1. Create a new compound that kills HIV 2. Test to make sure it ONLY kills HIV, not the people who have it 3. Leak to press before step two is complete 4. Profit!
As a web site designer, at least for my own sites, I've been (briefly) tempted to post vast quantities of honey-pot data that is guaranteed to be "attractive" to search engines but which I am not (by copyright) allowed to have online. The idea of showing the googlebot the honeypot data and the rest of the world redirects to the legitimate owner of the information is offensive to the spirit of the web and is clearly an abuse. That, and the fact that I'm sure the Google system could spot it fairly quickly with a random spot check bot using headers that identify it as a user with a regular browser, are why I didn't and don't do it.
Does the fact that BMW is...well....BMW make it less abusive or less offensive to do misleading or abusive things to raise its site value?
Aside from all that, its fairly stupid in this case. People looking for BMW know what they're looking for, and BMW doesn't need tricks to raise brand awareness.
Look, writing in managed code may be great for YOUR code's stability -- but only because you're writing less of it and trusting more and more to other people. In all candor, we're talking about either the JVM or the CLR (which are nearly the same thing in many respects).
Sure, you write less lines so you write less bugs. Big deal. If you take your time and treat your work as a CRAFT and yourself as a CRAFTSMAN, you'll write good code in nearly any language.
Personally, If I were after "Ultra Stability" (a made up phrase, by the way, with no real definition) I'd be looking first at the hardware and operating system and pulling out absolutely everything it does not need, then moving to the custom software and pairing everything down to its absolute purest, most minimal set of features and functions.
Think in terms of simplifying the environment, the platform, and then your code. Its the external factors that are going to kill you. Get rid of as many as you can.
1. Figure out how to generate nutrinos with just the right spin 2. Open storefront nutrino generate based radioactive waste disposalsites 3. Profit!:-)
...This kind of remote data gathering is in production use in tens of thousands of factories, farms, forests, and wildlife preserves all over the world. So they're sending different data. So what?
May have to be some exceptions for Parkinsons because sufferers have such a hard time accurately clicking the unsubscribe buttons, and Alzheimers patiences who subscribe to the same list every day.
Ok, yes, I'm in a truly insensitive and utterly evil mode. I'll duck now, as I turn off the Karma bonus on this one.
If, for example, consumers find they can use Verizon's VOD well but not Google's; yet Google has the better product, consumers may well opt to get their network service from the Cable Company instead.
The real issue is if Verizon is required to provide equal access to the local POP or not. This is a regulation issue -- is owning the copper to the home a monopoly?
So called 'departmental' I.T. solutions, along with the developers and admin who support them, tend to be focused on line of business needs. Their target-locked on needs based designs. From their perspective, this means cheaper, faster to live, and more adaptive solutions that enable real world business. From the internal "CIO" direct reporting structure, these represent a problem because they tend to be built without regard to what the "strategic I.T. direction" may be, and their lower cost and faster results make the big fancy projects look bad in the short term.
So who's right?
Well, both are right -- and wrong. If the CIO's vision is really as good as he thinks, then clearly the departmental application is a problem. Mostly, the CIO's vision is corrupted so fully by the time it impacts departmental level projects that what's left of that vision is little more than an attempt to garner a larger 'empire' of control regardless of cost of feasibility. That's not even counting the "cool tech" projects which often make no sense.
I've definately seen both as an outside consultant (and one who really does try to be honest about his work). In the end, you have to follow your own joy. Do what are paid to do as best you can, and always remember to "dance with the one that brung 'ya" -- remember your loyalties and morals. If doing those things is too frustrating or is mutually exclusive, its time to find another job.
IBM is effectively saying "If your product is targetted at x86 servers -- even multiprocessor/multi-core -- you don't really have a product."
Microsoft's market is exclusively (or nearly so) now forced to compete against a product that most of the industry considers vastly superior, and yet is free to anyone using it on a scale that Microsoft typically sells to.
IBM Isn't, and has never been effective at selling to SOHO. By giving away this market, they have the opportunity to capture some of it, poison the water supply of their competitor in Microsoft SQL, and for those successful companies that grow from PC based servers to serious hardware they can easily migrate them to iSeries or zSeries big boxes with lots of zeros on the price tag.
Its a solid strategy and a good product.
I remember doing a side by side comparison of Oracle to DB2 for a service company planning to scale up around 1999. I fully expected to pick Oracle -- but they were so difficult to deal with, that with no real advantage you'd be stupid to go with them. At the same time, no matter what oddball "what-if" question we came up with for a future direction IBM had a product integration path to handle the need.
In short, DB2 was a more mature, more powerful, and more extensible tool. At the time, MS Sql wasn't even in the running. Today's MSSQL is much stronger, but still not in the league of DB2 and Oracle.
