They didn't spend actual money. They traded stock. Ebay has a market cap of $15b, so it appears that they traded 10% of their company for a company that has about 20% of their revenue, IIRC. It doesn't look like they issued new stock to do this, so the shareholders will not have their shares diluted. Ebay's share price DID go down today, so I guess shareholders CAN bitch about that. If PayPal is ripe for the picking, then the time to take them is NOW, not after you have eroded their market share and profitability.
You seem to give us only those 2 choices, now or never. But it won't operate this way. For example, some day there will be giant wind power arrays down both sides of the Columbia gorge, where the wind blows often and hard. Right now there are test plants of limited size, but energy is too cheap to make these a good bargain right now. As soon as the price of energy justifies the expense of the wind farms, more will be built. Meanwhile, technology advances and so there is an advantage to waiting until the need arises before we build these. I agree with you that the "market solution" is often short sighted and will not yield the best thing for long term. There is ample evidence in California's power crisis, which seems to have been caused by a lack of planning, and a "market solution" that left the people who should be building power plants with an incentive to NOT build them, and then profit off the scarcity. OTOH, I don't think it is time to go build a giant orbital solar power collector for fear that we will run out of power.
One of the big reasons many people buy SUVs is their perceived safety. As you have already pointed out, SUVs really are NOT safe, because they handle and stop so poorly. They also are more likely to roll over. Nevertheless, people confronted with the facts will cling unwaiveringly to the belief that SUVs are safer. They like the "command view seating" and the advantage of larger mass in a 2 vehicle collision. Sadly, these "advantages" disappear when most everyone else has an SUV too. and make things much less safe for the cars left on the road.
You think The Rich are rich because they work harder and are smarter? May I present People's Exhibit A: The Hilton Twins. These are the poster children for what is wrong with no estate tax.
Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm completely FOR deep linking. I think it is the responibility of the original site to use technological measures if they don't want people getting straight to "interior" pages from somewhere else. If the pages have a URL, then I say they are PUBLIC.
Having said that, I don't think this is a Free Speech issue, and I don't think the courts are going to see it that way either. The Courts are not consistant about this issue, and some judge might agree with you, but I don't think you could count on it.
For your first example, Yes, your recipe could be found to be "content neutral" as the DeCSS code was found to be by a NY judge, and therefore not afforded the same protection as "pure speech." Because the judge might decide that your recipe doesn't express anything, but instead is primarily for doing something. Just because it is words, doesn't mean it is speech.
For your second example, well ART is in the eye of the beholder. And I am completely in favor of people having the freedom to call a urinal ART and display it, and sell it. But art or not, you still can't do something illegal with it. If I take a firearm, functional or not, and paint it bright pink and march into an airport as a legitimate political protest, or artistic social commentary, I'm still going to be in big trouble, if I don't get shot. And a judge isn't going to say that my freedom of expression is more important than the public safety.
Likewise, most judges are not going to decide that your freedom extends into the area where someone elses property rights start.
Now what I really hope the judge in this Dutch case finds is that linking is not republishing, and therefore not a violation of copyright, or theft of a database. Instead, linking should be considered commentary on and directions to the source pages, which are public.
Well, not the stock units that come with the cars, but after I bought a Nomad Jukebox I went to Best Buy to look at car CD players and ALMOST HALF of them have a nice, little standard headphone jack sized input on the front of the unit. All you need is a male-male headphone cord from Radio Shack and you can plug your iPod or Rio or Nomad right in and go.
But I already ripped my entire collection once, over a 2 week period, plus hours of deleting songs I decided I didn't want, and making play lists. Now Sony wants me to do it again? Now if it had a USB or Firewire connection, that would be an entirely diffent story. But it doesn't because of course that would let me load "pirated" music.
Doesn't someone make a deck with a pull-out HDD that can be mounted in your desktop for loading up the music? That makes a whole lot more sense to me.
'Finally, if DeCSS code can be considered "free speech", how can writing an URL not be subject to the same rational?"
But The Courts have not upheld code as Free Speech. At least the US Courts haven't. They have said that code is primarily a device, and secondarily speech. So if the function of the code is deemed illegal, then the code can be illegal.
