"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau" -- Irving Fischer, 1929
I've never heard this comment before, but if the date is accurate, I'm surprised you place it with the others. In fact, that might be the absolute best forecast of all time.
Obviously, stock prices and all indices are much higher today than they were in 1929. However, as you probably know, 1929 was the start of a massive, four-year decline in equity prices that played a huge part in creating "The Great Depression." Clearly, every investor who owned stocks in 1929 wished he/she had heeded Mr. Fischer's advice.
You may have an issue with the word "permanently," which is why you'd consider the statement to be ridiculous. However, after the crash of 1929, the Dow Jones IA did not reach it's pre-crash level again until 1954 -- 25 years later! In investing terms, 25 years is about as close as you'll ever get to "permanent" or "forever." Plenty of people died in those 25 years, so for all of them, Mr. Fischer's accuracy was stunning.
The bottom line is Mr. Fischer was making a sell recommendation, and he was absolutely, 100% on the money.
Best post yet. Microsoft's Java implementation wasn't "broken" per se, as it did run pure Java code fine. MS added proprietary extensions to its VM and made them available to programmers in Visual J++. Only when coders used the MS extensions, then tried to port that code back to a non-MS machine, did problems arise.
A "broken" implementation is different from an "implementation with extensions."
Whether it's good or bad depends on your point of view. If I'm a Visual J++ coder, looking to create a cross-platform program, then the extensions probably make it difficult to be sure my code is portable (of course an educated programmer would already know this and not use VJ++). If my goal is to write software that runs on Windows, having Windows-specific extensions to Java is terrific.
Of course Microsoft's (4/5-year-old) VM is currently incompatible with the latest Java version, but that is because Sun sued MS to prevent it from including any VM with Windows. Obviously, MS isn't going to work to update a product it isn't allowed to ship.
Excellent discussion of the circumstances. Except that, as it turns out, these 6 winning tickets were the only winning tickets.
Upon further research, you are indeed correct. Nobody but the one player who is being investigated hit the Pick-6.
The rules state, that 75% of the prize pool are to be distributed to those who got all 6, while the other 25% is to be distributed to those who got 5-of-6. But if nobody got 6-of-6, instead of a carry-over, which is the norm, then the "major" pool would be combined with the "minor" pool so that 100% of the pool whould be distributed to those who got 5 of 6.
According to the NYT, the guy in question also held 108 of 186 total 5-of-6 winners, meaning that there are likely only 78 legit winners, whose tickets, which were worth $4606, will now be worth about $45,000 each. Nice.
They should be able to find the true winners pretty easily in order to payout the true winnings, since they should have had to fill out tax forms for winning more than 600 times their original amount.
Again, the racetrack's profit is not affected at all. This is why pari-mutual betting is so fair... if there are 186 winners, they money gets split up that many ways, but if there are only 78, the winners get a lot more.
One other point. The bettor in question made single selections in the first 4 races. This means he chose 26-1 Domedriver in the first race and 13-1 Starine in the third, as well as lesser picks in the other 2. But he made NO ALTERNATES. Had his 26-1 shot not come in, the entire $1100+ ticket was history. Or, of course, the bet was made after those four races were over. These two guys are going down.
The reason why this was a dumb scheme, and the reason why they got caught is pure math. The track paid out more money then they took in
No, the win did not pay out more than the track earned. Each winning ticket paid $428,392 from a pool of $4,569,515, which means that there were probably 8 or 9 winning tickets in total, nationwide. The guy they are investigating had 6 of them.
Having 6 of only 9 winning tickets is obviously unusual. His betting strategy is even more unusual... making single selections for 4 races, then "wheeling" then entire field for the last 2, which means if the first four come in, he's guaranteed to win. Combined with the "flaw" in the system which doesn't report the ticket to the central database until after the fourth race, this is an obvious red flag. Finally, making the same bet 6 times is simply stupid. It's the same as buying 6 lottery tickets with all of the same numbers... the only justification is to increase your percentage of the winner's pool if you KNOW you are going to win.
Think of recent Powerball lottery wins... if they announce there were 6 winners, and one guy shows up with 4 of the winning tickets, it's going to raise eyebrows.
Had this guy never made these wagers, most likely there would have been 2 legit winners, each of whom would have won about $1.8 million (or maybe 3 winners each getting $1.2 mil). Instead, since there were a lot more winning tickets, the payout on each was reduced to only $428 thousand.
Again, the track didn't lose anything, and if they disqualify his tickets, the money will get paid to the legit winners. That's how pari-mutual wagering works... the total pool is calculated, the house percenatge is taken out, and everything left is split among the winning tickets. When there are 9 winning tickets, each one gets paid less than if there were 3 winning tickets. The racetrack is unaffected. The legitimate winners are the victims.
This does not affect the profit or loss of the racetracks and pari-mutual organizations ONE CENT. The pool for the pick 6 wager was $4,569,515... and the track is obligated to pay that amount back, less a "hold" percenatge (that the revenue for the track).
If this guy's winning tickets are disqualified, it will only increase the amount paid back to those who legitimately won. I'm guessing because I don't know the exact hold percenatge, but there were probably 8 or 9 winning tickets, each paying out $428,392. 6 of them belonged to the man in question. If his tix are disqualified, it will only mean that the $2.5 million that they were worth will be disrtibuted among the valid winners.
