also refers to rabies. The victim is scared of water. BTW what will you call someone who is scared of a mixture of water and oil?
Oil is Hydrophobic (it doesnt stick to water). So someone who is phobic to oil will be hrdro-lover. But if u mix oil+water, then he becomes hrdrophobic + hrdro-lover. So what the hell is he?
February 17, 2003
Smithsonian Folkways Dusts Off Titles With New Technology
By CHRIS NELSON
he major music companies may fret over falling revenue, but one label saw its business jump 33 percent last year -- thanks in part to the recordable compact discs that the industry says are hurting its sales.
The label, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, is using recordable CD's, or CD-R's, to ensure that each release in its extensive catalog is always available. And in doing so, the label best known for dusty recordings by Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly is taking initial steps toward creating a 21st-century "celestial jukebox," where nothing recorded ever goes out of print.
The Folkways inventory includes 2,168 titles dating to 1948. Some of those are collections by familiar troubadours like Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs. But many more are obscurities like "Music From Western Samoa: From Conch Shell to Disco" (1984) and "Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods" (1955).
Most recording companies, if they would ever release titles like that to begin with, would let the master tapes languish once a first pressing was sold out and initial interest had waned.
The notion of any recording falling into history's dust bin was said to gall Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records. Dan Sheehy, director of Smithsonian Folkways, recalled that Mr. Asch used to ask if Q would be dropped from the alphabet just because it wasn't used as much as the rest of the letters.
When the Smithsonian Institution bought Folkways from the Asch estate in 1987, the museum agreed to keep every title in print. Initially, requests for rare, out-of-stock albums were fulfilled with dubbed cassettes.
Now, music fans hankering for "Burmese Folk and Traditional Music" from 1953 can pay $19.95 and receive a CD-R "burned" with the original album, along with a standard cardboard slipcase that includes a folded photocopy of the original liner notes.
The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group representing the major music corporations, worries that CD-R technology aids music piracy. Rather than buy new CD's, the theory goes, people will burn downloaded music onto CD-R's or burn a copy of a friend's CD.
In 2002, 681 million CD's were sold, down from 763 million the year before, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But Smithsonian Folkways Recordings has been using the CD-R technology since 1996 to sell its obscure titles, essentially creating a just-in-time delivery model for record companies. Every time an order comes in, a Folkways employee burns five copies, one for the customer, and four for future requests.
Last year, the company sold 13,467 CD-R's, accounting for 6 percent of its CD sales, said Richard Burgess, director of marketing. Over all, Smithsonian Folkways had net album sales of almost $2.9 million in 2002, up 33 percent from 2001, despite its cutting its advertising budget more than 50 percent.
Interest in Smithsonian Folkways has jumped since the bluegrass-flavored soundtrack to "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (2001), from Universal, won a Grammy for Album of the Year and went platinum six times over.
But it is not just rustic American music that Smithsonian Folkways is selling.
A 2002 double-CD set of Middle Eastern and Asian songs called "The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan" has sold 7,800 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Though that is just a fraction of the sales for Eminem in a single week, it is a respectable figure for a museum label that makes no videos, places few ads and deals primarily in music recorded by artists long dead, or in foreign languages, or from locales most Americans will never visit.
"Getting rid of inventory, which is what this custom on-demand stuff is about, is a huge step in the right direction toward making even low-selling albums into a business," said Josh Bernoff, principal analyst at Forrester Research.
Industry analysts say it is also a step toward making all music forever available, one the record business has yet to take successfully.
In 1999, Alliance Entertainment's RedDotNet subsidiary unveiled kiosks that would burn discs in retail outlets while customers waited. But that program failed, in part because the company was not able to secure licensing agreements with major labels, according to Eric Weisman, president and chief executive of Alliance.
Echo, a new consortium of retailers including Best Buy, Tower and Wherehouse, is considering development of in-store stations that would allow customers to download music onto portable digital music players like Apple's iPod.
While the Smithsonian Folkways CD-R operation allows the company to fulfill its obligation to keep everything in print, it is a labor-intensive solution that would be inefficient for the higher-demand catalogs of the major labels.
