1. Push valuation of company on basis that people will pay for the currently free ads (e.g. the article's suggestion that charging $75 per job ad will take revenues to $100m, that assumes that you will get as many ads at $75 each as at $0 each).
2. IPO
3. Profit
4. Leave investors to discover that revenues can not be increased that easilly.
Why does this sound familiar?
5. Make every
If that worked for software, then R & D spending on software would have jumped as soon as software was ruled patentabl in the US: in fact it did not. Therefore this benefit is non existent.
You have already dealt with the second benefit: so software patents have no benefit.
The sudden patentability of software in the US was the greatest test ever of the effectiveness of patents, and they failed badly.
Other posters have already pointed out that you do not seem to understand rounding errors.
Also, even after fall, Red Hat trades at 133 P/E
But the P/E is only 36x the forecast earnings for next financial year.
which is way overvalued even for this sector
(MSFT, for example, is at 40.59).
MS has not managed to increase sales by 61% from Q1 last year to Q1 this year. Neither is its EPS forecast to increase 478% from 2004 to 2006. Did you try comparing their PEG ratios? Or doing a DCF of any kind?
People don't like to be lied
Changing accouting policies is not lying as long as what the policies were was correctly stated at the time. Policy changes happen all the time. The share price drop either reflects fear of accounting changes (post Enron), with an outside possibility that the sellers know of more bad news to come.
I used to be an analyst and this sort of announcement would not in itself have any effect on my view on a company. I do not know the company (I used to cover UK software so I know something about the sector) so I can not form a proper view on it. What I can say is that if I had one, this announcement would not change it.
I personally found all three of these distributions quite usable once set up properly
So would you agree that it is suitable for non-knowledgeable users who have someone else available to set it up for them? This has been my experience. How would your mum do if you set it up for her? My father (so far, after a week) is very happy. My wife is happy after about two years and now dislikes having to use Windows.
I feel the biggest problem for linux lies with "power users", i.e. people who know the applications and OS they use very well, in that they know what to click to do anything, but have no knowledge beyond that so their experience does not transfer to a new OS.
I also think the hassle of set up and installation is worth it for more users than you say because of the hassle saved in the long run by better security (all those Windows viruses can be devastating). Most home users just want a web browser, an email client and some office software, once those are setup they need infrequent upgrades. Business users should have IT taking care of the hassle for them.
If I was one of your students I would just be grateful that the policy is not "all computers must have this software istalled" thus cutting off Linux (and possibly) Mac users. Plenty of places do assume that everyone uses Windows.
if it's a word processor, let it be for typing. Let it have spell-check, thesaurus, word count, and some formatting. I've often wished for a small, light-weight app that would just type things up without worrying too much about inserting images, or even getting too complex with layout/formatting.
1) Viruses. Do not tell me Windows is fine with up to date anti virus software as I know few organisations or home users who have never been infected, and the cost of even one infection can be huge.
2) Cost. Despite buying official versions of Mandrake (Powerpack is convenient).
3) Ease of installation/upgrade. My expeience with Mandrake has been that it is easier to install than Windows. I am not sure what improvements there may be in Win XP as I have never isntalled it so this may be a little unfair.
4) Software availability: a huge number of applications with the distro, no need to buy or download.
6) Lyx: There is an "experimental" version for Windows, I am not happy with running something experimental if it is important to me that it works.
6) Driver availability: If it works, the driver is on the install disks - no downloads, no seperate CDs or floppies to keep. Of course the downside is lack of drivers for some things, but as the only thing that has affect so far is an old Agfa scanner I never used anyway it has not been a significant problem yet.
7) KDE: Ease of use AND configurability. Konqueror is a wonderful file manager and an OK web browser. Nice little touches like file browser buttons.
Maybe they expect to keep on being sued if they continue their current business practices, the business practices are intimately tied in in with sales volumes and prices, and therefore the continuing fines will be a marginal cost - i.e. if they stop doing what they are doing they will lose sales, so the fines are a cost of higher sales and/or prices.
With American-style checks and balances, resulting in an American-style limited government, Marxism is totally unworkable.
How do you know when its not been tried? Most communist governments were backed by either the Soviet Union or China and copied their sponsor's systems. Those Soviet CLient states that tried to do things differently got their chains yanked pretty hard.
Furthermore the typical Marxist a centralised state controled economy is not the only possible form of communism: it would be perfectly possbiel to spread control of the economy a lot more (more power for local government, more collectives etc.).
The real problem with communism is that it is not economically effcient due to lack of mechanisms to move resources to match consumer choice. That said a monopoly capitalist system (to which we seem to be currently moving at least in some sectors) would be just as inefficient.
