"He's missing something: home PCs aren't spam-generators, they are spam relays. The spam has to be getting in somehow, and that is something a normal firewall should be able to stop."
They are generating the SMTP connections. Once a virus is on a computer, it can communicate out to its source via common ports, like http's port 80. It doesn't need to use a blockable port (although ports like the NetBIOS port should be blocked to avoid trojans). Anti-virus is a client side solution, and clearly, relying on clients does not work. Plus, there is a lag time between a virus being introduced and the AV software catching it.
I'm not sure that the cable modem is the place to make these blocks either. I would think that they could be more sensibly made at the network router/switch.
1. No, it doesn't make the stock worth more, as it doesn't increase the assets or income of the company. In fact, once they pay the dividend, it makes the stock worth less (the company's assets are reduced).
2 & 3. No, a buy back cancels itself out. It reduces the assets of the company (cutting the stock price) while decreasing the number of shares of stock (increasing the stock price). The two effects exactly cancel each other.
The only way that either increases the stock price is by removing the risk that the company will go bankrupt and lose all that money. Once it is distributed, the company can no longer spend the money. As such, any increase in the stock price is saying that Microsoft is likely to become a money losing proposition. As a result, the stock should drop less than $3 per share, but it should still drop.
No, instead of $56 billion, they will only have $24 billion (and dropping, the stock buy back will cost money too) after the dividend.
The grandparent is incorrect about how the dividend should affect the share price though. Although it has created a temporary bump, this should be less than $3 unless people really don't trust Microsoft with the money. It's not like the dividend announcement actual increases the value of the company. The only real effect it should have is to *reduce* the price of the stock after it is paid (as that reduces the assets of the corporation).
Which is why Perot (who was similarly rich in the 70s) had Congress write a special tax exemption just for him one year.
I'll let you in on a secret. The way to become rich as a businessperson is to begrudge every penny you spend (while still spending it if necessary). Everyone who owned a business that I have ever met with increasing income has been like that. If Bill Gates can avoid paying a billion or so in taxes, he will, even if only out of habit. The money might be irrelevant to you if you had his money; it won't be irrelevant to him. If it was, he would have left Microsoft long ago.
It's also worth pointing out that giving money to a charitable foundation that you manage is not like giving it to charity. In fact, it can be a great way to maintain control of assets that you would otherwise lose. This is a large part of how the Ford family has maintained control of Ford. If they had passed it down through the generations, they would have lost half to taxes with each generation. As it is, the foundation just gives away its dividend income and holds onto the stock. Management of the foundation is kept within the family.
" Actually, the $3 dividend will raise the price of the stock by slightly less than $3/share (because it's a future value),"
The $3 dividend should raise the current price of the stock far less than $3, since it does not involve new income. The only reason it should raise it at all is that $3 in the hand is better than $3 in the corporation (if Microsoft retains the money, they might spend it rather than pay it out in the future). Note: a big increase would show a lack of faith in Microsoft (and seems to be happening, up 1.59 since closing and.37 before that; however, I would expect the price to drop tomorrow with profit taking). When the dividend is paid out, it will reduce the price of the stock. The net effect should be a *drop* in stock price of close to three dollars.
The stock buyback may increase the stock price somewhat, as it makes the company more concentrated in its core businesses (improves value of the stock, as the cash reserves can no longer be spent on losses in other divisions). The decrease in the total number of shares outstanding exactly counteracts the loss of assets from paying for the stock.
Of course, there will assumedly be other occurences over the four years of this, so it might be hard to tell what causes what.
IBM is not fighting SCO to help Linux. IBM is fighting SCO because caving would encourage others to sue them to try to get settlements (or bought out). IBM deliberately attached itself to Linux not to defend Linux but to attack SCO.
SCO still had some value (Caldera Linux and Unix licensing) when this started. It was falling value but it was there. Now, SCO is completely unable to sell Caldera Linux and is struggling to find people to buy Unix licenses. This is what Linux advocates did for IBM.
IBM is not a hero here. Just SCO's (bad) choice of victim.
No, it was Sun *hardware* that was being upgraded. The software was where the error came up *while* switching the hardware. Yes, the error was in third party software, but it was a reaction to a switch in the underlying hardware. While possible that Sun was not involved, installation and upgrade are both services that Sun offers.