But Smithsonian Folkways is also venturing into just-in-time delivery for more popular titles. Last fall, the company enlisted the print-on-demand company Americ Disc to manufacture CD's, which are expected to sell significantly more copies than typical CD-R's, but fewer than full-blown retail releases. These Collector's Series discs come with full-color booklets and are identical in quality to commercial releases, but are sold only through the Smithsonian Folkways Web site (www.si.edu/folkways).
The first CD in the series, "Bells & Winter Festivals of Greek Macedonia" proved so popular through mail order that the company quickly made it a regular retail release.
It is hard for some to ignore the irony that as Smithsonian Folkways uses CD-R's to further its business, much of the industry hopes to limit the technology's use.
"It's almost like a little bootlegger's operation going on," said Dean Blackwood, owner of Revenant Records, an esoteric Americana label.
It's war on a generation of cyber pirates
ByAmanda Morgan
February 18 2003
The recording industry has launched its most aggressive offensive yet against illegal music swapping over the internet.
In the Federal Court in Sydney today, record companies will try to seize evidence of song swapping by students using the computer networks of the universities of Sydney, Melbourne and Tasmania.
Record labels in the United States and Europe have warned the world's top 1000 companies they must stop illegal music swapping on their networks or face legal action.
Australia's major record companies, Sony, EMI and Universal, are acting on suspicions that students, and possibly staff, are using the universities' computers to swap digital music files. The industry says the three universities have not divulged information, but that others have co-operated.
Michael Speck, the director of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, which tracks swapping on behalf of the Australian record industry, believes the illegal file trading is significant.
"And we're not talking about one track here, one track there," he said. "We're talking piracy, significant examples of piracy."
The University of Sydney says it knows of one student who established a website with a handful of songs for swapping on its system. It has "isolated the website, and will hand over the evidence at an appropriate time", a spokesman said.
There are hundreds of thousands of song files on personal computers worldwide. They are "swapped" for free using special software, robbing artists and their record companies of royalties.
But the president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Cameron Murphy, said the industry was wrong to target students.
"The focus of these organisations should be on people who are running or pirating music for clear commercial benefit," he said. "I don't think there is any benefit to the community in prosecuting individuals who do this as a one-off. I mean, we'd have half the students in Australia in jail."
Mr Murphy also questioned whether the universities should be forced into the role of policing their students.
Mr Speck denied the industry was making an example of the universities. "Somebody gets caught being involved in a wrongdoing and they utter, 'We're not the only ones, why are we here?' Well, you got caught."
This story was found at:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/17/10453305 39310.html
Friday, 14 February, 2003, 23:32 GMT Biology to make mini machines By Richard Black BBC science correspondent
Computers of the future will be built not by factory machines, but by living cells such as bacteria.
That at least is the vision which has been outlined by scientists speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Denver.
They have described how wires can now be made by yeast organisms, and how solar panels could be built using substances produced by sea sponges.
Researchers believe these kind of technologies will be essential if we are to continue to shrink the size of electronic devices.
Science of the small
Plants and animals produce an extraordinary variety of chemical substances, all designed to help them in their lives. But some of these substances - proteins or other kinds of molecule - might also be useful in the electronics industry, as it seeks ways of making silicon chips smaller and faster.
Another potential application is nanotechnology - science which is done at the scale of just billionths (nano) of a metre.
Materials fabricated at this level have unusual electrical and optical properties but are costly to produce. Getting the "machinery" that already exits in biological organisms to do the work has obvious advantages.
Some of the molecules that scientists are now investigating come from unlikely sources. Susan Lindquist, director of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is using yeast to produce tough wires.
"We're using a protein from yeast that is actually called yeast prion," she said.
"It resembles the prions that are responsible for mad cow disease. They form long, long fibres.
"They are very thin - just 10 nanometres in width. But they go on for thousands and thousands and thousands of nanometres in length."
Dr Lindquist has discovered how to coat these strands of prion protein in gold and silver so they conduct electricity.
Captured rays
Through genetic engineering, it should be possible to make the protein strands - and so the wires - in different shapes and configurations, perhaps even forming entire electronic components.
Another researcher speaking here, Daniel Morse from the University of California, found a number of years ago that substances developed by sea sponges could be used to make silicon-based materials.
