You dream! Just because today one can convert any graphics format to another doesn't mean that will be the case in the future.
In the 80's and early 90's before MS Word was so pervasive, there were a number of programs that could convert between different word processing formats. That isn't so true anymore because MS tries to keep its formats secret and Word is now so pervasive.
That doesn't mean that there will be software that runs on future computers that can decode jpeg. The average computer user won't be a coder that easily whip up a jpeg reader in F++ or F#.
As for the Wordstar file, what if the only remaining copy is electronic and on 5.25" floppy disk? Courts and lawyers aren't as computer savvy as we are.
RAID doesn't help either. What happens when the file or filesystem format becomes obsolete? You have to constantly upgrade the media, file format and filesystem format if the files are to be stored for longer than 5 or 10 years.
A few years back there was columnist in PC Magazine who wrote about how proud he was that he scanned the instruction booklets and sheets from everything he bought into his computer and put them on CD. These scans where in JPEG format.
What happens 10 years from now when Microsoft Windowze no longer reads that file format and jpeg has been superceded by some other format. Is he and all the other millions of people with jpeg photos going to stay current? How about when CDs are obsoleted for the DVD format du jour?
What if some your company's documents were first created in DOS on Wordstar 1.0 and the originals are needed for a lawsuit?
That's why car dealers are consistently considered among the most slimy and disreputable sellers.
As far as haggling goes, many sites don't have tol-free numbers and answer their e-mail infrequently (Yahoo is a godd example of that). So I still say that haggling with an internet entity is difficult at best. The internet is not setup for that.
I find the tone of this whole discussion and/.'ers reactions distateful. While price segmentation is not illegal nor unethical, not telling anyone that a site does that I believe to be unethical and may be illegal.
It's ok to have price differences among different segments of the public, such as seniors versus others, new customers versus repeat customers, etc. What is galling is that these sites don't tell you this. That means the customer doesn't have enough information to do price comparison shopping.
Our system of commerce is based on transparency. The customer has all the relevant facts so that he or she can make an informed decision. When sellers keep information secret that system breaks down.
You cannot haggle on the internet. Most sites do not have a way to offer an alternative price. So the price posted is the one you have to accept if you want to purchase from that site.
Some have said that Dell has two sites - a home user site and a small business site, and that the small business site has consistently lower prices because the two sites are essentially run by separate entities, but anyone can shop at either. Why would anyone use the home user site if that is the case? The answer is that they aren't told otherwise unless they hear it by word of mouth.
This is exactly the kind of situation that the FTC was created to police. Fairness and transparency is the only ethical way and I am not surprised that most shoppers are unaware.
I totally disagree. Taking out a loan is a liability and is properly reported so on the balance sheet. Making the payments is an expense that reduces that liability. I doesn't matter if the loan company is La Cosa Nostra or Joe's Bank. The difference between the amount borrowed and the amount paid is the interest. The amount of the loan is a liability because if the company goes out of business it can be made to pay that back.
Same with options, even though those who have them may not be high on the list of creditors and may not actually get anything if the company defaults. But the company does have to come up with a way to satify the exercise of an option even if it is done by issuing new stock which costs the company nothing.
What is the expense that has been hidden? If the owner of the options never exercises them, then there is never any expense incurred buy the company. As has been said elsewhere here, this is a liability. Only when exercised does it become an expense. You are confusing a grant with an exercise.
I still think this is bad accounting. Options when granted don't cost the company anything and no money changes hands. They are NOT a cost or an expense. They are a future liability - the difference between the current price of the stock and the exercise price of the grant.
When the options are exercised the liability goes away and their accounting depends on whether new stock was issued (they dilute everyone else's stock), they were purchased on the open market (a real cost), or they were sold to the exercisor from treasury stock (reduces retained earnings).
This individual application is not much of a problem in itself, and with the Anthrax scare of a few years ago, they can get a picture of who used a post office where the Anthrax might have originated.
However, as more and more places take our pictures it becomes more easy to track someone.
Years ago it was a bureaucratic joke that the federal government had 20-30 agencies each with their own police and arrest powers. Because they were spread out and uncoordinated, this was not a really big deal. Now with consolidation under 2 or three super agencies (Justice, Homeland Security, and intelligence) coordination becomes more possible and insidious.