All inkjet printers suck. Unless you are paying for wide carriage or some other business class printer, inkjets are a commodity item. They come with a 3 month warranty because people who actually use them will break them regularly. Laser printers are better. I know of someone who finally gave up on his HP Classic only when the rollers cracked from sheer age (and wanted to replace the rollers but couldn't find them). Modern ones are a bit more fragile but still repairable (who'd repair a $50 inkjet; it's cheaper to just replace it).
ObAOL: This was my first thought as well. If other distributed projects paid as well or better than spamming, then fewer virus writers would waste time on spam. This would also shift the burden off the system (distributed computing is CPU intensive rather than bandwidth intensive) and leave it purely on the individuals with insecure PCs.
The only bad possibility is that it might increase the number of zombies. However, this is not necessarily so. It is not evident to me that it would be simple to increase the number of zombies. If it was, why haven't they already done so?
And they were making fun of that "Mythical Man Month" guy questioning if OSes were proven.:)
I'll go with his comment, which went something like "Whatever minor overhead comes from the OS, the flexibility benefits outweigh them." DNS, mail, and web servers all require file system access and management (DNS servers also frequently sync across multiple machines), as well as TCP/IP connection management. Mail and web servers run remote logins. Web servers generally require FTP and database support as well as access to basic utilities (gzip and image libs come to mind as common needs).
Microsoft recently paid Sun $2 billion. Now flush with cash, Sun no longer sees a need to do proper QA when performing upgrades for customers.
See? Associating Microsoft with this disaster is simple:)
Or we could just argue that Sun follows a Microsoft model of business. Even though that wouldn't be Microsoft's fault per se, it still blames the proprietary business model.
Porting apps is harder than getting installs. Companies will in fact ship Linux on their PCs; note the Wal-Mart PCs that run Lindows, Lycoris, etc. I would agree with your outlook on market share and porting apps. The antidote to this is to concentrate on specific apps. This allows one to only care about market share in one area. For example, I would think that CAD workstations would be a good area in which to do this, as they usually only run one very resource intensive app (the CAD program). Another possible area are basic internet/office apps, as OpenOffice and the Mozilla suite already do most of the basic tasks. The problem is that people might want to run other apps there as well.
One can see places where this already works: web, DNS, and mail servers usually run *nix in some flavor.
Why pick a name that rhymes? Why not just use Windows? The case would seem even stronger if someone made their own company (e.g. Lawsuit Scams, Inc.) and released their product as Lawsuit Scams Windows.
Question: if this is Darl's next project, will/. start liking him?
Microsoft claims to own the name Windows as applies to computers. It's not Lindows fault that they don't own it; it's Microsoft's fault for choosing a generic name (and thus creating the confusion). Maybe they should change their name; wasn't X-Windows there first?
Saying otherwise is like saying that OpenOffice and StarOffice (or MySQL) should change their names because they are too similar to Microsoft Office (or Microsoft SQL Server). Yes, their is similarity; yes, it may cause confusion; yes, it's Microsoft's own fault for picking an *obvious* name for their software.
It has costs Lindows something like $1.4 million in legal fees to pursue this. Not everyone has $100M+ in extortion money from Viacom (what they paid Robertson for MP3.com) to spend on legal fees and establishing something similar enough to a real company to be sued.
According to http://lwn.net/Articles/81289/ (a link posted elsewhere in this thread), they had revenues of $2M (million) last year and losses (negative profits) of $4M. This would give costs of $6M per year. The debt numbers are a bit confusing in that they only show $4.7M debt of which Robertson has $10M? Perhaps there is actually $15M of debt?
"for the naysayers remember that XBox has nearly unlimited funds behind it, when you have that kind of capital it's not a matter of it but rather a matter of when"
Uhm. Sony is bigger than Microsoft. Not just in consoles, in general. Since Sony is 6 or 7 times as big in consoles, Sony can spend proportionately less per unit and still outspend Microsoft. Further, Sony not only has the US market, but the Japanese market as well. Microsoft's only advantage is that they have historically been more profitable.
Not to mention possible future problems. If Kerry wins, will he restore the Clinton anti-trust enforcement and break up Microsoft? Will OpenOffice and an improving Linux force Microsoft to cut prices in their three main profit centers (desktop OS, server OS, office suite)? Will stockholders insist that Microsoft distribute its cash reserves? Microsoft's "unlimited funds" are not eternal.
That is not possible for most Americans. Anyone born in the US is a US citizen. There is no provision to renounce this. At best, someone born in the US (Bill was born in the US, right?) can have a dual citizenship.
