Come on, this isn't an ad to take out personal ads in the National Enquirer and get rich in thirty days. This is an invitation to buy stock which may add a sizable chunk to your savings in a few years, from a company which has done a lot for the Open source community.
Let's face it, E-trade is one of the few ways Joe Bloes like us are going to get our hands on IPO stock. The big boys on Wall Street pick up most of it, and it's damn hard to get any when you only want to buy a hundred shares. I don't think you are justified in denouncing it as spam. Delete the email. Rant a bit. Sleep on it.
Also, how is Red Hat to know whether you are a non-US citizen? I use a NetForward address to (very primitively) protect my privacy, and there's no quick way to tell where the email ends up (as it turns out, I'm Canadian. Boo hoo, no IPO for me). Admittedly, they could simply not send email to anyone whos email address ends in a foreign country's suffix, but you might just be an American student working abroad.
I support their decision to offer IPO stock to everyone associated with the Open Source community. It's very generous of them.
I agree with you. I'd rather not, but I do. Be has by far the most amazing, technologically superb desktop OS around right now. But, the desktop computer market (full of PHBs and other idiots) is not a place for ingenuity. Jean Louis Gassée (sp?), Be's CEO, is taking the only path that he can - raise money, advertise to the knowledgeable folks in graphic design, and hope that they listen up. Problem is, Be has to compete with the dredges of MacOS, shiny SGI workstations, and the compatibile Win95/NT systems that inhabit graphic design/media right now.
Be has a shot, but a very very small one. In all likelyhood, they'll fail, but as the original poster suggested, they may get bought out. If AOL or somesuch company can snap up Be and market the BeOS (providing it's still technically superior by that time), I'll cheer.
The stock may not be a good investment, but, for many of us, it's an ethically sound one. Support the most superior OS, and if you lose your money, well, hopefully you weren't trusting enough to invest much.
BTW, as I write this, Be's stock has only gained $2 from its starting price of $6. Doesn't that strike you as a very small gain for a tech stock? Yikes...
Neal Stephenson's predicted another development. Lots of you have probably read Snow Crash, his second big book. If not, know that he invented the term "Gargoyles", men who wire themselves up with infrared vision, microwave radar, network link for database searches, laser retina-scanners, and go around collecting intelligence on whatever they happen to see. Looks like this little thing is yet another step along the road to the bionic man.
If you hooked this puppy up to the Sony video goggles we've been hearing so much about, turned them to "transparent", and wrote some custom code, you could get a HUD for your daily activites. Imagine: [[AUTOMOBILE APPROACHING - SPEED : 75 KPH - LICENSE NO. K7L 3N8 REGISTERED TO WILLIAM GATES - RETINAL SCAN IDENTITY CONFIRMED - RANGE : 76 METERS AND CLOSING]]
Q: And who is going to end up footing the bill for the COMBINED NATO destruction in Kosovo/Serbia?
A:Why, the EU. Who dragged NATO into bombarding Serbia for months on end? The USAmericans.
Q: Who constantly bails out Mexico's failing economy?
A: Amongst others, the USAmericans. Why? Well, wouldn't you do the same if you had millions of illegal immigrants swarming across your southern border? Also, Mexico can't fall apart or all the US-owned industry down there (Nike, tech companies) would suffer.
Q: Who is now preparing multi-billion dollar bailouts for the former USSR?
A: As said in a previous post, the same country that would suffer from terrorists armed with nuclear warheads. Think the Oklahoma bombing was big?
Q: Who spends billions/year stationing half of our military might in the middle east to protect half of the countries there?
A: Replace "Half of the countries" with "The countries that supply the oil which we need to keep up our bloated standard of living" and you've got it pretty much right. (Kuwait!)
Q: Who rebuilt half of post-WWII Europe/Japan?