Under no circumstances will the racetrack make or lose any extra money as a result of what happens. If there were no other winners, the pool would either be carried over, or paid to the consolation winners (5 of 6). Most tracks employ the carry-over (to the necxt day), but this is the Breeder's Cup, which is a special, nationwide, once-a-year event, so the rules may be different.
are you saying that the odds are set (or changed) *after* people place their bets? If so, isn't that fraud? If not, how do they know beforehand how much people will bet on each horse?
In horse racing, yes. The final odds are not known until after all the betting has ended, right at the start of the race. The track's computers tally up all the of the money bet on each horse, take out the vig (usually 18% or so on straight win bets, more on more exotic bets), and then determine how much to pay back to each winning ticket.
It's not fraud at all, it's how pari-mutual betting works. Bettors understand that all the money bet will be placed in the same pool... the money I bet now joins money previously bet, and the money bet in the future will be added to that. It's common to bet a horse at 4-1 odds, and at post time the horse is only 3-1 or perhaps 6-1.
Just as a simple example (no vig), I can make a bet a 10 minutes before post time, at which time $250 has been bet on Citation, and $750 has been bet on Secretariat. Thus, at this time, Citation pays 3-1. When the race goes off, a total of $1000 has been bet Citation, and $2000 on Secretariat. Now Citation is only 2-1. Doesn't matter that he was 3-1... only that in the final pool, he is 2-1. Sometimes it goes in your favor, sometimes the other way.
In the end, this is the most fair... every player is betting against each other, not the house. No bookmaker is required to keep all the odds in line, the pool does it automatically. It also means that tracks aren't afraid of successful players, because they take a percentage of every dollar bet, win or lose. The track just wants to keep the total amount bet as high as possible.
I intend to double check and make sure that my managed 401K hasn't got one dime invested in Microsoft stock.
And what are you going to do about it, tough guy, if some of your 401(k) is in fact invested in MSFT? Will you forfeit the tax advantage, and the company matching, just to promote your anti-Microsoft zealotry?
Considering MSFT is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard & Poor's 500, and the NASDAQ Composite index, not to mention one of the United States's largest (in terms of market capitalization) companies, I'd say there's a pretty good chance some of your retirement account is invested in Microsoft.
Gates has been dumping about a million shares a month for more than two years.
Question: - which anyone except a self deluded clueless business major could answer correctly - "Why would they be doing that if the stock were as solid as you imply?"
Well, according to its annual report, in 2000 the Gates Foundation paid (not pledged, actually paid out) over $1 billion in grants. The guy's got to get the money from somewhere. (is that a clueless busines major's answer?)
Before you rebut with "but it's all in computers and software that doesn't cost anything", even if you exclude the "education", "special projects", "libraries", and "Pacific Northwest" categories, the foundation paid out over $500 million to global health causes, including vaccines and disease prevention, reproductive and child health, and poverty-related disease.
Again, the guy has to get the money somewhere, so he sells some stock. He owns something like 700 million shares, so selling a million a month isn't really significant. In fact, at that rate, it would take nearly 60 years to be completely divested. So I'd hardly say he's "dumping".
As far as Paul Allen, he is no longer on MSFT's board, but Forbes (in their 2002 list of world's richest people) describes him as "still believed to hold large stake in company." So maybe you want to re-check your facts.
He doesn't understand them that well. Bigger is not always better. Anyway, IBM's revenue and profit are NOT 10x that of MS.
Focus on the top-line numbers. IBM's annual revenue in 2001 was 85.9b, Microsoft's was 25.3 (Note: MS's financial year ends June 30), about 3.5x. Since IBM sells a lot of hardware that is expensive to build, though, their cost of sales was 54.1b, vs. just 3.5b over at MS, leaving gross profit at 31.8b at IBM, 21.8b at MS.
Now why is MS stock so much higher? Stock price is all about growth. MS's gross profit is 116% higher than it was 4 years ago. IBM's has grown just 3% in that same time period. And the fact that MS has $40b in short-term assets, just $11 in short-term debt, and NO long-tem debt, makes portfolio managers sleep soundly at night.
I'm not knocking IBM... it's a great company, but that's the benchmark you chose to compare to Microsoft.
And IBM reported net income at $7.7b in 2001, vs. $7.3 at MS. So please explain where the 10x figure you stated comes from.
How much had did that lady spend on music last year before discovering Kazaa?
If your answer was "zero", explain how the RIAA can have "lost" any money from her non purchases this year.
Because the past is not a perfect predictor of future events. Maybe I never bought a CD in my life but then a great new band came out last week and I broke down and bought their album. If I had gotten it free from Napster you'd make the same point, but it would be false.
Although I generally agree with the point you were trying to make, just keep in mind it isn't an absolute and therefore isn't applicable in every situation.
if i buy a (x86) computer, there is a 98% chance that it will come with windows
Hey genius. As soon as you restrict your choice of computer hardware to x86 your argument becomes moot. It's like saying if I walk into a Chevrolet dealership, there is a 98% chance the car I'm buying will be a Chevy.
Secondly, that "98% chance" is bullshit. You personally have 100% control over the OS that comes with your PC. Don't want Windows? Don't buy it. If you're favorite computer manufacturer won't sell you a computer without Windows, find a new favorite computer manufacturer.
Exactly how could Netscape ever possibly stand a chance when there was no way in hell for them to swing a deal to get their browser distributed with the OS?