Ballet and professional wrestling also require a great deal of athletic talent (you don't think professional wrestling requires athletic talent? You try to jump from a 4' post onto someone else without hurting them), but does that make either of them sports?
Re:the real reason to be on the math team...
on
Is Math A Sport?
·
· Score: 1
Even more fun is stealing the food so that you could eat it on the bus trip back. For some reason, they never seemed to invest in worthwhile security at these things.
I was recruited by Stanford because of my participation in math competitions (in particular, the first two qualification exams for the International Mathematical Olympiad: the AHSME and the AIME). They're not entirely useless.
"could you hold an annual competition for the 'best' mathematician"
Can you hold an annual competition for the best athlete? No, you create a competition that tests one or more areas of skill (e.g. sprinting, endurance running, etc.). Are the winners the best athletes? No, of course not, they are simply the best at that area. For example, Michael Johnson could outsprint Rod Woodson. However, I would still pick Woodson as the better athlete: he can sprint almost as fast as Johnson, whereas Johnson could never have covered Jerry Rice or tackled Barry Sanders.
It's the same with math competitions. They create artificial competitions that measure some kind of problem solving. Someone comes in first and becomes the winner.
The reason why these are unlikely to become popularly watched is that it is almost impossible to see progress. In a race, you can continually see who's in first, who's coming up fast, etc. With math competitions (the college level one is called the Putnam Exam), you usually just see a bunch of people scribbling on paper for two hours.
Sub500.com already sells CAN$499 and US$299 (through the sub300.com site) computers over the internet. The only news about this is that they decided to open an actual store as well. I suspect that they plan on keeping the internet side as their main source of revenue.
Also there is no professional here. Their retail space is in the back of a car wash.
Sub500.com (also known as Sub300.com in the US) has been selling LindowsOS PCs since around the time that the Lindows Mobile PC (laptop) came out. Further, Linspire provides driver, etc. support as part of its $500 per month OEM program. I don't know that Suse, Red Hat, etc. are interested in doing that, as they are more focused on servers (more expensive licenses and easier to sell support). Linspire only sells desktop machines.
Slashdot Mirror
"He's missing something: home PCs aren't spam-generators, they are spam relays. The spam has to be getting in somehow, and that is something a normal firewall should be able to stop."
They are generating the SMTP connections. Once a virus is on a computer, it can communicate out to its source via common ports, like http's port 80. It doesn't need to use a blockable port (although ports like the NetBIOS port should be blocked to avoid trojans). Anti-virus is a client side solution, and clearly, relying on clients does not work. Plus, there is a lag time between a virus being introduced and the AV software catching it.
I'm not sure that the cable modem is the place to make these blocks either. I would think that they could be more sensibly made at the network router/switch.
1. No, it doesn't make the stock worth more, as it doesn't increase the assets or income of the company. In fact, once they pay the dividend, it makes the stock worth less (the company's assets are reduced).
2 & 3. No, a buy back cancels itself out. It reduces the assets of the company (cutting the stock price) while decreasing the number of shares of stock (increasing the stock price). The two effects exactly cancel each other.
The only way that either increases the stock price is by removing the risk that the company will go bankrupt and lose all that money. Once it is distributed, the company can no longer spend the money. As such, any increase in the stock price is saying that Microsoft is likely to become a money losing proposition. As a result, the stock should drop less than $3 per share, but it should still drop.
No, instead of $56 billion, they will only have $24 billion (and dropping, the stock buy back will cost money too) after the dividend.
The grandparent is incorrect about how the dividend should affect the share price though. Although it has created a temporary bump, this should be less than $3 unless people really don't trust Microsoft with the money. It's not like the dividend announcement actual increases the value of the company. The only real effect it should have is to *reduce* the price of the stock after it is paid (as that reduces the assets of the corporation).
Which is why Perot (who was similarly rich in the 70s) had Congress write a special tax exemption just for him one year.
I'll let you in on a secret. The way to become rich as a businessperson is to begrudge every penny you spend (while still spending it if necessary). Everyone who owned a business that I have ever met with increasing income has been like that. If Bill Gates can avoid paying a billion or so in taxes, he will, even if only out of habit. The money might be irrelevant to you if you had his money; it won't be irrelevant to him. If it was, he would have left Microsoft long ago.