A: This is a good deed which the United States has performed in the past. No question about it. A few things: The United States rebuilt Japan so as to make sure that it would not turn to the USSR for help. They created Japan as an American-Asian country (which it remains today) to base their military efforts in the Pacific Rim. It wasn't just altruism. Same goes for Europe, to a lesser extent. The Eastern sections of Europe were under USSR control, and it wouldn't do to have the rest of europe looking shabby.
Q: Who is CONSTANTLY dumping money into relief efforts around the world?
A: Read earlier posts. Just because the US puts more money into relief efforts, doesn't mean that Americans are doing more, percentage-of-GDP-wise. Also, since our 20% of the world's popluation devour and own 80% of the resources, ya gotta figure we owe something back?
"Michael Jordan gets paid $20 million to wear his Nikes. Children in Indonesia get paid $2.20 a day to make them."
Read the actual report, it says that it would have raised $70 billion *globally*, not only in the USA.
God, it's tempting to make comments about egocentric Americans... But since the Wired article *was* misleading, it's OK. Just think twice next time, eh?
... except that for the weight of all those coil magnets and circuitry, you might as well just use a standard keyboard and a larger battery.
What I want is a power generator a-la 'Seiko Kinetic Watch' so that when I get fed up with the idiocy coming out of Redmond (or Compaq for that matter) I can throw my laptop against a wall and it'll charge the batteries...
... inspired cars like these. Don't get me wrong, from a "neeto" perspective, they're great! Gadgets aplenty. I'm thinking of the other side of them, the practical side. I come from Vancouver, Canada, the city with the *most* luxury cars per capita in North America. We also have, I'm convinced, the most horrible drivers. Everything from clueless 40-something moms with cellphones driving minivans to young rich stockbrokers in Porsches, cutting people off. The sheer number of people who *don't pay attention* when they're driving is scary! IMHO, the last thing that we need is more things distracting people while they drive.
If there was some way to ensure that only competent drivers could wire up their cars with attention-grabbing electronics, I wouldn't have a problem with it. In fact, I think that this sort of thing would be absolutely amazing for limousines and other chauffered cars! Grabbing your Mp3 collection from home while getting the latest version of some documents from your office, and playing Half-Life.... Fun.
It'll never catch on anyhow, we'll start running short of gas worldwide before the benefits of a in-car computer system outweigh the price.
I had the same thoughts as you a while back, and I managed to find out the actual pie-chart distribution. Unfortunatley, I don't know where it is now, so I'll have to give out my impressions of it instead.
Bottom line is that a surprisingly large amount of the money goes to the artist! The music stores take about 1/3 to 1/2, and of the remainder, the artist gets most of it. The reason the record companies can make a killing is that they take a small cut from *every* artist they sell. Mp3 is hurting artists, there's no doubt.
According to what I've been reading, it's SDMI players, not MP3 players, that'll be rolling off Wal-mart's shelves this Christmas. Diamond Multimedia has announced that they'll support means to suppress piracy (if only to stave off lawsuits). The five record companies have untold gobs of money to spend, and they are fighting for their stock-holding lives right now. They're cleverly going straight to the colleges to try and stamp out the enlightenment going on. Watch out for the record industry, 'cause I have a feeling they're going to give Mp3 a run for it's money (or lack of it).
Remember, people are tech-stupid. They'll shell out for "Easier Digital Music".
Well, as a young'n (18), I never really got into the whole Amiga thing back in its day. My only encounter was through one of my friends who had one, we'd play games on it, but that was as far as it went. I think the coolest thing about the AmigaOS was the integration between shell and GUI. Aaaaand.....
That's why I am a big fan of the BeOS. It's got a spiffyclean GUI, bash shell, scripting, and it's brand new from the ground up. It's really too bad that nobody uses it. Someday...
Professor Frink, Professor Frink, he'll make you laugh, he'll make you think, he'll do the thing... with the guy.... eughhh.