I recently had someone tell me that they needed windows becuase they used Net Meeting: she had no idea that there were alternatives,let alone OSS ones.
On the other hand I also had someone ask me about switching to Linus becuase her university wanted her to buy a legit version of Windows and stop using a priated one, at the same time they had courses on Linux for newbies so she felt comfirtable there is some support. Her main conern was reading word docs.
Between them my two friends probably neatly descripe the state of open source in the thrid world, as far as non-geek users go.
People in IT are very aware of Linux. My employer recently won a contract in an African country, it is going to be our first deployment of our product on anything other than Solaris becuase they have Lunix admins over there but no one knows Solaris. Red Hat and sometimes Mandrake CDs are avaiable everywhere you can get pirated windows from (although for some weird reason well out of date).
Thats a good idea for client machines. In fact even the reimaging is only really necessary when something gets messed up - thats what we do with PCs here.
Whoever the original question here is how to distribute rooot to the servers.
Everyone deserves root. Even those people that are going to screw the system up. (Once or twice, and they won't do it again.)
Agree completely, as long as this is not meant to apply to servers (like the ones you everyone's home directories on!).
Onions will be banned. Anyone caught in possession of onions will be assumed to be a terrorist and arrested for "going equiped to sabotage biometric devices".
confirms that software patents do not increase innovation:
The only academic evidence I know off confirms this.
Details of the paper here but I can not find aplace to download it from anymore. There is other literature sugesting that patents are pretty useless in other fields as well. Less academic view here
Wal-mart is also the biggest globally in terms of value added - a much better measure than sales. Sales understates the size of a more vertically integrated company.
The other meaningful measures are profits and market capitalisaion, MS is big but not astonishingly so on either measure, in the same range as big pharmaceutical companies.
Most users use some sub-set of the non-email features of outlook, but only that subset that they know how to use.
When they do know how to use it (like MS Office) it tends to get used for stuff it is not the best solution for: e.g. using Outlook folders to distribute information when a web server could do a better job.
Copyright infringement is ok if *I* do it, but not some company.
Yes, "*I*" do not profit by it, they do so they should share the profi.
Anyway I, and a lot of other people here, are not against copyright, just unreasonable copyright laws (excessively long terms, inadequate fair use provisions)
Unfortunately, since I chose to run my own mailsever, I've now earned the ire of the same anti-spammers, because I'm not using a corporate controlled mail server
A bit OTT but you are onto a real problem: blacklists will (and have already) make running mailservers a lot more difficult and thereby will help consolidate control of email by a few big players. Just the sort of thing/.ers like, right?
It also takes some time to discover that your emails are disappearing: my ISP was blacklisted and it was several days before I knew (I just assumed that people had got a bit slow about replying) until Yahoo rather than just deleting bounced the email with an explanation of the blacklisting. SInce then I have made sure I have two SMTP servers I can use. Of course Joe Sixpack's response will probably to just swtich to using Hotmail as it is more reliable (from his point of view).
When coupled with a $20 copy of Office 2003 Pro, there's not much reason for my to use Linux for my office computing needs.
That assumes that cost is the only or main reason for using Linux. Given the cost of software against the value of my time, I am willing to pay more for something better (hence I bought Opera for example) but I will use what ever is cheaper if it is as good, as good in the context of my needs (e.g. Gnumeric), or better in the context of my needs (e.g. Lyx). I also prefer to use open file formats for storing documents as I am less likely to be staranded with something that is unreadable later.
I think that India and South Asia in general would compare better than the countires you mentioned: the culture and education system are completely different although there is a significant tendency to do things by rote in less good places.
Someone who worked for a stock broker in Singapore told me that what tended to happen there is that locals did back office work (needs discipline), Indians were analysts (needs brains) and the British (there are a lot out there) did sales (needs people skills and polish).
TCL is still being used and developed. I have was very impressed at how fast development happened when Arsdigita (when it was still being run by Philip Greenspun) adapted the ACS to my then employers pretty specialist needs.
I thought it was RMS who trashed TCL. Incidentally the linked discussions warn that people will not use TCL because RMS does not like it: Reading the discussion he does seem to ahve been guility of a certain amount of exageration of its flaws.
You'll get far more use out of a CD than you will a DVD. Think how many times you've listened to your favourite albums. Now think how many times you've watched your favourite films. Unless you're the sort of fool who wastes half his/her life watching Star Wars, Titanic or Grease every week then there's no comparision. With music, you get far more bang for your buck.