Oh you did? You looked at the Mac On Linux site and this: "What Is Mac On Linux? Mac-on-Linux lets you run MacOS under Linux/ppc. MOL runs natively on the processor, i.e. it is very fast. Unlike most mac emulators, MOL can run MacOS 8.6 and later WITHOUT A ROM IMAGE
I didn't add the emphasis, by the way. So you read that and decided it is all a big fat lie. I wish I was smart like you and knew everything about everything.
I don't think you should take it on faith that there IS a loophole there in the law. Other posters here who have read the telemarketing law have said that it allows for ONE mistake in a years time. There is no grace period for them to keep calling you while they put you on their list, and their Don't Call List can't expire after a year. I guess the loophole is that they could "accidently" call you once per year, but it sounds like the story they are giving you is bogus and doesn't absolve them of $500 per infraction. IINAL and I have not even personally read the law in question.
Here in Oregon, it can take 3 months for the State's NCL to be updated and sent out to the telemarketers, who must buy it. But I think the above poster was saying that his credit card company, who is selling his name, claimed it would take THEM 3 months to put him on their NCL. And someone else said that was illegal.
Are you saying your Missouri State NCL didn't work for you? That is surprising. For me, it took a few months to eliminate all the calls, but when the conversation went "Have you heard of the Oregon No Call List? Well, this number is on it and you can be fined $20,000 each time you call me." Then I didn't ever get another call from that company. Now I can answer my phone at dinner time without fear.
They are describing a worst case scenerio when they speak of the difficulties in tracking down a file sharing host. Most of the "big fish" file sharers are going to be on a broadband connections. And enough of the broadband big fish will have a static IP address to give the RIAA a variety of easy targets to choose from. They will be carefull to pick out people who have assets and who will not play sympatheically before the camera. The first case will not be a Doctor with a file sharing young teenage son, it will be a nerd who lives alone (so that it cannot be mistaken who was responsible) with a fat pipe and a giant RAIDed server of pr0n, mp3s, and DivX movies. He'll be inarticulate, combative, and swear a lot. At least that's what I would do if I were them.
It is true that filing suits against all file sharers would be foolish at this point. But after they get the first 10 people...well they will probably reduce the number of people doing the sharing, and drive the sharers to use tools will better anonymity.
You didn't see the Salon article. Their headline was "Tycoon completes global balloon trip." Talk about spin. "Fosset..." would have been a much better/unbiased headline, and for the same number of letters.
DIVX didn't die because of savvy users, it died because most of the companies in the industry were against it. Many studios swore they would never put any movies on DIVX, and released vast swaths of their library on DVD, some at very low prices (Time-Warner) Many retail outlets wouldn't carry DIVX because they felt that would only be helping the competition (Circuit City). So in my area, I had to drive 30 minutes through traffic to get to a Circuit City or one other place now out of business whose name escapes me righ now, rather than going to the corner video store, or the grocery store, or any of a number of places that stock DVDs for rent or sale, and once I got there, there were many movies that were not available. It was not the technology that people objected to. Well, most people.
Notice that DVD prices have gone up about 75% since DIVX died.
Its probably someone that wants to hurt Microsoft's Secure PC plans by showing the world that the Emperor has no clothes. There is a lot more than $5 mil at stake in that arena.
"Even if many xboxes get sold to put Linux on, it's still a good thing for MS. Significance: Not only would MS be able to claim a more significant install base to potential developers, but it would also allow them to buy the parts for the xbox cheaper..."
Wrong. First, X-Box Software Developers are slightly interested in the number of consoles sold, but they are a lot more interested in the number of X-Box software titles sold. X-box crackers are not going to be helping that number. Second, Microsoft already has all their supplier contracts worked out with fixed prices, so more units sold isn't goint to lower their price for parts. In fact, Microsoft is buying so few parts, that they are a long way from having leverage with their suppliers. I think there are already disputes with suppliers because Microsoft has locked themselves into contracts that they would like to get out of now.
All things considered, I think it is paranoia to think that Microsoft is offering this reward.