Way to go, Be! A stroke of luck for them, don't you think? Out of all the bundling deals that they've managed to secure (all four of them), this one has the most promise by far. If the iToaster takes off (which it has the potential to do), the BeOS will assuredly get a bit of the limelight. Their operating system will be portrayed as light, quick, and $-cheap. Which it is. But the next question in consumers' minds will be - 'What could it do on my Tri-Athlon box?'.
Be has to license their software as cheaply as they can, or else they're not going to get any market share. We all have to hope that they won't jack up the price later.
... ALWAYS get an agreement in writing. A verbal agreement (over the phone, no less) is practically worthless legally. Remember - if you ever think you might get stomped on by a large corporation, get all the "assurances" in writing. That or else you'll be another bug on the road to more multimillion dollar profits.
Very thorny issue, cryptology. I would have to agree with the DOJ on this one, though. I trust the government to make a few calls on personal privacy. I'd rather that they be able to do a bit of policing in the computer world than that they be constantly stumped by encoded documents. First post?
Just a side note: I should've clarified my original post. Booting in 20 seconds is not just a thing to flaunt and throw around. It's more of an indicator of how slick and refined the whole operating system is. Everything is smooth, responsive, consistent, and logical. Be's listened to many ideas from users and added options to make your system work the way you want. It's just a better OS than Windows. Judging from the 210 (and growing) comments, Be's a hot topic!
And, if you want "Ooooh, Aaaah" or more 'hidden agenda' (?) stuff:
- Audio that *never* skips - Replicant apps that can embed into the desktop as well as other applications - 99% efficient with multiple processors - Stable as all hell.... Ah well, I've run out of steam. "About time", you think.:)
As computers are priced cheaper and cheaper, the fee paid to Microsoft for use of their OS becomes a larger and larger chunk of what the consumer has to pay. Jean Louis Gasee (CEO of Be) recently offered to give the BeOS away for free (beer) to any computer company with the guts to put a BeLaunch icon on the desktop of a dual-booting Windows-BeOS machine. No takers. Hmmmm.... www.doj.com
It always seems that every time some new development involving the BeOS gets coverage here at Slashdot, almost a third of the comments have some reference to Open Source and Be's lack therof. Give it a rest, people! Open Source is cool, but there's other things out there too.
Closed-source coding does not necessarily equal bloated Microsoft software. Because of the hard work and coordination going on at Be, Inc., the BeOS is slim and quick. As an example, the BeOS boots in under twenty seconds on a PII 400 machine. Including the BIOS checks. As an OS, it's polished and honed in a way that is very hard to accomplish with the Open Source philosophy. I'm sure you all know of the merits and disadvantages of the BeOS (read: no software), but would you leave the Open Source maxim in the cupboard for once?
North America got off the communist kick in the 1970s, give it a rest. Cuba's communist, and the average Joe (Juan) there is doing a helluva lot better than he was back when Batista was in power. I think you've got enough paranoia there. Get some exercise.
Somehow I am skeptical that this government filtering software is going to be as restrictive as the vast majority of paranoid Slashdotters seem to think. I suppose I'm in a minority here, but I think the government probably should try and restrict stuff like white supremacist literature and "Shots of my wife I tied up out back and beat with sticks". If my 10-year old asked me to rent him a porn video, I'd likely say no. Admittedly, there's easy possibility of disabling the software by savvy young minds, which renders the whole idea useless....
Slashdot Mirror
Let's face it, E-trade is one of the few ways Joe Bloes like us are going to get our hands on IPO stock. The big boys on Wall Street pick up most of it, and it's damn hard to get any when you only want to buy a hundred shares. I don't think you are justified in denouncing it as spam. Delete the email. Rant a bit. Sleep on it.
Also, how is Red Hat to know whether you are a non-US citizen? I use a NetForward address to (very primitively) protect my privacy, and there's no quick way to tell where the email ends up (as it turns out, I'm Canadian. Boo hoo, no IPO for me). Admittedly, they could simply not send email to anyone whos email address ends in a foreign country's suffix, but you might just be an American student working abroad.