One word: innovate. How about this radical idea... make a better browser!! Perhaps if Netscape had been first to market with an XML parser integrated into the rendering engine. Perhaps if Navigator offered multiple browser windows like Opera. Perhaps if it had PNG support. Or Print Preview. Faster rendering. Less bloat. Or if Netscape had provided a better development environment so more programmers would have cretaed Netscape plugins rather than ActiveX controls or Java applets. Maybe if it had worked that deal with Eudora you mention. Nobody knows what 'it' is (well, maybe Opera does) but clearly Netscape didn't offer anything that IE users wanted badly enough to pay for.
Maybe if Netscape stopped whining it could get back in the game. Browsers will continually evolve, users will always be seeking more features. What if they built a browser with built-in word processing/web publishing/blogging tools like Radio Userland?
Do yourself a favor. Don't be a Netscape apologist. Netscape had one great idea, after that it allowed itself to become completely irrelevant. You may not like Microsoft, but in this case, the enemy of your enemy is not your friend. It's AOLTW.
Actually, only OEM's that chose to provide the Windows OS on their computers were forced to ship IE. OEM's have choices, too. There's a reason Penguin Computing is a lot smaller than Dell.
Beyond that, the Windows OEM's were also forced to ship Notepad, WordPad, Outlook Express, HyperTerminal, a calculator, and Solitaire, among others. All products for which their were (and still are) commercially-available alternatives.
Oh, and they also shipped a GUI, plenty of printer drivers, a CD-ROM interface, power-saving utilities, screen savers, multiple network protocols, and lots of other little things that we now take for granted. None of these things existed in perfectly useful operating systems such as DOS 5.0 or Apple's ProDOS (those old Apple ][ days!). So to say that Internet Explorer is not an "essential part of the operating system" is missing the point. Nothing is "essential". There is no such thing as the definitive operating system, they constantly change, expectations are always on the rise. The fact that every major OS sold today includes a web browser actually gives credence to Microsoft's claim that IE is necessary and essential.
Wouldn't getting a beer at the local watering hole be considered "corporate entertainment consumption"? After all, Anheuser-Busch is a big corporation, you're drinking to entertain yourself, and it's certainly consumption.
Last time I checked, Microsoft DID lose the case! They were convicted by Judge Jackson...
Hey, you really need to brush up on the facts. The settlement was proposed to settle **civil** cases against Microsoft. These cases were totally separate from the DOJ case, or the States' case. The whole point of the settlement was to find an alternative to going to court. Microsoft didn't win, didn't lose, the cases have NOT gone to trial.
Further, if Microsoft does eventually decide to settle (and the settlement is approved), it does NOT mean MS is guilty of anything whatsoever (in regards to **these cases**, again, they are totally separate from the DOJ & States').
Settling does NOT equal guilt or responsibility. A defendant often finds that settlement agreements are better than going to court, even if it believes it will ultimately win (think lawyers fees, time spent in court, public records, etc.)
I wouldn't mind lawyers getting paid by the boatload for all this stuff, as long as Microsoft is the only one that has to foot the bill. MS should also pay hefty court fees for wasting so much of the court's time.
OK, well, Microsoft is the defendant in a civil case. I guess in your mind, defedning one's self is "wasting time." I guess you also think that defendants should be responsible for plaintiff's legal fees even though that defendant hasn't lost the case. Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with something called the Constitution.
Your argument sounds good, but it's essentially a cop-out, "we can't compete because the other guys are too big."
But the mom-and-pop ISPs don't happen to own a massive cable television network on which they can run an incessant stream of commercials for their online service, free of charge
AOL didn't have one, either. Sure, now it does, that's because it was so unbelievably successful that it could go out and buy one. I might remind you that when AOL was first starting out (independently), it's competition included GEnie (owned by General Electric, the largest corporation in the world, far larger than any cable monopoly) and Prodigy, owned by a partnership of IBM and Sears. There was also Compuserve, owned by H&R Block.
The mom-and-pop ISPs don't have millions of telephone subscribers whose bills they can stuff their advertisements into each month.
Does Earthlink have phone subscribers? A cable company? Does it even send out bills?
The mom-and-pop ISPs aren't going under because they suck. They're going under because they can't compete in a market dominated by bloated companies with billions of dollars to spend on advertising.
In 1957, there was no such thing as a Japanese car in the United States. That year, a company nobody here had ever heard of, Toyota, opened a dealership and started selling cars. Imagine the bloat and the advertising might *that* company's competitors had! But, they had a better product, or at least a more economical one, and people (including people who vividly remembered that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor less than two decades earlier) bought the funny-looking cars.
Bottom line: quit whining about the size of your competition, just go out there and make something that is better.
Interesting that when Yahoo adds relevant links to an article which it had no part in authoring (freely adding links both externally, i.e. in a separate sidebar, and internally, i.e. right in the middle of the article), it is considered a Good Thing, however when Microsoft created a developer-extendable, user-customizable version of the same technology, it was the Evil to end all evils. I wonder why?
P2P is gaining popularity precisely because people want to get away from the increasingly commercialized side of the Internet. As the corporation's greed and lust for power knows no bounds... [blah blah blah]
P2P is gaining popularity because people want stuff without paying for it, and P2P networks are extremely efficient at supplying that stuff. If you're utilizing P2P networks to freely exchange music, movies, and computer programs, nearly all of which are copyrighted and owned by some corporation, you can't really complain that those corporations will make every attempt to be fairly compensated.
Note that the Kodak case you mentioned went to a jury, and Kodak lost. This Microsoft case has not been decided. Big difference. No party has won or lost. Microsoft is voluntarily entering into this settlement, and the plaintiffs are voluntarily agreeing to the terms.