He has now discovered that the same substances could potentially make a new generation of solar cells.
They make a material, a special kind of titanium dioxide, which is very efficient at turning the Sun's rays into electricity.
Dr Morse believes that making devices through biology rather than through factories would have other benefits, including for the environment.
Human ingenuity
He said: "Biology and bio-catalysis offers the prospects of synthesis without the recourse to toxic chemicals that are presently the basis of human manufacturing of silicon-based materials today."
Computers made with these natural processes are not just around the corner - it will be many years before the technologies can be developed that far.
But sea sponges and yeast offer us the possibility of making devices smaller, cheaper and cleaner than human ingenuity could develop on its own.
Perhaps we should not be surprised, says Susan Lindquist. After all, nature has been working on the problem for a lot longer than the human brain.
She said: "For a long time man has been harnessing horses to plough and we're just beginning to understand how to harness molecules to other kinds of purposes and just the prospect of being able to do this for the benefit of mankind is really an exciting thing."
The SGI Altix 3300 server is useful as a stand-alone server, a development platform for larger SGI® AltixTM 3700 superclusters, or a node in a cluster using an industry-standard switch.
PCs are *supposed* to look ugly, so it doesnt matter whether u assemble them yourself or buy a branded one. This is not the case with Apples. They are *supoosed* to look cool, but they wont be cool if u make them yourself.
Companies make decisions on the basis of maximising their profit. Mebbe using linux makes more business sense. So dont jump your gun saying "they r scared of microsoft", everytime something related with linux comes up.
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. and CUPERTINO, Calif., Dec. 13/PRNewswire-FirstCall/
-- Hughes Electronics Corporation today announced that its subsidiary, DIRECTV
Broadband, Inc., would close its high-speed Internet service business in
approximately 90 days and work toward transitioning existing customers to
alternative service providers.
DIRECTV Broadband, based in Cupertino, was acquired by HUGHES in
April 2001 and currently serves approximately 160,000 customers with its
"DIRECTV DSL" service.
"HUGHES and its subsidiaries have worked steadily over the past months to
improve our businesses in anticipation of the merger with EchoStar," said Jack
A. Shaw, president and chief executive officer of HUGHES. "When the merger
agreement was terminated earlier this week, we promised our shareholders and
customers that we would move quickly to strengthen the profitability and
efficiency of our company. This decision by DIRECTV Broadband is the first of
those moves."
"The landscape of the terrestrial broadband industry has changed
dramatically since we purchased this business nearly two years ago, and,
despite continuing subscriber growth, DIRECTV Broadband cannot operate
profitably now or in the foreseeable future," said Eddy W. Hartenstein,
chairman and CEO of DIRECTV, Inc. "The immediate priority will be to work
toward transitioning customers to alternative service providers as quickly as
possible, to minimize customer disruptions."
As a result of this action, HUGHES expects to record a fourth quarter 2002
EBITDA charge of between $100 million and $150 million. Also in 2002,
unrelated to the closure of DIRECTV Broadband and in conjunction with the
adoption of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards Number 142 "Goodwill
and Other Intangible Assets" (SFAS 142), HUGHES expects to record a
non-operating charge of $108 million to write-off the goodwill associated with
DIRECTV Broadband. Excluding the charge for the closure of DIRECTV Broadband
and the gain related to receipt of a $600 million settlement on Dec. 10, 2002
for termination of the merger agreement between HUGHES and EchoStar
Communications, HUGHES is confirming its full-year guidance for 2002.
HUGHES will continue to offer its DIRECWAY(R) satellite-delivered consumer
broadband service, which currently has approximately 160,000 subscribers. The
company will continue to add new DIRECWAY customers but will not increase the
subscriber base aggressively in the near term to avoid the cash requirements
from the subscriber acquisition costs. In addition, HUGHES and DIRECTV will
explore other strategic relationships that would allow the companies to offer
future broadband services via both terrestrial and satellite technologies.
Roughly half of DIRECTV Broadband's 400 employees were notified of layoff
today, with a minimum of 60 days notice during which time they will continue
to be paid, followed by receipt of a severance package. The remaining
employees will work with customers during the approximate 90-day transition
process and to wind down business operations.