Soon it will be possible to network together all these picture taking stations, and with better and better face recognition software, it will be possible to track many people's whereabouts
We are on a slippery slope towards Big Brother.
Read "Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town" by William Allen to see how a society can fall down a slippery slope without even realizing it.
Elegance is not the point. If you think I am obtuse and missing the point, so are others who rave about how small these programs are. I just think that before one raves about how good one's program is, it should be understandable to others. That doesn't require elegance. It IS a big deal that a small program many programmers could write can do P2P. If you want to drive home the point to the uninitiated (those who don't know perl, and python) then write the program so others can read it, understand it and appreciate it. It doesn't take a lot of elegance, nor that many more lines of code.
I never meant to say that tightly coded programs are difficult to write or because of that P2P is difficult. What I was decrying was that we should be proud of so tightly coded programs. Write them to be understandable by humans as well as machines and then be proud of how small one can be written. The fact that these two programs can be unwound and better written into about 20-30 lines of code still makes them small and marvels of what they do.
Both these programs remind me of the obfuscated C program contest of years ago. They put multiple lines of code on one text line and use cryptic variable names to save space. They try to be cute to be small.
Let's see how small a program can really be written if it is written in a decent style understandable by all. Not everyone knows the more arcane python and perl syntax. But a competent programmer could decipher it if written in a good style.
The comment that "any moderately skilled programmer can write one" is BS if it has to be written so cryptically that only the interpreter/compiler can decipher it.
that there are a number of factors that go into bad science stories.
1. Many Americans avoid science like the plague and a newspaper with many science stories sells less than those with sports and entertainment. Additionally science literacy in the US is poor at best. That means that many reporters and editors don't understand what they are reporting and and as a result don't do the subject justice. They may even give junk science equal weight.
2. Some science topics are so politicized (such as abortion, stem cell research, global warming, evolution) that any reporting is criticized with giving one side more weight than the other no matter how careful the reporter is. That leads to editors avoiding in depth analysis of these subjects.
3. Many science topics require a lot of space for in depth analysis and newspapers would rather give space to articles on topics that sell better. Also, they will cut off a story to make space for some fluff story, thereby leaving out the most important parts. Science journalists need to write with these space constraints in mind; put the most salient points up front before readers and editors stop reading. This is unlike in scientific journals where the entire article must be read to understand the point being made.
While there IS a buffer overflow problem with C, the real reason is Microsoft's ubiquity coupled with the ability to plugin third party executables and applications. BY allowing plugins to browsers, and office apps we leave the door open to malicious mischief if we don't know the originator of the plugin. By being ubiquitous, we make the spread of one malicious program that much easier. Users like being able to add to IE, Outlook, Excel, etc., and they like the fact that they don't have to test a wide variety of browsers and e-mail clients.
Ubiquity is the ONLY reason Linux and Apple don't have widely distributed viruses and worms.
That still doesn't make it good accounting. The purpose of accounting is determine what a company is worth and how much profit it is making, NOT what a share in the company is worth. That is done by the public through the market. The value of a share of stock is due to many factors one of which is how many shares are in the public's hands with respect to the company's value. That is why when options are exercised, the company should report that it issued stock to cover the options. Dilutions only occur when options are exercised, NOT when granted. If no money changed hands, then it cost the company nothing. If that affects the price of your stock, sorry. Companies issue new stock for all kinds of reasons and it should always be reported. If the company value is improperly reported then the price of the stock will be improperly determined. Treating unexercised stock options as liabilities puts them in the proper perspective. How they are fullfilled when exercised should determine how the exercise is accounted.
An expense represents a transaction where the company spent money on something. Granting options cost the company nothing and no money changes hands. It is only when the options are exercised that there is something to account for. Options granted but not exercised should be treated as a liability because it owes something to the grantee.
When the options are exercised, how they are accounted for depends on how they are fullfilled. There are three possibilities:
1. If the company issues new stock, then again it no money changed hands. It should be reported so shareholders can judge how much their stock has been diluted by the newly issued stock.
2. Most companies have a cache of their own stock they aquired and never retired. This is a balance sheet item listed under owner's equity. If the company uses its store of treasury stock, then it essentially gave up an item from the balance sheet. The difference between the aquisition price of the stock and the sale to the option exercisor becomes positive or negative paid-in capital under owner's equity in the balance sheet.