On the other hand, I fail to see much significance to users in the X-box being hacked, other than businesses losing faith in Palladium. IIRC, the Dreamcast was hacked and yet they still sat on shelves at $100, because people would rather just buy a real computer. When the X-Box gets broken, I doubt there will be much impact on sales. Lets face the facts, Microsoft will make darn sure that it is very difficult for anyone to buy 100 of these for any kind of cluster, unless retail stores are already sitting on large inventories.
"Boeing calculates that a BWB seating 480 passengers would use 32 percent less fuel than the proposed A380-700 from Airbus, the main business unit of European aerospace group EADS."
Perhaps the 800 passenger model is only one proposal. A 480 passenger or even 300 seems to make a lot more sense, and would probably fit on the runways. Since we are still 8 years away, I think they have time to figure out how big it needs to be, and I hope they do since I'd prefer to see those jobs say in America.
I'm thinking an electronic view would be just fine. Either on the back of the seat in front of you, or on one big screen at the front of the room. Since the camera or cameras could be pointed ahead, behind, or down, they would offer a much better view than one gets out the little window. A lounge area would just eat into the seating, which is not something that airlines are going to be interested in.
Another cool thing about no windows is that maybe they could mount all the seats rear facing without bothering anyone, since it is safer. If you have a screen that lets you feel like you are facing "forwards" then maybe people won't mind it.
Perhaps he means that fly-by-wire is new in a large commercial passenger plane. The same could be said of an "all wing" craft. The idea is not new, but it is new to jetliners.
Re:Not as great as it sounds for OpenGL 2.0
on
Doom3 and OpenGL2.0
·
· Score: 1
Good point, but at least we have something better than the card manufacturers only focusing on DirectX.
Re:Framerates differ based on application.
on
Doom3 and OpenGL2.0
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· Score: 1
That is true, but entirely beside the point. Benchmarks are usually run with a prerecorded demo so that each video card/driver is asked to run exactly the same thing, and net lag and some game engine elements are not in the equation, just graphics.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there is just no argueing with that kind of logic. Well done. And thank you for illustrating my point about people who "cling unwaiveringly."
They didn't spend actual money. They traded stock. Ebay has a market cap of $15b, so it appears that they traded 10% of their company for a company that has about 20% of their revenue, IIRC. It doesn't look like they issued new stock to do this, so the shareholders will not have their shares diluted. Ebay's share price DID go down today, so I guess shareholders CAN bitch about that. If PayPal is ripe for the picking, then the time to take them is NOW, not after you have eroded their market share and profitability.
You seem to give us only those 2 choices, now or never. But it won't operate this way. For example, some day there will be giant wind power arrays down both sides of the Columbia gorge, where the wind blows often and hard. Right now there are test plants of limited size, but energy is too cheap to make these a good bargain right now. As soon as the price of energy justifies the expense of the wind farms, more will be built. Meanwhile, technology advances and so there is an advantage to waiting until the need arises before we build these. I agree with you that the "market solution" is often short sighted and will not yield the best thing for long term. There is ample evidence in California's power crisis, which seems to have been caused by a lack of planning, and a "market solution" that left the people who should be building power plants with an incentive to NOT build them, and then profit off the scarcity. OTOH, I don't think it is time to go build a giant orbital solar power collector for fear that we will run out of power.
One of the big reasons many people buy SUVs is their perceived safety. As you have already pointed out, SUVs really are NOT safe, because they handle and stop so poorly. They also are more likely to roll over. Nevertheless, people confronted with the facts will cling unwaiveringly to the belief that SUVs are safer. They like the "command view seating" and the advantage of larger mass in a 2 vehicle collision. Sadly, these "advantages" disappear when most everyone else has an SUV too. and make things much less safe for the cars left on the road.
You think The Rich are rich because they work harder and are smarter? May I present People's Exhibit A: The Hilton Twins. These are the poster children for what is wrong with no estate tax.
I think you will find a screw or two underneath the sticker on the bottom of the mouse.
Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm completely FOR deep linking. I think it is the responibility of the original site to use technological measures if they don't want people getting straight to "interior" pages from somewhere else. If the pages have a URL, then I say they are PUBLIC.