Current DIRECTV DSL customers should check the company's Web site,
http://www.directvdsl.com, for complete information on transition plans for their
Internet service.
"While we have doubled our business year after year and consistently won
industry awards for our groundbreaking technology, the significant shift in
the telecom markets throughout the past 24 months and the current regulatory
environment for DIRECTV Broadband made it impossible to obtain profitability
within a reasonable time period," said Ned Hayes, president and CEO of DIRECTV
Broadband. "We are proud to have had a talented internal team focused on
achieving operational objectives despite the many distractions that have
befallen our industry in the past two years."
HUGHES, a world-leading provider of digital television entertainment,
broadband services, satellite-based private business networks, and global
video and data broadcasting, is a unit of General Motors Corporation. The
earnings of HUGHES are used to calculate the earnings attributable to the
General Motors Class H common stock (NYSE: GMH).
Engineers are working on software to load every photo you take, every letter you write......
And the damn hard-drive crashes. Duh!
doubts about future of wine
on
Fun With Wine
·
· Score: 0, Troll
I have serious doubts about the future of wine. The wine project may have achieved many milestones, but Microsoft can snap it any time. All they need to do, is to change thier APIs and making them incompatible. And if it makes bussiness sense, believe me, they will.
Just because you dont understand something, does not mean that it is gibberish. Theoritical physics is not a soap-opera, which any Tom-Dick-harry can analyse.
Linux plain sucks when it comes to graphics. I have a 1.3 GHz AMD
Duron, 256 MB RAM and Riva TNT2 graphic card. I am running both mandrake
linux 9.0 and win2k on this system. But linux pales in comparision, when
I play DVD or mpeg in full screen mode.
Slashdot Mirror
by giving it some other fancy name! U need to have something between hardware and the OS. Call it whatever you want to call
also refers to rabies. The victim is scared of water. BTW what will you call someone who is scared of a mixture of water and oil?
Oil is Hydrophobic (it doesnt stick to water). So someone who is phobic to oil will be hrdro-lover. But if u mix oil+water, then he becomes hrdrophobic + hrdro-lover. So what the hell is he?
I got excited for second, incorrectly reading this as.. Sun Microsystems Labs has backed this up with an open-source version of Java
February 17, 2003 Smithsonian Folkways Dusts Off Titles With New Technology By CHRIS NELSON
he major music companies may fret over falling revenue, but one label saw its business jump 33 percent last year -- thanks in part to the recordable compact discs that the industry says are hurting its sales.
The label, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, is using recordable CD's, or CD-R's, to ensure that each release in its extensive catalog is always available. And in doing so, the label best known for dusty recordings by Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly is taking initial steps toward creating a 21st-century "celestial jukebox," where nothing recorded ever goes out of print.
The Folkways inventory includes 2,168 titles dating to 1948. Some of those are collections by familiar troubadours like Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs. But many more are obscurities like "Music From Western Samoa: From Conch Shell to Disco" (1984) and "Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods" (1955).
Most recording companies, if they would ever release titles like that to begin with, would let the master tapes languish once a first pressing was sold out and initial interest had waned.
The notion of any recording falling into history's dust bin was said to gall Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records. Dan Sheehy, director of Smithsonian Folkways, recalled that Mr. Asch used to ask if Q would be dropped from the alphabet just because it wasn't used as much as the rest of the letters.
When the Smithsonian Institution bought Folkways from the Asch estate in 1987, the museum agreed to keep every title in print. Initially, requests for rare, out-of-stock albums were fulfilled with dubbed cassettes.
Now, music fans hankering for "Burmese Folk and Traditional Music" from 1953 can pay $19.95 and receive a CD-R "burned" with the original album, along with a standard cardboard slipcase that includes a folded photocopy of the original liner notes.
The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group representing the major music corporations, worries that CD-R technology aids music piracy. Rather than buy new CD's, the theory goes, people will burn downloaded music onto CD-R's or burn a copy of a friend's CD.
In 2002, 681 million CD's were sold, down from 763 million the year before, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But Smithsonian Folkways Recordings has been using the CD-R technology since 1996 to sell its obscure titles, essentially creating a just-in-time delivery model for record companies. Every time an order comes in, a Folkways employee burns five copies, one for the customer, and four for future requests.