As for your point about the threat of a big fiscal award, well, that threat is only worth anything if the defendant really is afraid it will lose. It's also only effective if the plaintiff is convinced it will win. Considering that in this instance, the plaintiff blinked first (yes, the plaintiff proposed the settlement), the case probably wasn't all that strong.
This is a private civil case Thanks for someone for finally stating that.
Further, this isn't the DOJ, and MS didn't lose this case. This is a settlement. The fact that one of the _plaintiff's_ lawyers proposed this settlement sheds some light on how weak this particular case against Microsoft actually is.
Of course Microsoft agreed to this deal. As has been stated over and over here, it costs little, promotes the company's products, and gets good publicity. Then again, had the case continued all the way through, it's very possible Microsoft would have won and wouldn't have had to pay a cent. Either way, the settlement works out a whole lot better than even a successful defense, as those lawyers' fees add up fast.
As for your last comment, about what the plaintiff's want... let's see. I don't hear many people running around saying they feel that Microsoft owes them $10 or $15. However, there are plenty of lawyers willing to file the flimsiest of lawsuits if the potential payoff was a piece of a $30+ billion (with a B) pile of cash.
If you haven't figured it out yet, this lawsuit was created by lawyers, and is being argued exclusively for the enrichment of lawyers. You, me, and the other millions of Windows users who are being represented are simply pawns.
SURE! This is a great idea - not! Let's say I have a business with a website. I sell some sort of synthetic-fiber housing insulation. Fiberglass is my competitor. Somewhere in my website I have a paragraph that speaks of the DISadvantages of fiberglass. Microsoft's new browser links the word Fiberglass to another website that trumpets it's value above other alternatives... That's bad for my business. That torks me off! This is a bad idea. -Sigmon
Or, to put it another way:
Let's say I have a business with a website. I sell some sort of nicotine transfer system, say cigarettes. Non-smokers are my enemy. Somewhere in my website I have a paragraph that speaks of the advantages of cigarette smoking. Microsoft's new browser links the word "cigarette" to another website that tells people that smoking kills people... That's bad for my business. That torks me off! This is a bad idea.
Hmmm... let's think about your comment. This is bad because you're afraid that you're product won't sell if people learn the truth about your competition? Sounds like your synthetic-fiber must be crap. Even without these tags, a reasonably intelligent person, when they read your paragraph attacking fiberglass, will go to some search engine seeking out a reply from some fiberglass manufacturer. Before you go knocking MS, just remeber that old saying you/.'ers have been shouting for years now, "info wants to be free!!!"... sounds like MS is freeing it up pretty well.
However, as a UVa Alum who has his fair share of bitterness as well (and most certainly DOESN'T call the school "The University", "Mr. Jefferson's School", or any of that bunk, I will defend the honor system.
Same deal here. I was never a part of the Honor Committee (although I was randomly chosen to be a juror once). I think if it's effective, an honor system can be an asset to a university, but when it's considered a joke it's a huge negative. This is an opportunity to test it out, which is always a good thing (except for the accused students of course...). Here are just a few somewhat relevant facts that weren't mentioned in the article...
"How Things" was first taught in either 91-92 or 92-93 and was extremely popular right from the start (based in large part on its 'gut' status). Prof. Bloomfield has cashed in beyond just his class... check out his book on Amazon.
While many universities have honor systems that are similar to UVA's, UVA considers itself to be the originator of such a system. Every first-year (freshman) is told some story about how some guy had something stolen back in the 1800's and demanded 'honor' from the guy who stole it to 'fess up. True or not, UVA takes it seriously and those students on the honor committee expect to keep UVA's honor code above all other schools'. I do think that if this gets a lot of national attention, something will have to happen, only because it would otherwise expose the inability of UVA to enforce its extremely-highly-regarded (at least by its members) honor system.
Because the honor system is so ingrained in the UVA culture, many (if not most) tests are allowed to be taken home, or at a different time, etc. A previous poster said with all the email and web information, a student has diffculty determining what is his/hers and what isn't... that's like saying "I was in the library taking the test and there were all these books there and so I'm not sure that I couldn't look at them to 'research' some of the answers..."
Officially, a UVA student is expected to uphold honor outside the classroom or even UVA. Back around '90-'91 they seriously considered making using a fake ID an honor violation and were going to ask local bars for cooperation in busting students.
Officially, the student reporting the honor violation (in this case, the girl with the low grade who complained to the prof) must personally confront any student she accuses of cheating face-to-face before an honor trial can be investigated. The accused can either leave UVA or deny the charge, after which an investigation/trial can begin. Note how this differs from normal laws where a victim would report the crime to the police who find and arrest the accused, and who is officially charged in court by a DA. So this could be a big loophole for the cheaters to squeeze through... unless the girl confronts a person directly, nothing can really happen. The fact that the prof found out who may have cheated probably won't matter, unless he decides to give that info to the student, which probably isn't allowed. She may know that a lot of people were cheating, but may not know exactly who, and therefore can't confront them directly.
The prof, Mr. Bloomfield, has no say who will be tried nor will he have any role in the decision(s) if a trial or trials do occur. He would be asked to give evidence about the cheating, but that's it. A jury would be comprised of a few Honor Committee members but mostly random students.
As has been stated by others, if a student is found guilty, the only allowable consequence is expulsion. There is no middle ground. Thus, the standard for guilt is extremely high, mostly because normal students are very hesitant to toss out other students, especially when many of those jurors probably realize they may have been just as guilty at one time or another. On the other hand, a unanimous decision is not required to find the accused guilty as in a criminal trial... I don't recall if it's simple majority, 2/3's, or what percentage, but it's not 100%.