It's also worth pointing out that giving money to a charitable foundation that you manage is not like giving it to charity. In fact, it can be a great way to maintain control of assets that you would otherwise lose. This is a large part of how the Ford family has maintained control of Ford. If they had passed it down through the generations, they would have lost half to taxes with each generation. As it is, the foundation just gives away its dividend income and holds onto the stock. Management of the foundation is kept within the family.
" Actually, the $3 dividend will raise the price of the stock by slightly less than $3/share (because it's a future value),"
.37 before that; however, I would expect the price to drop tomorrow with profit taking). When the dividend is paid out, it will reduce the price of the stock. The net effect should be a *drop* in stock price of close to three dollars.
The $3 dividend should raise the current price of the stock far less than $3, since it does not involve new income. The only reason it should raise it at all is that $3 in the hand is better than $3 in the corporation (if Microsoft retains the money, they might spend it rather than pay it out in the future). Note: a big increase would show a lack of faith in Microsoft (and seems to be happening, up 1.59 since closing and
The stock buyback may increase the stock price somewhat, as it makes the company more concentrated in its core businesses (improves value of the stock, as the cash reserves can no longer be spent on losses in other divisions). The decrease in the total number of shares outstanding exactly counteracts the loss of assets from paying for the stock.
Of course, there will assumedly be other occurences over the four years of this, so it might be hard to tell what causes what.
"Sigh. I can never tell what SCO is thinking."
SCO thinks?
IBM is not fighting SCO to help Linux. IBM is fighting SCO because caving would encourage others to sue them to try to get settlements (or bought out). IBM deliberately attached itself to Linux not to defend Linux but to attack SCO.
SCO still had some value (Caldera Linux and Unix licensing) when this started. It was falling value but it was there. Now, SCO is completely unable to sell Caldera Linux and is struggling to find people to buy Unix licenses. This is what Linux advocates did for IBM.
IBM is not a hero here. Just SCO's (bad) choice of victim.
No, it was Sun *hardware* that was being upgraded. The software was where the error came up *while* switching the hardware. Yes, the error was in third party software, but it was a reaction to a switch in the underlying hardware. While possible that Sun was not involved, installation and upgrade are both services that Sun offers.
All inkjet printers suck. Unless you are paying for wide carriage or some other business class printer, inkjets are a commodity item. They come with a 3 month warranty because people who actually use them will break them regularly. Laser printers are better. I know of someone who finally gave up on his HP Classic only when the rollers cracked from sheer age (and wanted to replace the rollers but couldn't find them). Modern ones are a bit more fragile but still repairable (who'd repair a $50 inkjet; it's cheaper to just replace it).
ObAOL: This was my first thought as well. If other distributed projects paid as well or better than spamming, then fewer virus writers would waste time on spam. This would also shift the burden off the system (distributed computing is CPU intensive rather than bandwidth intensive) and leave it purely on the individuals with insecure PCs.
The only bad possibility is that it might increase the number of zombies. However, this is not necessarily so. It is not evident to me that it would be simple to increase the number of zombies. If it was, why haven't they already done so?
And they were making fun of that "Mythical Man Month" guy questioning if OSes were proven. :)
I'll go with his comment, which went something like "Whatever minor overhead comes from the OS, the flexibility benefits outweigh them." DNS, mail, and web servers all require file system access and management (DNS servers also frequently sync across multiple machines), as well as TCP/IP connection management. Mail and web servers run remote logins. Web servers generally require FTP and database support as well as access to basic utilities (gzip and image libs come to mind as common needs).
Microsoft recently paid Sun $2 billion. Now flush with cash, Sun no longer sees a need to do proper QA when performing upgrades for customers.
:)
See? Associating Microsoft with this disaster is simple
Or we could just argue that Sun follows a Microsoft model of business. Even though that wouldn't be Microsoft's fault per se, it still blames the proprietary business model.
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/mai n/0,14179,2907876,00.html
9 11
e nt /04/06/04/2114222.shtml
http://www.cioupdate.com/article.php/10493_1477
http://management.itmanagersjournal.com/managem
are three stories saying that Linux has lower TCO than Microsoft.
Porting apps is harder than getting installs. Companies will in fact ship Linux on their PCs; note the Wal-Mart PCs that run Lindows, Lycoris, etc. I would agree with your outlook on market share and porting apps. The antidote to this is to concentrate on specific apps. This allows one to only care about market share in one area. For example, I would think that CAD workstations would be a good area in which to do this, as they usually only run one very resource intensive app (the CAD program). Another possible area are basic internet/office apps, as OpenOffice and the Mozilla suite already do most of the basic tasks. The problem is that people might want to run other apps there as well.