Last year, the company sold 13,467 CD-R's, accounting for 6 percent of its CD sales, said Richard Burgess, director of marketing. Over all, Smithsonian Folkways had net album sales of almost $2.9 million in 2002, up 33 percent from 2001, despite its cutting its advertising budget more than 50 percent.
Interest in Smithsonian Folkways has jumped since the bluegrass-flavored soundtrack to "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (2001), from Universal, won a Grammy for Album of the Year and went platinum six times over.
But it is not just rustic American music that Smithsonian Folkways is selling.
A 2002 double-CD set of Middle Eastern and Asian songs called "The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan" has sold 7,800 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Though that is just a fraction of the sales for Eminem in a single week, it is a respectable figure for a museum label that makes no videos, places few ads and deals primarily in music recorded by artists long dead, or in foreign languages, or from locales most Americans will never visit.
"Getting rid of inventory, which is what this custom on-demand stuff is about, is a huge step in the right direction toward making even low-selling albums into a business," said Josh Bernoff, principal analyst at Forrester Research.
Industry analysts say it is also a step toward making all music forever available, one the record business has yet to take successfully.
In 1999, Alliance Entertainment's RedDotNet subsidiary unveiled kiosks that would burn discs in retail outlets while customers waited. But that program failed, in part because the company was not able to secure licensing agreements with major labels, according to Eric Weisman, president and chief executive of Alliance.
Echo, a new consortium of retailers including Best Buy, Tower and Wherehouse, is considering development of in-store stations that would allow customers to download music onto portable digital music players like Apple's iPod.
While the Smithsonian Folkways CD-R operation allows the company to fulfill its obligation to keep everything in print, it is a labor-intensive solution that would be inefficient for the higher-demand catalogs of the major labels.
But Smithsonian Folkways is also venturing into just-in-time delivery for more popular titles. Last fall, the company enlisted the print-on-demand company Americ Disc to manufacture CD's, which are expected to sell significantly more copies than typical CD-R's, but fewer than full-blown retail releases. These Collector's Series discs come with full-color booklets and are identical in quality to commercial releases, but are sold only through the Smithsonian Folkways Web site (www.si.edu/folkways).
The first CD in the series, "Bells & Winter Festivals of Greek Macedonia" proved so popular through mail order that the company quickly made it a regular retail release.
It is hard for some to ignore the irony that as Smithsonian Folkways uses CD-R's to further its business, much of the industry hopes to limit the technology's use.
"It's almost like a little bootlegger's operation going on," said Dean Blackwood, owner of Revenant Records, an esoteric Americana label.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy
It's war on a generation of cyber piratesPrint this article | Close this window
ByAmanda Morgan
February 18 2003
The recording industry has launched its most aggressive offensive yet against illegal music swapping over the internet.
In the Federal Court in Sydney today, record companies will try to seize evidence of song swapping by students using the computer networks of the universities of Sydney, Melbourne and Tasmania.
Record labels in the United States and Europe have warned the world's top 1000 companies they must stop illegal music swapping on their networks or face legal action.
Australia's major record companies, Sony, EMI and Universal, are acting on suspicions that students, and possibly staff, are using the universities' computers to swap digital music files. The industry says the three universities have not divulged information, but that others have co-operated.
Michael Speck, the director of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, which tracks swapping on behalf of the Australian record industry, believes the illegal file trading is significant.
"And we're not talking about one track here, one track there," he said. "We're talking piracy, significant examples of piracy."
The University of Sydney says it knows of one student who established a website with a handful of songs for swapping on its system. It has "isolated the website, and will hand over the evidence at an appropriate time", a spokesman said.
There are hundreds of thousands of song files on personal computers worldwide. They are "swapped" for free using special software, robbing artists and their record companies of royalties.
But the president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Cameron Murphy, said the industry was wrong to target students.
"The focus of these organisations should be on people who are running or pirating music for clear commercial benefit," he said. "I don't think there is any benefit to the community in prosecuting individuals who do this as a one-off. I mean, we'd have half the students in Australia in jail."
Mr Murphy also questioned whether the universities should be forced into the role of policing their students.