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"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau" -- Irving Fischer, 1929
I've never heard this comment before, but if the date is accurate, I'm surprised you place it with the others. In fact, that might be the absolute best forecast of all time.
Obviously, stock prices and all indices are much higher today than they were in 1929. However, as you probably know, 1929 was the start of a massive, four-year decline in equity prices that played a huge part in creating "The Great Depression." Clearly, every investor who owned stocks in 1929 wished he/she had heeded Mr. Fischer's advice.
You may have an issue with the word "permanently," which is why you'd consider the statement to be ridiculous. However, after the crash of 1929, the Dow Jones IA did not reach it's pre-crash level again until 1954 -- 25 years later! In investing terms, 25 years is about as close as you'll ever get to "permanent" or "forever." Plenty of people died in those 25 years, so for all of them, Mr. Fischer's accuracy was stunning.
The bottom line is Mr. Fischer was making a sell recommendation, and he was absolutely, 100% on the money.
Best post yet. Microsoft's Java implementation wasn't "broken" per se, as it did run pure Java code fine. MS added proprietary extensions to its VM and made them available to programmers in Visual J++. Only when coders used the MS extensions, then tried to port that code back to a non-MS machine, did problems arise.
A "broken" implementation is different from an "implementation with extensions."
Whether it's good or bad depends on your point of view. If I'm a Visual J++ coder, looking to create a cross-platform program, then the extensions probably make it difficult to be sure my code is portable (of course an educated programmer would already know this and not use VJ++). If my goal is to write software that runs on Windows, having Windows-specific extensions to Java is terrific.
Of course Microsoft's (4/5-year-old) VM is currently incompatible with the latest Java version, but that is because Sun sued MS to prevent it from including any VM with Windows. Obviously, MS isn't going to work to update a product it isn't allowed to ship.
Excellent discussion of the circumstances. Except that, as it turns out, these 6 winning tickets were the only winning tickets.
Upon further research, you are indeed correct. Nobody but the one player who is being investigated hit the Pick-6.
The rules state, that 75% of the prize pool are to be distributed to those who got all 6, while the other 25% is to be distributed to those who got 5-of-6. But if nobody got 6-of-6, instead of a carry-over, which is the norm, then the "major" pool would be combined with the "minor" pool so that 100% of the pool whould be distributed to those who got 5 of 6.
According to the NYT, the guy in question also held 108 of 186 total 5-of-6 winners, meaning that there are likely only 78 legit winners, whose tickets, which were worth $4606, will now be worth about $45,000 each. Nice.
They should be able to find the true winners pretty easily in order to payout the true winnings, since they should have had to fill out tax forms for winning more than 600 times their original amount.
Again, the racetrack's profit is not affected at all. This is why pari-mutual betting is so fair... if there are 186 winners, they money gets split up that many ways, but if there are only 78, the winners get a lot more.
One other point. The bettor in question made single selections in the first 4 races. This means he chose 26-1 Domedriver in the first race and 13-1 Starine in the third, as well as lesser picks in the other 2. But he made NO ALTERNATES. Had his 26-1 shot not come in, the entire $1100+ ticket was history. Or, of course, the bet was made after those four races were over. These two guys are going down.
The reason why this was a dumb scheme, and the reason why they got caught is pure math. The track paid out more money then they took in
No, the win did not pay out more than the track earned. Each winning ticket paid $428,392 from a pool of $4,569,515, which means that there were probably 8 or 9 winning tickets in total, nationwide. The guy they are investigating had 6 of them.
Having 6 of only 9 winning tickets is obviously unusual. His betting strategy is even more unusual... making single selections for 4 races, then "wheeling" then entire field for the last 2, which means if the first four come in, he's guaranteed to win. Combined with the "flaw" in the system which doesn't report the ticket to the central database until after the fourth race, this is an obvious red flag. Finally, making the same bet 6 times is simply stupid. It's the same as buying 6 lottery tickets with all of the same numbers... the only justification is to increase your percentage of the winner's pool if you KNOW you are going to win.
Think of recent Powerball lottery wins... if they announce there were 6 winners, and one guy shows up with 4 of the winning tickets, it's going to raise eyebrows.
Had this guy never made these wagers, most likely there would have been 2 legit winners, each of whom would have won about $1.8 million (or maybe 3 winners each getting $1.2 mil). Instead, since there were a lot more winning tickets, the payout on each was reduced to only $428 thousand.
Again, the track didn't lose anything, and if they disqualify his tickets, the money will get paid to the legit winners. That's how pari-mutual wagering works... the total pool is calculated, the house percenatge is taken out, and everything left is split among the winning tickets. When there are 9 winning tickets, each one gets paid less than if there were 3 winning tickets. The racetrack is unaffected. The legitimate winners are the victims.
This does not affect the profit or loss of the racetracks and pari-mutual organizations ONE CENT. The pool for the pick 6 wager was $4,569,515... and the track is obligated to pay that amount back, less a "hold" percenatge (that the revenue for the track).
If this guy's winning tickets are disqualified, it will only increase the amount paid back to those who legitimately won. I'm guessing because I don't know the exact hold percenatge, but there were probably 8 or 9 winning tickets, each paying out $428,392. 6 of them belonged to the man in question. If his tix are disqualified, it will only mean that the $2.5 million that they were worth will be disrtibuted among the valid winners.