I support their decision to offer IPO stock to everyone associated with the Open Source community. It's very generous of them.
Be has a shot, but a very very small one. In all likelyhood, they'll fail, but as the original poster suggested, they may get bought out. If AOL or somesuch company can snap up Be and market the BeOS (providing it's still technically superior by that time), I'll cheer.
The stock may not be a good investment, but, for many of us, it's an ethically sound one. Support the most superior OS, and if you lose your money, well, hopefully you weren't trusting enough to invest much.
BTW, as I write this, Be's stock has only gained $2 from its starting price of $6. Doesn't that strike you as a very small gain for a tech stock? Yikes...
If you hooked this puppy up to the Sony video goggles we've been hearing so much about, turned them to "transparent", and wrote some custom code, you could get a HUD for your daily activites. Imagine: [[AUTOMOBILE APPROACHING - SPEED : 75 KPH - LICENSE NO. K7L 3N8 REGISTERED TO WILLIAM GATES - RETINAL SCAN IDENTITY CONFIRMED - RANGE : 76 METERS AND CLOSING]]
A:Why, the EU. Who dragged NATO into bombarding Serbia for months on end? The USAmericans.
Q: Who constantly bails out Mexico's failing economy?
A: Amongst others, the USAmericans. Why? Well, wouldn't you do the same if you had millions of illegal immigrants swarming across your southern border? Also, Mexico can't fall apart or all the US-owned industry down there (Nike, tech companies) would suffer.
Q: Who is now preparing multi-billion dollar bailouts for the former USSR?
A: As said in a previous post, the same country that would suffer from terrorists armed with nuclear warheads. Think the Oklahoma bombing was big?
Q: Who spends billions/year stationing half of our military might in the middle east to protect half of the countries there?
A: Replace "Half of the countries" with "The countries that supply the oil which we need to keep up our bloated standard of living" and you've got it pretty much right. (Kuwait!)
Q: Who rebuilt half of post-WWII Europe/Japan?
A: This is a good deed which the United States has performed in the past. No question about it. A few things: The United States rebuilt Japan so as to make sure that it would not turn to the USSR for help. They created Japan as an American-Asian country (which it remains today) to base their military efforts in the Pacific Rim. It wasn't just altruism. Same goes for Europe, to a lesser extent. The Eastern sections of Europe were under USSR control, and it wouldn't do to have the rest of europe looking shabby.
Q: Who is CONSTANTLY dumping money into relief efforts around the world?
A: Read earlier posts. Just because the US puts more money into relief efforts, doesn't mean that Americans are doing more, percentage-of-GDP-wise. Also, since our 20% of the world's popluation devour and own 80% of the resources, ya gotta figure we owe something back?
"Michael Jordan gets paid $20 million to wear his Nikes. Children in Indonesia get paid $2.20 a day to make them."
Want's = Belonging to someone named Want (Want L. Smith)
God, it's tempting to make comments about egocentric Americans... But since the Wired article *was* misleading, it's OK. Just think twice next time, eh?
-Mister "Riled-up-Canadian" Ed.
What I want is a power generator a-la 'Seiko Kinetic Watch' so that when I get fed up with the idiocy coming out of Redmond (or Compaq for that matter) I can throw my laptop against a wall and it'll charge the batteries...
If there was some way to ensure that only competent drivers could wire up their cars with attention-grabbing electronics, I wouldn't have a problem with it. In fact, I think that this sort of thing would be absolutely amazing for limousines and other chauffered cars! Grabbing your Mp3 collection from home while getting the latest version of some documents from your office, and playing Half-Life.... Fun.
It'll never catch on anyhow, we'll start running short of gas worldwide before the benefits of a in-car computer system outweigh the price.