A product selling at a price that reflects the value to the buyer rather than the cost of production is evidence of a monopoloy. Under perfect competition price = cost of production. The less competitive the market, the further from cost of production prices can be raised.
However. probably a good 50% of explorer is already loaded all that needs to be done is draw a new window, this can be proven by crashing IE (not hard) alot of times the whole desktop disapears
What disappears? I have crashed IE on Win 2000 (by opening an HTML file that is embeded in itself) and nothing else disappears.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Push valuation of company on basis that people will pay for the currently free ads (e.g. the article's suggestion that charging $75 per job ad will take revenues to $100m, that assumes that you will get as many ads at $75 each as at $0 each). 2. IPO 3. Profit 4. Leave investors to discover that revenues can not be increased that easilly. Why does this sound familiar? 5. Make every
If that worked for software, then R & D spending on software would have jumped as soon as software was ruled patentabl in the US: in fact it did not. Therefore this benefit is non existent.
You have already dealt with the second benefit: so software patents have no benefit.
The sudden patentability of software in the US was the greatest test ever of the effectiveness of patents, and they failed badly.
Other posters have already pointed out that you do not seem to understand rounding errors.
Also, even after fall, Red Hat trades at 133 P/E
But the P/E is only 36x the forecast earnings for next financial year. which is way overvalued even for this sector
(MSFT, for example, is at 40.59).
MS has not managed to increase sales by 61% from Q1 last year to Q1 this year. Neither is its EPS forecast to increase 478% from 2004 to 2006. Did you try comparing their PEG ratios? Or doing a DCF of any kind?
People don't like to be lied
Changing accouting policies is not lying as long as what the policies were was correctly stated at the time. Policy changes happen all the time. The share price drop either reflects fear of accounting changes (post Enron), with an outside possibility that the sellers know of more bad news to come.
I used to be an analyst and this sort of announcement would not in itself have any effect on my view on a company. I do not know the company (I used to cover UK software so I know something about the sector) so I can not form a proper view on it. What I can say is that if I had one, this announcement would not change it.
So would you agree that it is suitable for non-knowledgeable users who have someone else available to set it up for them? This has been my experience. How would your mum do if you set it up for her? My father (so far, after a week) is very happy. My wife is happy after about two years and now dislikes having to use Windows.
I feel the biggest problem for linux lies with "power users", i.e. people who know the applications and OS they use very well, in that they know what to click to do anything, but have no knowledge beyond that so their experience does not transfer to a new OS.
I also think the hassle of set up and installation is worth it for more users than you say because of the hassle saved in the long run by better security (all those Windows viruses can be devastating). Most home users just want a web browser, an email client and some office software, once those are setup they need infrequent upgrades. Business users should have IT taking care of the hassle for them.
If I was one of your students I would just be grateful that the policy is not "all computers must have this software istalled" thus cutting off Linux (and possibly) Mac users. Plenty of places do assume that everyone uses Windows.
You mean something like this.
1) Viruses. Do not tell me Windows is fine with up to date anti virus software as I know few organisations or home users who have never been infected, and the cost of even one infection can be huge.
2) Cost. Despite buying official versions of Mandrake (Powerpack is convenient).
3) Ease of installation/upgrade. My expeience with Mandrake has been that it is easier to install than Windows. I am not sure what improvements there may be in Win XP as I have never isntalled it so this may be a little unfair.
4) Software availability: a huge number of applications with the distro, no need to buy or download.
6) Lyx: There is an "experimental" version for Windows, I am not happy with running something experimental if it is important to me that it works.
6) Driver availability: If it works, the driver is on the install disks - no downloads, no seperate CDs or floppies to keep. Of course the downside is lack of drivers for some things, but as the only thing that has affect so far is an old Agfa scanner I never used anyway it has not been a significant problem yet.
7) KDE: Ease of use AND configurability. Konqueror is a wonderful file manager and an OK web browser. Nice little touches like file browser buttons.
Is that enough to be getting on with?
Maybe they expect to keep on being sued if they continue their current business practices, the business practices are intimately tied in in with sales volumes and prices, and therefore the continuing fines will be a marginal cost - i.e. if they stop doing what they are doing they will lose sales, so the fines are a cost of higher sales and/or prices.
How do you know when its not been tried? Most communist governments were backed by either the Soviet Union or China and copied their sponsor's systems. Those Soviet CLient states that tried to do things differently got their chains yanked pretty hard.
Furthermore the typical Marxist a centralised state controled economy is not the only possible form of communism: it would be perfectly possbiel to spread control of the economy a lot more (more power for local government, more collectives etc.).