Under no circumstances will the racetrack make or lose any extra money as a result of what happens. If there were no other winners, the pool would either be carried over, or paid to the consolation winners (5 of 6). Most tracks employ the carry-over (to the necxt day), but this is the Breeder's Cup, which is a special, nationwide, once-a-year event, so the rules may be different.
are you saying that the odds are set (or changed) *after* people place their bets? If so, isn't that fraud? If not, how do they know beforehand how much people will bet on each horse?
In horse racing, yes. The final odds are not known until after all the betting has ended, right at the start of the race. The track's computers tally up all the of the money bet on each horse, take out the vig (usually 18% or so on straight win bets, more on more exotic bets), and then determine how much to pay back to each winning ticket.
It's not fraud at all, it's how pari-mutual betting works. Bettors understand that all the money bet will be placed in the same pool... the money I bet now joins money previously bet, and the money bet in the future will be added to that. It's common to bet a horse at 4-1 odds, and at post time the horse is only 3-1 or perhaps 6-1.
Just as a simple example (no vig), I can make a bet a 10 minutes before post time, at which time $250 has been bet on Citation, and $750 has been bet on Secretariat. Thus, at this time, Citation pays 3-1. When the race goes off, a total of $1000 has been bet Citation, and $2000 on Secretariat. Now Citation is only 2-1. Doesn't matter that he was 3-1... only that in the final pool, he is 2-1. Sometimes it goes in your favor, sometimes the other way.
In the end, this is the most fair... every player is betting against each other, not the house. No bookmaker is required to keep all the odds in line, the pool does it automatically. It also means that tracks aren't afraid of successful players, because they take a percentage of every dollar bet, win or lose. The track just wants to keep the total amount bet as high as possible.
I intend to double check and make sure that my managed 401K hasn't got one dime invested in Microsoft stock.
And what are you going to do about it, tough guy, if some of your 401(k) is in fact invested in MSFT? Will you forfeit the tax advantage, and the company matching, just to promote your anti-Microsoft zealotry?
Considering MSFT is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard & Poor's 500, and the NASDAQ Composite index, not to mention one of the United States's largest (in terms of market capitalization) companies, I'd say there's a pretty good chance some of your retirement account is invested in Microsoft.
Gates has been dumping about a million shares a month for more than two years.
Question: - which anyone except a self deluded clueless business major could answer correctly - "Why would they be doing that if the stock were as solid as you imply?"
Well, according to its annual report, in 2000 the Gates Foundation paid (not pledged, actually paid out) over $1 billion in grants. The guy's got to get the money from somewhere. (is that a clueless busines major's answer?)
Before you rebut with "but it's all in computers and software that doesn't cost anything", even if you exclude the "education", "special projects", "libraries", and "Pacific Northwest" categories, the foundation paid out over $500 million to global health causes, including vaccines and disease prevention, reproductive and child health, and poverty-related disease.
Again, the guy has to get the money somewhere, so he sells some stock. He owns something like 700 million shares, so selling a million a month isn't really significant. In fact, at that rate, it would take nearly 60 years to be completely divested. So I'd hardly say he's "dumping".
As far as Paul Allen, he is no longer on MSFT's board, but Forbes (in their 2002 list of world's richest people) describes him as "still believed to hold large stake in company." So maybe you want to re-check your facts.
Finally a geek that understands financials.
He doesn't understand them that well. Bigger is not always better. Anyway, IBM's revenue and profit are NOT 10x that of MS.
Focus on the top-line numbers. IBM's annual revenue in 2001 was 85.9b, Microsoft's was 25.3 (Note: MS's financial year ends June 30), about 3.5x. Since IBM sells a lot of hardware that is expensive to build, though, their cost of sales was 54.1b, vs. just 3.5b over at MS, leaving gross profit at 31.8b at IBM, 21.8b at MS.
Now why is MS stock so much higher? Stock price is all about growth. MS's gross profit is 116% higher than it was 4 years ago. IBM's has grown just 3% in that same time period. And the fact that MS has $40b in short-term assets, just $11 in short-term debt, and NO long-tem debt, makes portfolio managers sleep soundly at night.
I'm not knocking IBM... it's a great company, but that's the benchmark you chose to compare to Microsoft.
And IBM reported net income at $7.7b in 2001, vs. $7.3 at MS. So please explain where the 10x figure you stated comes from.
Pop quiz (pun intended):
How much had did that lady spend on music last year before discovering Kazaa?
If your answer was "zero", explain how the RIAA can have "lost" any money from her non purchases this year.
Because the past is not a perfect predictor of future events. Maybe I never bought a CD in my life but then a great new band came out last week and I broke down and bought their album. If I had gotten it free from Napster you'd make the same point, but it would be false.
Although I generally agree with the point you were trying to make, just keep in mind it isn't an absolute and therefore isn't applicable in every situation.
if i buy a (x86) computer, there is a 98% chance that it will come with windows
Hey genius. As soon as you restrict your choice of computer hardware to x86 your argument becomes moot. It's like saying if I walk into a Chevrolet dealership, there is a 98% chance the car I'm buying will be a Chevy.
Secondly, that "98% chance" is bullshit. You personally have 100% control over the OS that comes with your PC. Don't want Windows? Don't buy it. If you're favorite computer manufacturer won't sell you a computer without Windows, find a new favorite computer manufacturer.
Exactly how could Netscape ever possibly stand a chance when there was no way in hell for them to swing a deal to get their browser distributed with the OS?