Having said that, I don't think this is a Free Speech issue, and I don't think the courts are going to see it that way either. The Courts are not consistant about this issue, and some judge might agree with you, but I don't think you could count on it.
For your first example, Yes, your recipe could be found to be "content neutral" as the DeCSS code was found to be by a NY judge, and therefore not afforded the same protection as "pure speech." Because the judge might decide that your recipe doesn't express anything, but instead is primarily for doing something. Just because it is words, doesn't mean it is speech.
For your second example, well ART is in the eye of the beholder. And I am completely in favor of people having the freedom to call a urinal ART and display it, and sell it. But art or not, you still can't do something illegal with it. If I take a firearm, functional or not, and paint it bright pink and march into an airport as a legitimate political protest, or artistic social commentary, I'm still going to be in big trouble, if I don't get shot. And a judge isn't going to say that my freedom of expression is more important than the public safety.
Likewise, most judges are not going to decide that your freedom extends into the area where someone elses property rights start.
Now what I really hope the judge in this Dutch case finds is that linking is not republishing, and therefore not a violation of copyright, or theft of a database. Instead, linking should be considered commentary on and directions to the source pages, which are public.
Well, not the stock units that come with the cars, but after I bought a Nomad Jukebox I went to Best Buy to look at car CD players and ALMOST HALF of them have a nice, little standard headphone jack sized input on the front of the unit. All you need is a male-male headphone cord from Radio Shack and you can plug your iPod or Rio or Nomad right in and go.
But I already ripped my entire collection once, over a 2 week period, plus hours of deleting songs I decided I didn't want, and making play lists. Now Sony wants me to do it again? Now if it had a USB or Firewire connection, that would be an entirely diffent story. But it doesn't because of course that would let me load "pirated" music.
Doesn't someone make a deck with a pull-out HDD that can be mounted in your desktop for loading up the music? That makes a whole lot more sense to me.
'Finally, if DeCSS code can be considered "free speech", how can writing an URL not be subject to the same rational?"
But The Courts have not upheld code as Free Speech. At least the US Courts haven't. They have said that code is primarily a device, and secondarily speech. So if the function of the code is deemed illegal, then the code can be illegal.
Oh you did? You looked at the Mac On Linux site and this:
"What Is Mac On Linux? Mac-on-Linux lets you run MacOS under Linux/ppc. MOL runs natively on the processor, i.e. it is very fast. Unlike most mac emulators, MOL can run MacOS 8.6 and later WITHOUT A ROM IMAGE
I didn't add the emphasis, by the way. So you read that and decided it is all a big fat lie. I wish I was smart like you and knew everything about everything.
I don't think you should take it on faith that there IS a loophole there in the law. Other posters here who have read the telemarketing law have said that it allows for ONE mistake in a years time. There is no grace period for them to keep calling you while they put you on their list, and their Don't Call List can't expire after a year. I guess the loophole is that they could "accidently" call you once per year, but it sounds like the story they are giving you is bogus and doesn't absolve them of $500 per infraction. IINAL and I have not even personally read the law in question.
Here in Oregon, it can take 3 months for the State's NCL to be updated and sent out to the telemarketers, who must buy it. But I think the above poster was saying that his credit card company, who is selling his name, claimed it would take THEM 3 months to put him on their NCL. And someone else said that was illegal.
Are you saying your Missouri State NCL didn't work for you? That is surprising. For me, it took a few months to eliminate all the calls, but when the conversation went "Have you heard of the Oregon No Call List? Well, this number is on it and you can be fined $20,000 each time you call me." Then I didn't ever get another call from that company. Now I can answer my phone at dinner time without fear.
They are describing a worst case scenerio when they speak of the difficulties in tracking down a file sharing host. Most of the "big fish" file sharers are going to be on a broadband connections. And enough of the broadband big fish will have a static IP address to give the RIAA a variety of easy targets to choose from. They will be carefull to pick out people who have assets and who will not play sympatheically before the camera. The first case will not be a Doctor with a file sharing young teenage son, it will be a nerd who lives alone (so that it cannot be mistaken who was responsible) with a fat pipe and a giant RAIDed server of pr0n, mp3s, and DivX movies. He'll be inarticulate, combative, and swear a lot. At least that's what I would do if I were them.