The real problem with communism is that it is not economically effcient due to lack of mechanisms to move resources to match consumer choice. That said a monopoly capitalist system (to which we seem to be currently moving at least in some sectors) would be just as inefficient.
Opera alows you to enable or disable pug-ins from its quick preferences menu.
Further more with out flash hwo the heel do I navigate around sites like this?
That said I do hate flash and during the dot com boom repeated irritated clueless "web designers" with tirades about why I hated it.
I recently had someone tell me that they needed windows becuase they used Net Meeting: she had no idea that there were alternatives,let alone OSS ones.
On the other hand I also had someone ask me about switching to Linus becuase her university wanted her to buy a legit version of Windows and stop using a priated one, at the same time they had courses on Linux for newbies so she felt comfirtable there is some support. Her main conern was reading word docs.
Between them my two friends probably neatly descripe the state of open source in the thrid world, as far as non-geek users go.
People in IT are very aware of Linux. My employer recently won a contract in an African country, it is going to be our first deployment of our product on anything other than Solaris becuase they have Lunix admins over there but no one knows Solaris. Red Hat and sometimes Mandrake CDs are avaiable everywhere you can get pirated windows from (although for some weird reason well out of date).
Whoever the original question here is how to distribute rooot to the servers.
Everyone deserves root. Even those people that are going to screw the system up. (Once or twice, and they won't do it again.)
Agree completely, as long as this is not meant to apply to servers (like the ones you everyone's home directories on!).
Onions will be banned. Anyone caught in possession of onions will be assumed to be a terrorist and arrested for "going equiped to sabotage biometric devices".
The only academic evidence I know off confirms this. Details of the paper here but I can not find aplace to download it from anymore. There is other literature sugesting that patents are pretty useless in other fields as well. Less academic view here
Wal-mart is also the biggest globally in terms of value added - a much better measure than sales. Sales understates the size of a more vertically integrated company.
The other meaningful measures are profits and market capitalisaion, MS is big but not astonishingly so on either measure, in the same range as big pharmaceutical companies.
Good point.
Most users use some sub-set of the non-email features of outlook, but only that subset that they know how to use.
When they do know how to use it (like MS Office) it tends to get used for stuff it is not the best solution for: e.g. using Outlook folders to distribute information when a web server could do a better job.
Or rather a developer who does fork on a whim is likely to be be ignored by everyone else.
Yes, "*I*" do not profit by it, they do so they should share the profi.
Anyway I, and a lot of other people here, are not against copyright, just unreasonable copyright laws (excessively long terms, inadequate fair use provisions)
A bit OTT but you are onto a real problem: blacklists will (and have already) make running mailservers a lot more difficult and thereby will help consolidate control of email by a few big players. Just the sort of thing /.ers like, right?
It also takes some time to discover that your emails are disappearing: my ISP was blacklisted and it was several days before I knew (I just assumed that people had got a bit slow about replying) until Yahoo rather than just deleting bounced the email with an explanation of the blacklisting. SInce then I have made sure I have two SMTP servers I can use. Of course Joe Sixpack's response will probably to just swtich to using Hotmail as it is more reliable (from his point of view).
When coupled with a $20 copy of Office 2003 Pro, there's not much reason for my to use Linux for my office computing needs.
That assumes that cost is the only or main reason for using Linux. Given the cost of software against the value of my time, I am willing to pay more for something better (hence I bought Opera for example) but I will use what ever is cheaper if it is as good, as good in the context of my needs (e.g. Gnumeric), or better in the context of my needs (e.g. Lyx). I also prefer to use open file formats for storing documents as I am less likely to be staranded with something that is unreadable later.I think that India and South Asia in general would compare better than the countires you mentioned: the culture and education system are completely different although there is a significant tendency to do things by rote in less good places.
Someone who worked for a stock broker in Singapore told me that what tended to happen there is that locals did back office work (needs discipline), Indians were analysts (needs brains) and the British (there are a lot out there) did sales (needs people skills and polish).
I thought it was RMS who trashed TCL. Incidentally the linked discussions warn that people will not use TCL because RMS does not like it: Reading the discussion he does seem to ahve been guility of a certain amount of exageration of its flaws.
A product selling at a price that reflects the value to the buyer rather than the cost of production is evidence of a monopoloy. Under perfect competition price = cost of production. The less competitive the market, the further from cost of production prices can be raised.
I am confused: I thought StrongARM was an Intel processor
What disappears? I have crashed IE on Win 2000 (by opening an HTML file that is embeded in itself) and nothing else disappears.