3. Only if the company goes out into the market to buy shares, is there an expense. That expense is the difference between the market price and the option price.
I've used Acme's online ordering and delivery twice so far. Both times there were errors in what they delivered versus what I ordered. The driver/delivery guy did not want to spend the time for me to make sure that I checked the order (he was nice enough, but he acted like he was in a big hurry), and both times I had to call the toll-free customer service number to get a refund or redelivery with the right stuff. To their credit, they made it right both times. Until drivers take the time to ensure that what they deliver is what was ordered, and they have the authority to fix the problem on the spot, there will still be some bad word of mouth press.
What do think ioctl's do? They call driver code based on the major and minor numbers of the device.
If you were a company with 5 EE's developing PC circuit boards and 4 software guys writing drivers, do you think you could afford to support drivers for 5 or six OS's when at least 4 of them have less than 5% market share? You might sell 10-20,000 Cards to Windows users and only a few hundred to Linux/Unix users. The answer is an economic no-brainer. Most of these companies are small and don't have the resources that HP or Dell have.
RedHat, SUSE, Apple, et al should involve themselves in the driver writing biz and help get more hardware solutions available to the community instead of depending on small firms whose main focus is Windows. Also, they should help get drivers for newer hardware on older releases. Often the Linux/Unix distributors only provide drivers for hardware that exists at the time the OS release occurs and don't bother updating the available drivers until the next release. Users can't afford to update every time just to get new hardware drivers.
Good luck getting MS to participate! They are notorious for bending standards to their way. Look what they did to Java before Sun sued them. Then because it was too much trouble they stopped supporting Java.MS participation would mean that they were acknowledging the existence of other competing OS's and that they would be facilitating their operation. That is contrary to the way MS thinks.
Hardware manufacturers have no choice in writing Windows drivers if they want to sell their products; but OS's that are a small share of the market give them no economic incentive. Writing the driver itself is not that expensive, but supporting it could be. If you want hardware drivers for alternative OS's, then the OS distributors and creators need to be finding ways to make these drivers easy to write and support. Perhaps the distributors (such as Redhat and SUSE) would help support the driver.
Slashdot Mirror
You dream! Just because today one can convert any graphics format to another doesn't mean that will be the case in the future.
In the 80's and early 90's before MS Word was so pervasive, there were a number of programs that could convert between different word processing formats. That isn't so true anymore because MS tries to keep its formats secret and Word is now so pervasive.
That doesn't mean that there will be software that runs on future computers that can decode jpeg. The average computer user won't be a coder that easily whip up a jpeg reader in F++ or F#.
As for the Wordstar file, what if the only remaining copy is electronic and on 5.25" floppy disk? Courts and lawyers aren't as computer savvy as we are.RAID doesn't help either. What happens when the file or filesystem format becomes obsolete? You have to constantly upgrade the media, file format and filesystem format if the files are to be stored for longer than 5 or 10 years.
A few years back there was columnist in PC Magazine who wrote about how proud he was that he scanned the instruction booklets and sheets from everything he bought into his computer and put them on CD. These scans where in JPEG format.
What happens 10 years from now when Microsoft Windowze no longer reads that file format and jpeg has been superceded by some other format. Is he and all the other millions of people with jpeg photos going to stay current? How about when CDs are obsoleted for the DVD format du jour?
What if some your company's documents were first created in DOS on Wordstar 1.0 and the originals are needed for a lawsuit?
That's why car dealers are consistently considered among the most slimy and disreputable sellers. As far as haggling goes, many sites don't have tol-free numbers and answer their e-mail infrequently (Yahoo is a godd example of that). So I still say that haggling with an internet entity is difficult at best. The internet is not setup for that.
I find the tone of this whole discussion and /.'ers reactions distateful. While price segmentation is not illegal nor unethical, not telling anyone that a site does that I believe to be unethical and may be illegal.
It's ok to have price differences among different segments of the public, such as seniors versus others, new customers versus repeat customers, etc. What is galling is that these sites don't tell you this. That means the customer doesn't have enough information to do price comparison shopping.
Our system of commerce is based on transparency. The customer has all the relevant facts so that he or she can make an informed decision. When sellers keep information secret that system breaks down.
You cannot haggle on the internet. Most sites do not have a way to offer an alternative price. So the price posted is the one you have to accept if you want to purchase from that site.