I've used rebates many times - and whenever I've done the work, I've gotten the check. Sure, I'd prefer they did it at the register or just LOWERED THE PRICE, but I suspect that accounting rules and who is selling what tend to make that complicated more than it should be.
In any case, I know the game. The manufacturer counts on you NOT redeeming all the rebates. Fair enough. It lets them offer deeper discounts. I assume the possibility of failing to get the rebate when I buy the product. These electronic rebates reduce that liklihood, and as a result I'm more likely to get the product.
I agree completely with what you're saying. If you improve the library or add to it -- you should be contributing that back and of course not making money on the work that's already been done for you. Stack libraries and protocols are a bit different though, no? The code you do has literally nothing to do with the protocol other than as a user of it. Is it the same?
Not trying to be an ass, or weasel out of something -- the gpl is what is and I agree with it. I just want to bring up that it often fails to meet this kind of need. By virtue of the poor way its addressed (individually) it prevents me even trying out many GPL'd tools because I don't want to invest the time to learn them only to later find out I can't use them.
Maybe I don't have a good feel for the community then. The success of open source, the availability of tools, and the usefulness of those tools are not diminished by the existance of proprietary software. Keep in mind, I'm talking about things like libraries which are only useful if the software is going to - by its nature - take part in an open standard.
In the example I gave, if I wanted to build something that "speaks" IAX2 instead of SIP, and to do so I want to have the legal right (which I would presumably have to pay for) to incorporate the existing work someone has done to build the iaxclient.dll itself, isn't that in general GOOD not BAD for the overall success of IAX2, Open Source in general, and the expansion of the platforms that use the open standard connection protocol itself?
I guess I just don't see how that's bad. Is it bad to make a career out of developing software? I'm all for support and living within the standards. 100% for it. I'd MUCH rather support a standard than not. Not everything is standardized, and not everything should be. Does that mean if I build something which is inherently proprietary that communicates openly with something that isn't, that I'm hurting the industry?
I was just thinking to myself, "what I really want is an elevator ride a few times a day where I cannot predict the number of stops, the order of stops, or how long it will take to get to my floor."
Well, look -- someone made one. Excellent. THIS will really play hell with the kids in hotels that push EVERY button a thousand times. Between them and the greedy, loud-cell-phone-talking, expensive-shoes-wearing yuppies pushing their button a thousand times to get priority, here's what I expect to see:
"Error: Overflow error 2102 adding user 32768. (A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore, (F)all to your death?"
So, its annoying, unpredictable, and dangerous -- but at least it will be expensive.
There are absolutely times when you're willing to try climbing out the mythical hole in the top of all TV elevators just get away from some seriously bad perfume or B.O.
Using libraries and such you don't always know which you'll want to use until you've tried several. For me, its also an iterative process as I'm learning the technology at the same time I'm looking into the available code. That means trying out lots of things. Since the commercial use arrangements are difficult to track down, I usually try to avoid the whole mess except in those rare occasions when I already KNOW the tool I need.
Recent example - I'm doing some custom work which uses VOIP as a backbone transport. IAX2 is, IMO, the better protocol. The open sourced project which produces the iaxclient.dll is built to make that easier. Figuring out just how to take advantage of that, however, is quite hard. Since the client is Windoze based, it was WAY easier to use the Microsoft RTC Client libraries and use SIP for the session management. I hate SIP compared to IAX2, and I'm working toward my own implimentation of the IAX2 protocol so I can use that -- but its a great case where some excellent technology is just unworkable (for me, and those like me) in its present form resulting from its open source roots. Its great tech, its functional, its a better design, the code is probably much better --- but it isn't really "finished" at all.
Some tools are valuable as 'free' for use. Some represent a small niche market for very specific kinds of work. Making the choice between either not doing the work at all or doing it without hope of recovering revenue from it is the place the GPL leaves you.
Thank you, that's helpful. I've looked at LGPL to some extent,and it makes sense. GPL is too heavy handed. Its like you give me a hammer and tell me that if I build a house with it that I must let everyone live in it.
Ref - your comment to my third point about eyes not yet existing was to point out previous articles about the eyes. In fact, statement was specifically that the article does not actually represent advancement beyond what we've already seen printed about the science of artificial eyes.
Its INCREADIBLY cool what they've done -- however this article doesn't actually show advances in those technologies. Just the promise of smaller batteries based on some magic that doesn't really scale yet for eyes that aren't quiet there yet either.
Its a long way from a 16x16 matrix of pixels that allows general shape identification or the "zoom" identification of letters one at a time, to a working and functional eye at a resolution sufficient to be considered "vision" better than that which would be considered "legally blind".