Mr Speck denied the industry was making an example of the universities. "Somebody gets caught being involved in a wrongdoing and they utter, 'We're not the only ones, why are we here?' Well, you got caught."
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/17/10453305 39310.html
=252) refR=refR.substring(0,252)+"...";I fully agree with you. If your are not into gaming or other graphic intensive applications, buy a used laptop and install linux.
They are redirecting the slashdot users to a special website.
"Especially formulated for slashdotters"
Friday, 14 February, 2003, 23:32 GMT
Biology to make mini machines
By Richard Black
BBC science correspondent
Computers of the future will be built not by factory machines, but by living cells such as bacteria.
That at least is the vision which has been outlined by scientists speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Denver.
They have described how wires can now be made by yeast organisms, and how solar panels could be built using substances produced by sea sponges.
Researchers believe these kind of technologies will be essential if we are to continue to shrink the size of electronic devices.
Science of the small
Plants and animals produce an extraordinary variety of chemical substances, all designed to help them in their lives. But some of these substances - proteins or other kinds of molecule - might also be useful in the electronics industry, as it seeks ways of making silicon chips smaller and faster.
Another potential application is nanotechnology - science which is done at the scale of just billionths (nano) of a metre.
Materials fabricated at this level have unusual electrical and optical properties but are costly to produce. Getting the "machinery" that already exits in biological organisms to do the work has obvious advantages.
Some of the molecules that scientists are now investigating come from unlikely sources. Susan Lindquist, director of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is using yeast to produce tough wires.
"We're using a protein from yeast that is actually called yeast prion," she said.
"It resembles the prions that are responsible for mad cow disease. They form long, long fibres.
"They are very thin - just 10 nanometres in width. But they go on for thousands and thousands and thousands of nanometres in length."
Dr Lindquist has discovered how to coat these strands of prion protein in gold and silver so they conduct electricity.
Captured rays
Through genetic engineering, it should be possible to make the protein strands - and so the wires - in different shapes and configurations, perhaps even forming entire electronic components.
Another researcher speaking here, Daniel Morse from the University of California, found a number of years ago that substances developed by sea sponges could be used to make silicon-based materials.
He has now discovered that the same substances could potentially make a new generation of solar cells.
They make a material, a special kind of titanium dioxide, which is very efficient at turning the Sun's rays into electricity.
Dr Morse believes that making devices through biology rather than through factories would have other benefits, including for the environment.
Human ingenuity
He said: "Biology and bio-catalysis offers the prospects of synthesis without the recourse to toxic chemicals that are presently the basis of human manufacturing of silicon-based materials today."
Computers made with these natural processes are not just around the corner - it will be many years before the technologies can be developed that far.
But sea sponges and yeast offer us the possibility of making devices smaller, cheaper and cleaner than human ingenuity could develop on its own.
Perhaps we should not be surprised, says Susan Lindquist. After all, nature has been working on the problem for a lot longer than the human brain.
She said: "For a long time man has been harnessing horses to plough and we're just beginning to understand how to harness molecules to other kinds of purposes and just the prospect of being able to do this for the benefit of mankind is really an exciting thing."
The SGI Altix 3300 server is useful as a stand-alone server, a development platform for larger SGI® AltixTM 3700 superclusters, or a node in a cluster using an industry-standard switch.
The only thing missing is a nice GUI.
Dude thats why its called LInux, and not MacOSX
Who wants a crappy service for $29.99 ??
PCs are *supposed* to look ugly, so it doesnt matter whether u assemble them yourself or buy a branded one. This is not the case with Apples. They are *supoosed* to look cool, but they wont be cool if u make them yourself.
Companies make decisions on the basis of maximising their profit. Mebbe using linux makes more business sense. So dont jump your gun saying "they r scared of microsoft", everytime something related with linux comes up.
unless they bring the damn price down!!
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. and CUPERTINO, Calif., Dec. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/
-- Hughes Electronics Corporation today announced that its subsidiary, DIRECTV
Broadband, Inc., would close its high-speed Internet service business in
approximately 90 days and work toward transitioning existing customers to
alternative service providers.
DIRECTV Broadband, based in Cupertino, was acquired by HUGHES in
April 2001 and currently serves approximately 160,000 customers with its
"DIRECTV DSL" service.