Some have said that Dell has two sites - a home user site and a small business site, and that the small business site has consistently lower prices because the two sites are essentially run by separate entities, but anyone can shop at either. Why would anyone use the home user site if that is the case? The answer is that they aren't told otherwise unless they hear it by word of mouth.
This is exactly the kind of situation that the FTC was created to police. Fairness and transparency is the only ethical way and I am not surprised that most shoppers are unaware.
I totally disagree. Taking out a loan is a liability and is properly reported so on the balance sheet. Making the payments is an expense that reduces that liability. I doesn't matter if the loan company is La Cosa Nostra or Joe's Bank. The difference between the amount borrowed and the amount paid is the interest. The amount of the loan is a liability because if the company goes out of business it can be made to pay that back.
Same with options, even though those who have them may not be high on the list of creditors and may not actually get anything if the company defaults. But the company does have to come up with a way to satify the exercise of an option even if it is done by issuing new stock which costs the company nothing.
What is the expense that has been hidden? If the owner of the options never exercises them, then there is never any expense incurred buy the company. As has been said elsewhere here, this is a liability. Only when exercised does it become an expense. You are confusing a grant with an exercise.
Hear! Hear! I said the very same thing in a later reply to the parent of this thread and in a reply to a previous slashdot thread.
I have posted on slashdot about this before!
I still think this is bad accounting. Options when granted don't cost the company anything and no money changes hands. They are NOT a cost or an expense. They are a future liability - the difference between the current price of the stock and the exercise price of the grant.
When the options are exercised the liability goes away and their accounting depends on whether new stock was issued (they dilute everyone else's stock), they were purchased on the open market (a real cost), or they were sold to the exercisor from treasury stock (reduces retained earnings).
This individual application is not much of a problem in itself, and with the Anthrax scare of a few years ago, they can get a picture of who used a post office where the Anthrax might have originated.
However, as more and more places take our pictures it becomes more easy to track someone.
Years ago it was a bureaucratic joke that the federal government had 20-30 agencies each with their own police and arrest powers. Because they were spread out and uncoordinated, this was not a really big deal. Now with consolidation under 2 or three super agencies (Justice, Homeland Security, and intelligence) coordination becomes more possible and insidious.
Soon it will be possible to network together all these picture taking stations, and with better and better face recognition software, it will be possible to track many people's whereabouts
We are on a slippery slope towards Big Brother.
Read "Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town" by William Allen to see how a society can fall down a slippery slope without even realizing it.
Elegance is not the point. If you think I am obtuse and missing the point, so are others who rave about how small these programs are. I just think that before one raves about how good one's program is, it should be understandable to others. That doesn't require elegance. It IS a big deal that a small program many programmers could write can do P2P. If you want to drive home the point to the uninitiated (those who don't know perl, and python) then write the program so others can read it, understand it and appreciate it. It doesn't take a lot of elegance, nor that many more lines of code.
I never meant to say that tightly coded programs are difficult to write or because of that P2P is difficult. What I was decrying was that we should be proud of so tightly coded programs. Write them to be understandable by humans as well as machines and then be proud of how small one can be written. The fact that these two programs can be unwound and better written into about 20-30 lines of code still makes them small and marvels of what they do.
Both these programs remind me of the obfuscated C program contest of years ago. They put multiple lines of code on one text line and use cryptic variable names to save space. They try to be cute to be small. Let's see how small a program can really be written if it is written in a decent style understandable by all. Not everyone knows the more arcane python and perl syntax. But a competent programmer could decipher it if written in a good style. The comment that "any moderately skilled programmer can write one" is BS if it has to be written so cryptically that only the interpreter/compiler can decipher it.
1. Many Americans avoid science like the plague and a newspaper with many science stories sells less than those with sports and entertainment. Additionally science literacy in the US is poor at best. That means that many reporters and editors don't understand what they are reporting and and as a result don't do the subject justice. They may even give junk science equal weight.
2. Some science topics are so politicized (such as abortion, stem cell research, global warming, evolution) that any reporting is criticized with giving one side more weight than the other no matter how careful the reporter is. That leads to editors avoiding in depth analysis of these subjects.
3. Many science topics require a lot of space for in depth analysis and newspapers would rather give space to articles on topics that sell better. Also, they will cut off a story to make space for some fluff story, thereby leaving out the most important parts. Science journalists need to write with these space constraints in mind; put the most salient points up front before readers and editors stop reading. This is unlike in scientific journals where the entire article must be read to understand the point being made.