Bottom line is that a surprisingly large amount of the money goes to the artist! The music stores take about 1/3 to 1/2, and of the remainder, the artist gets most of it. The reason the record companies can make a killing is that they take a small cut from *every* artist they sell. Mp3 is hurting artists, there's no doubt.
According to what I've been reading, it's SDMI players, not MP3 players, that'll be rolling off Wal-mart's shelves this Christmas. Diamond Multimedia has announced that they'll support means to suppress piracy (if only to stave off lawsuits). The five record companies have untold gobs of money to spend, and they are fighting for their stock-holding lives right now. They're cleverly going straight to the colleges to try and stamp out the enlightenment going on. Watch out for the record industry, 'cause I have a feeling they're going to give Mp3 a run for it's money (or lack of it).
Remember, people are tech-stupid. They'll shell out for "Easier Digital Music".
That's why I am a big fan of the BeOS. It's got a spiffyclean GUI, bash shell, scripting, and it's brand new from the ground up. It's really too bad that nobody uses it. Someday...
If I'm not mistaken, www.freshmeat.net has dynamic mirroring already up and working. Helps out a lot on peak traffic hours.
The iToaster will output to your TV, apparently.
Way to go, Be! A stroke of luck for them, don't you think? Out of all the bundling deals that they've managed to secure (all four of them), this one has the most promise by far. If the iToaster takes off (which it has the potential to do), the BeOS will assuredly get a bit of the limelight. Their operating system will be portrayed as light, quick, and $-cheap. Which it is. But the next question in consumers' minds will be - 'What could it do on my Tri-Athlon box?'.
Be has to license their software as cheaply as they can, or else they're not going to get any market share. We all have to hope that they won't jack up the price later.
Hindsight is 20/20...
Very thorny issue, cryptology. I would have to agree with the DOJ on this one, though. I trust the government to make a few calls on personal privacy. I'd rather that they be able to do a bit of policing in the computer world than that they be constantly stumped by encoded documents. First post?
And, if you want "Ooooh, Aaaah" or more 'hidden agenda' (?) stuff:
- Audio that *never* skips - Replicant apps that can embed into the desktop as well as other applications - 99% efficient with multiple processors - Stable as all hell .... Ah well, I've run out of steam. "About time", you think. :)
Blah!
It's a joke.
As computers are priced cheaper and cheaper, the fee paid to Microsoft for use of their OS becomes a larger and larger chunk of what the consumer has to pay. Jean Louis Gasee (CEO of Be) recently offered to give the BeOS away for free (beer) to any computer company with the guts to put a BeLaunch icon on the desktop of a dual-booting Windows-BeOS machine. No takers. Hmmmm.... www.doj.com
Closed-source coding does not necessarily equal bloated Microsoft software. Because of the hard work and coordination going on at Be, Inc., the BeOS is slim and quick. As an example, the BeOS boots in under twenty seconds on a PII 400 machine. Including the BIOS checks. As an OS, it's polished and honed in a way that is very hard to accomplish with the Open Source philosophy. I'm sure you all know of the merits and disadvantages of the BeOS (read: no software), but would you leave the Open Source maxim in the cupboard for once?
The SGI URL was mistyped in the story
... which would be pentathlons and decathlons respectively. This begs for a computer manufacturer to start manufacturing a box called the "Ironman".
North America got off the communist kick in the 1970s, give it a rest. Cuba's communist, and the average Joe (Juan) there is doing a helluva lot better than he was back when Batista was in power. I think you've got enough paranoia there. Get some exercise.
Somehow I am skeptical that this government filtering software is going to be as restrictive as the vast majority of paranoid Slashdotters seem to think. I suppose I'm in a minority here, but I think the government probably should try and restrict stuff like white supremacist literature and "Shots of my wife I tied up out back and beat with sticks". If my 10-year old asked me to rent him a porn video, I'd likely say no. Admittedly, there's easy possibility of disabling the software by savvy young minds, which renders the whole idea useless....