It is true that filing suits against all file sharers would be foolish at this point. But after they get the first 10 people...well they will probably reduce the number of people doing the sharing, and drive the sharers to use tools will better anonymity.
You didn't see the Salon article. Their headline was "Tycoon completes global balloon trip." Talk about spin. "Fosset..." would have been a much better/unbiased headline, and for the same number of letters.
DIVX didn't die because of savvy users, it died because most of the companies in the industry were against it. Many studios swore they would never put any movies on DIVX, and released vast swaths of their library on DVD, some at very low prices (Time-Warner) Many retail outlets wouldn't carry DIVX because they felt that would only be helping the competition (Circuit City). So in my area, I had to drive 30 minutes through traffic to get to a Circuit City or one other place now out of business whose name escapes me righ now, rather than going to the corner video store, or the grocery store, or any of a number of places that stock DVDs for rent or sale, and once I got there, there were many movies that were not available. It was not the technology that people objected to. Well, most people.
Notice that DVD prices have gone up about 75% since DIVX died.
You are confusing DIVX, the Circuit City backed pay-per-play scheme, with DivX, aka MPEG-4.
The POTUS doesn't make any laws. Congress does.
Its probably someone that wants to hurt Microsoft's Secure PC plans by showing the world that the Emperor has no clothes. There is a lot more than $5 mil at stake in that arena.
"Even if many xboxes get sold to put Linux on, it's still a good thing for MS. Significance: Not only would MS be able to claim a more significant install base to potential developers, but it would also allow them to buy the parts for the xbox cheaper..."
Wrong. First, X-Box Software Developers are slightly interested in the number of consoles sold, but they are a lot more interested in the number of X-Box software titles sold. X-box crackers are not going to be helping that number. Second, Microsoft already has all their supplier contracts worked out with fixed prices, so more units sold isn't goint to lower their price for parts. In fact, Microsoft is buying so few parts, that they are a long way from having leverage with their suppliers. I think there are already disputes with suppliers because Microsoft has locked themselves into contracts that they would like to get out of now.
All things considered, I think it is paranoia to think that Microsoft is offering this reward.
On the other hand, I fail to see much significance to users in the X-box being hacked, other than businesses losing faith in Palladium. IIRC, the Dreamcast was hacked and yet they still sat on shelves at $100, because people would rather just buy a real computer. When the X-Box gets broken, I doubt there will be much impact on sales. Lets face the facts, Microsoft will make darn sure that it is very difficult for anyone to buy 100 of these for any kind of cluster, unless retail stores are already sitting on large inventories.
From the article
"Boeing calculates that a BWB seating 480 passengers would use 32 percent less fuel than the proposed A380-700 from Airbus, the main business unit of European aerospace group EADS."
Perhaps the 800 passenger model is only one proposal. A 480 passenger or even 300 seems to make a lot more sense, and would probably fit on the runways. Since we are still 8 years away, I think they have time to figure out how big it needs to be, and I hope they do since I'd prefer to see those jobs say in America.
I'm thinking an electronic view would be just fine. Either on the back of the seat in front of you, or on one big screen at the front of the room. Since the camera or cameras could be pointed ahead, behind, or down, they would offer a much better view than one gets out the little window. A lounge area would just eat into the seating, which is not something that airlines are going to be interested in.
Another cool thing about no windows is that maybe they could mount all the seats rear facing without bothering anyone, since it is safer. If you have a screen that lets you feel like you are facing "forwards" then maybe people won't mind it.
Perhaps he means that fly-by-wire is new in a large commercial passenger plane. The same could be said of an "all wing" craft. The idea is not new, but it is new to jetliners.
Good point, but at least we have something better than the card manufacturers only focusing on DirectX.
That is true, but entirely beside the point. Benchmarks are usually run with a prerecorded demo so that each video card/driver is asked to run exactly the same thing, and net lag and some game engine elements are not in the equation, just graphics.
This is a positive thing for open standards.