While there IS a buffer overflow problem with C, the real reason is Microsoft's ubiquity coupled with the ability to plugin third party executables and applications. BY allowing plugins to browsers, and office apps we leave the door open to malicious mischief if we don't know the originator of the plugin. By being ubiquitous, we make the spread of one malicious program that much easier. Users like being able to add to IE, Outlook, Excel, etc., and they like the fact that they don't have to test a wide variety of browsers and e-mail clients. Ubiquity is the ONLY reason Linux and Apple don't have widely distributed viruses and worms.
That still doesn't make it good accounting. The purpose of accounting is determine what a company is worth and how much profit it is making, NOT what a share in the company is worth. That is done by the public through the market. The value of a share of stock is due to many factors one of which is how many shares are in the public's hands with respect to the company's value. That is why when options are exercised, the company should report that it issued stock to cover the options. Dilutions only occur when options are exercised, NOT when granted. If no money changed hands, then it cost the company nothing. If that affects the price of your stock, sorry. Companies issue new stock for all kinds of reasons and it should always be reported. If the company value is improperly reported then the price of the stock will be improperly determined. Treating unexercised stock options as liabilities puts them in the proper perspective. How they are fullfilled when exercised should determine how the exercise is accounted.
An expense represents a transaction where the company spent money on something. Granting options cost the company nothing and no money changes hands. It is only when the options are exercised that there is something to account for. Options granted but not exercised should be treated as a liability because it owes something to the grantee.
When the options are exercised, how they are accounted for depends on how they are fullfilled. There are three possibilities:
1. If the company issues new stock, then again it no money changed hands. It should be reported so shareholders can judge how much their stock has been diluted by the newly issued stock.
2. Most companies have a cache of their own stock they aquired and never retired. This is a balance sheet item listed under owner's equity. If the company uses its store of treasury stock, then it essentially gave up an item from the balance sheet. The difference between the aquisition price of the stock and the sale to the option exercisor becomes positive or negative paid-in capital under owner's equity in the balance sheet.
3. Only if the company goes out into the market to buy shares, is there an expense. That expense is the difference between the market price and the option price.
In all three cases, the liability goes away.
I've used Acme's online ordering and delivery twice so far. Both times there were errors in what they delivered versus what I ordered. The driver/delivery guy did not want to spend the time for me to make sure that I checked the order (he was nice enough, but he acted like he was in a big hurry), and both times I had to call the toll-free customer service number to get a refund or redelivery with the right stuff. To their credit, they made it right both times. Until drivers take the time to ensure that what they deliver is what was ordered, and they have the authority to fix the problem on the spot, there will still be some bad word of mouth press.
What do think ioctl's do? They call driver code based on the major and minor numbers of the device.
If you were a company with 5 EE's developing PC circuit boards and 4 software guys writing drivers, do you think you could afford to support drivers for 5 or six OS's when at least 4 of them have less than 5% market share? You might sell 10-20,000 Cards to Windows users and only a few hundred to Linux/Unix users. The answer is an economic no-brainer. Most of these companies are small and don't have the resources that HP or Dell have.
RedHat, SUSE, Apple, et al should involve themselves in the driver writing biz and help get more hardware solutions available to the community instead of depending on small firms whose main focus is Windows. Also, they should help get drivers for newer hardware on older releases. Often the Linux/Unix distributors only provide drivers for hardware that exists at the time the OS release occurs and don't bother updating the available drivers until the next release. Users can't afford to update every time just to get new hardware drivers.
Good luck getting MS to participate! They are notorious for bending standards to their way. Look what they did to Java before Sun sued them. Then because it was too much trouble they stopped supporting Java.MS participation would mean that they were acknowledging the existence of other competing OS's and that they would be facilitating their operation. That is contrary to the way MS thinks. Hardware manufacturers have no choice in writing Windows drivers if they want to sell their products; but OS's that are a small share of the market give them no economic incentive. Writing the driver itself is not that expensive, but supporting it could be. If you want hardware drivers for alternative OS's, then the OS distributors and creators need to be finding ways to make these drivers easy to write and support. Perhaps the distributors (such as Redhat and SUSE) would help support the driver.