One word: innovate. How about this radical idea... make a better browser!! Perhaps if Netscape had been first to market with an XML parser integrated into the rendering engine. Perhaps if Navigator offered multiple browser windows like Opera. Perhaps if it had PNG support. Or Print Preview. Faster rendering. Less bloat. Or if Netscape had provided a better development environment so more programmers would have cretaed Netscape plugins rather than ActiveX controls or Java applets. Maybe if it had worked that deal with Eudora you mention. Nobody knows what 'it' is (well, maybe Opera does) but clearly Netscape didn't offer anything that IE users wanted badly enough to pay for.
Maybe if Netscape stopped whining it could get back in the game. Browsers will continually evolve, users will always be seeking more features. What if they built a browser with built-in word processing/web publishing/blogging tools like Radio Userland?
Do yourself a favor. Don't be a Netscape apologist. Netscape had one great idea, after that it allowed itself to become completely irrelevant. You may not like Microsoft, but in this case, the enemy of your enemy is not your friend. It's AOLTW.
Actually, only OEM's that chose to provide the Windows OS on their computers were forced to ship IE. OEM's have choices, too. There's a reason Penguin Computing is a lot smaller than Dell.
Beyond that, the Windows OEM's were also forced to ship Notepad, WordPad, Outlook Express, HyperTerminal, a calculator, and Solitaire, among others. All products for which their were (and still are) commercially-available alternatives.
Oh, and they also shipped a GUI, plenty of printer drivers, a CD-ROM interface, power-saving utilities, screen savers, multiple network protocols, and lots of other little things that we now take for granted. None of these things existed in perfectly useful operating systems such as DOS 5.0 or Apple's ProDOS (those old Apple ][ days!). So to say that Internet Explorer is not an "essential part of the operating system" is missing the point. Nothing is "essential". There is no such thing as the definitive operating system, they constantly change, expectations are always on the rise. The fact that every major OS sold today includes a web browser actually gives credence to Microsoft's claim that IE is necessary and essential.
Wouldn't getting a beer at the local watering hole be considered "corporate entertainment consumption"? After all, Anheuser-Busch is a big corporation, you're drinking to entertain yourself, and it's certainly consumption.
Last time I checked, Microsoft DID lose the case! They were convicted by Judge Jackson...
Hey, you really need to brush up on the facts. The settlement was proposed to settle **civil** cases against Microsoft. These cases were totally separate from the DOJ case, or the States' case. The whole point of the settlement was to find an alternative to going to court. Microsoft didn't win, didn't lose, the cases have NOT gone to trial.
Further, if Microsoft does eventually decide to settle (and the settlement is approved), it does NOT mean MS is guilty of anything whatsoever (in regards to **these cases**, again, they are totally separate from the DOJ & States').
Settling does NOT equal guilt or responsibility. A defendant often finds that settlement agreements are better than going to court, even if it believes it will ultimately win (think lawyers fees, time spent in court, public records, etc.)
I wouldn't mind lawyers getting paid by the boatload for all this stuff, as long as Microsoft is the only one that has to foot the bill. MS should also pay hefty court fees for wasting so much of the court's time.
OK, well, Microsoft is the defendant in a civil case. I guess in your mind, defedning one's self is "wasting time." I guess you also think that defendants should be responsible for plaintiff's legal fees even though that defendant hasn't lost the case. Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with something called the Constitution.
Your argument sounds good, but it's essentially a cop-out, "we can't compete because the other guys are too big."
But the mom-and-pop ISPs don't happen to own a massive cable television network on which they can run an incessant stream of commercials for their online service, free of charge
AOL didn't have one, either. Sure, now it does, that's because it was so unbelievably successful that it could go out and buy one. I might remind you that when AOL was first starting out (independently), it's competition included GEnie (owned by General Electric, the largest corporation in the world, far larger than any cable monopoly) and Prodigy, owned by a partnership of IBM and Sears. There was also Compuserve, owned by H&R Block.
The mom-and-pop ISPs don't have millions of telephone subscribers whose bills they can stuff their advertisements into each month.
Does Earthlink have phone subscribers? A cable company? Does it even send out bills?
The mom-and-pop ISPs aren't going under because they suck. They're going under because they can't compete in a market dominated by bloated companies with billions of dollars to spend on advertising.
In 1957, there was no such thing as a Japanese car in the United States. That year, a company nobody here had ever heard of, Toyota, opened a dealership and started selling cars. Imagine the bloat and the advertising might *that* company's competitors had! But, they had a better product, or at least a more economical one, and people (including people who vividly remembered that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor less than two decades earlier) bought the funny-looking cars.
Bottom line: quit whining about the size of your competition, just go out there and make something that is better.
Interesting that when Yahoo adds relevant links to an article which it had no part in authoring (freely adding links both externally, i.e. in a separate sidebar, and internally, i.e. right in the middle of the article), it is considered a Good Thing, however when Microsoft created a developer-extendable, user-customizable version of the same technology, it was the Evil to end all evils. I wonder why?
P2P is gaining popularity precisely because people want to get away from the increasingly commercialized side of the Internet. As the corporation's greed and lust for power knows no bounds... [blah blah blah]
P2P is gaining popularity because people want stuff without paying for it, and P2P networks are extremely efficient at supplying that stuff. If you're utilizing P2P networks to freely exchange music, movies, and computer programs, nearly all of which are copyrighted and owned by some corporation, you can't really complain that those corporations will make every attempt to be fairly compensated.
Note that the Kodak case you mentioned went to a jury, and Kodak lost. This Microsoft case has not been decided. Big difference. No party has won or lost. Microsoft is voluntarily entering into this settlement, and the plaintiffs are voluntarily agreeing to the terms.