One can see places where this already works: web, DNS, and mail servers usually run *nix in some flavor.
Why pick a name that rhymes? Why not just use Windows? The case would seem even stronger if someone made their own company (e.g. Lawsuit Scams, Inc.) and released their product as Lawsuit Scams Windows.
/. start liking him?
Question: if this is Darl's next project, will
Microsoft claims to own the name Windows as applies to computers. It's not Lindows fault that they don't own it; it's Microsoft's fault for choosing a generic name (and thus creating the confusion). Maybe they should change their name; wasn't X-Windows there first?
Saying otherwise is like saying that OpenOffice and StarOffice (or MySQL) should change their names because they are too similar to Microsoft Office (or Microsoft SQL Server). Yes, their is similarity; yes, it may cause confusion; yes, it's Microsoft's own fault for picking an *obvious* name for their software.
It has costs Lindows something like $1.4 million in legal fees to pursue this. Not everyone has $100M+ in extortion money from Viacom (what they paid Robertson for MP3.com) to spend on legal fees and establishing something similar enough to a real company to be sued.
According to http://lwn.net/Articles/81289/ (a link posted elsewhere in this thread), they had revenues of $2M (million) last year and losses (negative profits) of $4M. This would give costs of $6M per year. The debt numbers are a bit confusing in that they only show $4.7M debt of which Robertson has $10M? Perhaps there is actually $15M of debt?
"for the naysayers remember that XBox has nearly unlimited funds behind it, when you have that kind of capital it's not a matter of it but rather a matter of when"
Uhm. Sony is bigger than Microsoft. Not just in consoles, in general. Since Sony is 6 or 7 times as big in consoles, Sony can spend proportionately less per unit and still outspend Microsoft. Further, Sony not only has the US market, but the Japanese market as well. Microsoft's only advantage is that they have historically been more profitable.
Not to mention possible future problems. If Kerry wins, will he restore the Clinton anti-trust enforcement and break up Microsoft? Will OpenOffice and an improving Linux force Microsoft to cut prices in their three main profit centers (desktop OS, server OS, office suite)? Will stockholders insist that Microsoft distribute its cash reserves? Microsoft's "unlimited funds" are not eternal.
"unless he renounces his US Citzenship"
That is not possible for most Americans. Anyone born in the US is a US citizen. There is no provision to renounce this. At best, someone born in the US (Bill was born in the US, right?) can have a dual citizenship.
Ballet and professional wrestling also require a great deal of athletic talent (you don't think professional wrestling requires athletic talent? You try to jump from a 4' post onto someone else without hurting them), but does that make either of them sports?
Even more fun is stealing the food so that you could eat it on the bus trip back. For some reason, they never seemed to invest in worthwhile security at these things.
I was recruited by Stanford because of my participation in math competitions (in particular, the first two qualification exams for the International Mathematical Olympiad: the AHSME and the AIME). They're not entirely useless.
"could you hold an annual competition for the 'best' mathematician"
Can you hold an annual competition for the best athlete? No, you create a competition that tests one or more areas of skill (e.g. sprinting, endurance running, etc.). Are the winners the best athletes? No, of course not, they are simply the best at that area. For example, Michael Johnson could outsprint Rod Woodson. However, I would still pick Woodson as the better athlete: he can sprint almost as fast as Johnson, whereas Johnson could never have covered Jerry Rice or tackled Barry Sanders.
It's the same with math competitions. They create artificial competitions that measure some kind of problem solving. Someone comes in first and becomes the winner.
The reason why these are unlikely to become popularly watched is that it is almost impossible to see progress. In a race, you can continually see who's in first, who's coming up fast, etc. With math competitions (the college level one is called the Putnam Exam), you usually just see a bunch of people scribbling on paper for two hours.
Sub500.com already sells CAN$499 and US$299 (through the sub300.com site) computers over the internet. The only news about this is that they decided to open an actual store as well. I suspect that they plan on keeping the internet side as their main source of revenue.
Also there is no professional here. Their retail space is in the back of a car wash.
Sub500.com (also known as Sub300.com in the US) has been selling LindowsOS PCs since around the time that the Lindows Mobile PC (laptop) came out. Further, Linspire provides driver, etc. support as part of its $500 per month OEM program. I don't know that Suse, Red Hat, etc. are interested in doing that, as they are more focused on servers (more expensive licenses and easier to sell support). Linspire only sells desktop machines.