"HUGHES and its subsidiaries have worked steadily over the past months to
improve our businesses in anticipation of the merger with EchoStar," said Jack
A. Shaw, president and chief executive officer of HUGHES. "When the merger
agreement was terminated earlier this week, we promised our shareholders and
customers that we would move quickly to strengthen the profitability and
efficiency of our company. This decision by DIRECTV Broadband is the first of
those moves."
"The landscape of the terrestrial broadband industry has changed
dramatically since we purchased this business nearly two years ago, and,
despite continuing subscriber growth, DIRECTV Broadband cannot operate
profitably now or in the foreseeable future," said Eddy W. Hartenstein,
chairman and CEO of DIRECTV, Inc. "The immediate priority will be to work
toward transitioning customers to alternative service providers as quickly as
possible, to minimize customer disruptions."
As a result of this action, HUGHES expects to record a fourth quarter 2002
EBITDA charge of between $100 million and $150 million. Also in 2002,
unrelated to the closure of DIRECTV Broadband and in conjunction with the
adoption of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards Number 142 "Goodwill
and Other Intangible Assets" (SFAS 142), HUGHES expects to record a
non-operating charge of $108 million to write-off the goodwill associated with
DIRECTV Broadband. Excluding the charge for the closure of DIRECTV Broadband
and the gain related to receipt of a $600 million settlement on Dec. 10, 2002
for termination of the merger agreement between HUGHES and EchoStar
Communications, HUGHES is confirming its full-year guidance for 2002.
HUGHES will continue to offer its DIRECWAY(R) satellite-delivered consumer
broadband service, which currently has approximately 160,000 subscribers. The
company will continue to add new DIRECWAY customers but will not increase the
subscriber base aggressively in the near term to avoid the cash requirements
from the subscriber acquisition costs. In addition, HUGHES and DIRECTV will
explore other strategic relationships that would allow the companies to offer
future broadband services via both terrestrial and satellite technologies.
Roughly half of DIRECTV Broadband's 400 employees were notified of layoff
today, with a minimum of 60 days notice during which time they will continue
to be paid, followed by receipt of a severance package. The remaining
employees will work with customers during the approximate 90-day transition
process and to wind down business operations.
Current DIRECTV DSL customers should check the company's Web site,
http://www.directvdsl.com, for complete information on transition plans for their
Internet service.
"While we have doubled our business year after year and consistently won
industry awards for our groundbreaking technology, the significant shift in
the telecom markets throughout the past 24 months and the current regulatory
environment for DIRECTV Broadband made it impossible to obtain profitability
within a reasonable time period," said Ned Hayes, president and CEO of DIRECTV
Broadband. "We are proud to have had a talented internal team focused on
achieving operational objectives despite the many distractions that have
befallen our industry in the past two years."
HUGHES, a world-leading provider of digital television entertainment,
broadband services, satellite-based private business networks, and global
video and data broadcasting, is a unit of General Motors Corporation. The
earnings of HUGHES are used to calculate the earnings attributable to the
General Motors Class H common stock (NYSE: GMH).
Will it be fun? I dont know .... But I am damn sure it will be expensive.
simple argument -> creator is always more powerful than the creation. So how can AI beat human mind?
What next? "word"?
Engineers are working on software to load every photo you take, every letter you write ......
And the damn hard-drive crashes. Duh!
I have serious doubts about the future of wine. The wine project may have achieved many milestones, but Microsoft can snap it any time. All they need to do, is to change thier APIs and making them incompatible. And if it makes bussiness sense, believe me, they will.
Watch it on TV dude. Why do want to go all the way there, just to get blind? Whats the big deal?
The only useful part attached to his body might be his DICK !!
Internet cannot be censured. When will these pinheads learn this simple fact?
Just because you dont understand something, does not mean that it is gibberish. Theoritical physics is not a soap-opera, which any Tom-Dick-harry can analyse.
Linux plain sucks when it comes to graphics. I have a 1.3 GHz AMD Duron, 256 MB RAM and Riva TNT2 graphic card. I am running both mandrake linux 9.0 and win2k on this system. But linux pales in comparision, when I play DVD or mpeg in full screen mode.