As for your point about the threat of a big fiscal award, well, that threat is only worth anything if the defendant really is afraid it will lose. It's also only effective if the plaintiff is convinced it will win. Considering that in this instance, the plaintiff blinked first (yes, the plaintiff proposed the settlement), the case probably wasn't all that strong.
This is a private civil case
Thanks for someone for finally stating that.
Further, this isn't the DOJ, and MS didn't lose this case. This is a settlement. The fact that one of the _plaintiff's_ lawyers proposed this settlement sheds some light on how weak this particular case against Microsoft actually is.
Of course Microsoft agreed to this deal. As has been stated over and over here, it costs little, promotes the company's products, and gets good publicity. Then again, had the case continued all the way through, it's very possible Microsoft would have won and wouldn't have had to pay a cent. Either way, the settlement works out a whole lot better than even a successful defense, as those lawyers' fees add up fast.
As for your last comment, about what the plaintiff's want... let's see. I don't hear many people running around saying they feel that Microsoft owes them $10 or $15. However, there are plenty of lawyers willing to file the flimsiest of lawsuits if the potential payoff was a piece of a $30+ billion (with a B) pile of cash.
If you haven't figured it out yet, this lawsuit was created by lawyers, and is being argued exclusively for the enrichment of lawyers. You, me, and the other millions of Windows users who are being represented are simply pawns.
You have to agree that if everyone was an atheist, there wouldn't be any "religious" war.
If there were no cops, there would be no cop-killers.
Or, to put it another way:
Let's say I have a business with a website. I sell some sort of nicotine transfer system, say cigarettes. Non-smokers are my enemy. Somewhere in my website I have a paragraph that speaks of the advantages of cigarette smoking. Microsoft's new browser links the word "cigarette" to another website that tells people that smoking kills people... That's bad for my business. That torks me off! This is a bad idea.
Hmmm... let's think about your comment. This is bad because you're afraid that you're product won't sell if people learn the truth about your competition? Sounds like your synthetic-fiber must be crap. Even without these tags, a reasonably intelligent person, when they read your paragraph attacking fiberglass, will go to some search engine seeking out a reply from some fiberglass manufacturer. Before you go knocking MS, just remeber that old saying you /.'ers have been shouting for years now, "info wants to be free!!!"... sounds like MS is freeing it up pretty well.
MS has done more than just *claim* that there will be an API. Go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/, then click on Smart Tag SDK.
However, as a UVa Alum who has his fair share of bitterness as well (and most certainly DOESN'T call the school "The University", "Mr. Jefferson's School", or any of that bunk, I will defend the honor system.
Same deal here. I was never a part of the Honor Committee (although I was randomly chosen to be a juror once). I think if it's effective, an honor system can be an asset to a university, but when it's considered a joke it's a huge negative. This is an opportunity to test it out, which is always a good thing (except for the accused students of course...). Here are just a few somewhat relevant facts that weren't mentioned in the article...
"How Things" was first taught in either 91-92 or 92-93 and was extremely popular right from the start (based in large part on its 'gut' status). Prof. Bloomfield has cashed in beyond just his class... check out his book on Amazon.
While many universities have honor systems that are similar to UVA's, UVA considers itself to be the originator of such a system. Every first-year (freshman) is told some story about how some guy had something stolen back in the 1800's and demanded 'honor' from the guy who stole it to 'fess up. True or not, UVA takes it seriously and those students on the honor committee expect to keep UVA's honor code above all other schools'. I do think that if this gets a lot of national attention, something will have to happen, only because it would otherwise expose the inability of UVA to enforce its extremely-highly-regarded (at least by its members) honor system.
Because the honor system is so ingrained in the UVA culture, many (if not most) tests are allowed to be taken home, or at a different time, etc. A previous poster said with all the email and web information, a student has diffculty determining what is his/hers and what isn't... that's like saying "I was in the library taking the test and there were all these books there and so I'm not sure that I couldn't look at them to 'research' some of the answers..."
Officially, a UVA student is expected to uphold honor outside the classroom or even UVA. Back around '90-'91 they seriously considered making using a fake ID an honor violation and were going to ask local bars for cooperation in busting students.
Officially, the student reporting the honor violation (in this case, the girl with the low grade who complained to the prof) must personally confront any student she accuses of cheating face-to-face before an honor trial can be investigated. The accused can either leave UVA or deny the charge, after which an investigation/trial can begin. Note how this differs from normal laws where a victim would report the crime to the police who find and arrest the accused, and who is officially charged in court by a DA. So this could be a big loophole for the cheaters to squeeze through... unless the girl confronts a person directly, nothing can really happen. The fact that the prof found out who may have cheated probably won't matter, unless he decides to give that info to the student, which probably isn't allowed. She may know that a lot of people were cheating, but may not know exactly who, and therefore can't confront them directly.
The prof, Mr. Bloomfield, has no say who will be tried nor will he have any role in the decision(s) if a trial or trials do occur. He would be asked to give evidence about the cheating, but that's it. A jury would be comprised of a few Honor Committee members but mostly random students.
As has been stated by others, if a student is found guilty, the only allowable consequence is expulsion. There is no middle ground. Thus, the standard for guilt is extremely high, mostly because normal students are very hesitant to toss out other students, especially when many of those jurors probably realize they may have been just as guilty at one time or another. On the other hand, a unanimous decision is not required to find the accused guilty as in a criminal trial... I don't recall if it's simple majority, 2/3's, or what percentage, but it's not 100%.