As I said in my initial comment -- I watch and read and hope for a wearable eye replacement. Retinitus Pigmentosa and Macular Degeneration run in my wife's family and my step mother suffers another kind of blindness related to deterioration of the eye itself while the optic nerve remains undamaged. In the latter case, she's proven to be an excellent surgical patient and is young enough to be a good candidate for a workable implant if one can be developed in the next ten years.
1. They haven't developed the eyes any further than otherwise reported some time ago. 2. The batteries don't exist yet, really. 3. The batteries that don't yet exist are being designed for artificial eyes that don't yet exist.
I'm all for this technology to mature -- I have two blind relatives and it seems likely that others in my family will also have problems as they age. The kinds of work they're doing should help them if it matures. This article, however, doesn't actually show much advancement other than a new lab is working on a new thing, that could power a new device -- when they all get it figured out.
...about downloading and trying any GPL library because ultimately I've found too many unclear explanations on what I can and cannot do with it related to code I make money on. In some cases, I'd like to pay for the right to use it commercially but can't even figure out who to write the check to and for how much.
I wish authors releasing good libraries under GPL would also assume that is OK to make money with it too. Just spell out the terms and conditions for us commercial types too. Not all of what I do is commercial of course, some is free (as in beer) in which case GPL tends to be fine.
I hate being the kind of person who uses other people's contributions but can't contribute back all the time. I hope the new license clears some of this up for me.
Grow up boys, you're not Bill Gates. You're not going to be Bill Gates. That's not such a bad thing. People don't like Microsoft anyway.
QUIT running your companies like vengefull morons bent on doing everything with a goal of hurting Microsoft. Its getting predictable, boring, and less and less profitable.
Larry, you're not selling enough of your application suite to matter to anyone. Sorry to break that to you. Market share wise, you're still a database company and lately you're getting your clock cleaned on that front by MYSQL, MS SQL, and DB2 of all things. Why? Because you're so focused on your applications that nobody wants, that you make it impossible to do business with Oracle. You bought out Peoplesoft -- and trashed it. The folks I know in Munich can't stand what you've done to their work environment and projects. The problem, Larry, isn't Microsoft.
Scott.. WTF? Can't fine enough cool technology to give away this year? Your model is broken. Its been broken for years. The people who want non-microsoft servers are using Linux, not Solaris for new work. Its proving itself capable. Your hardware is too expensive for its performance -- its modeled after an old school "big blue" style sale with its service revenue coat-tails. How 70's and 80's. You've turned one of the most innovative and power companies in the world, into this decade's version of Silicon Graphics. Remember their last ditch effort? They came out with a high end graphics workstation with a non-standard embedded video rig that performed better but wasn't upgradeable. They were trying to compete with PC based workstations. Ooops. Now you're trying to compete with PC based servers without competing against IBM or Hitachi (et. al.). Ooops again.
Does anyone else but me remember the "Netscape-Sun-Aol Alliance" that was going to bring us J2EE based replacements for Windows servers and change all of us into J2EE freaks? Did ANYONE think an alliance like that could possible be stable? What are iPlanet sales like now?
The "Everyone but Bill" treehouse club is for 10 year olds. Its not for people running major corporations with a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Thank the FSM that I don't have any stock with you guys. You're like the poster children for why egomaniacs shouldn't be running public companies.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Create a new compound that kills HIV
2. Test to make sure it ONLY kills HIV, not the people who have it
3. Leak to press before step two is complete
4. Profit!
.....Our current President went to one of the finest institutes of higher "edumacation" on the planet. They couldn't help him.
As a web site designer, at least for my own sites, I've been (briefly) tempted to post vast quantities of honey-pot data that is guaranteed to be "attractive" to search engines but which I am not (by copyright) allowed to have online. The idea of showing the googlebot the honeypot data and the rest of the world redirects to the legitimate owner of the information is offensive to the spirit of the web and is clearly an abuse. That, and the fact that I'm sure the Google system could spot it fairly quickly with a random spot check bot using headers that identify it as a user with a regular browser, are why I didn't and don't do it.
Does the fact that BMW is...well....BMW make it less abusive or less offensive to do misleading or abusive things to raise its site value?
Aside from all that, its fairly stupid in this case. People looking for BMW know what they're looking for, and BMW doesn't need tricks to raise brand awareness.
Look, writing in managed code may be great for YOUR code's stability -- but only because you're writing less of it and trusting more and more to other people. In all candor, we're talking about either the JVM or the CLR (which are nearly the same thing in many respects).
Sure, you write less lines so you write less bugs. Big deal. If you take your time and treat your work as a CRAFT and yourself as a CRAFTSMAN, you'll write good code in nearly any language.
Personally, If I were after "Ultra Stability" (a made up phrase, by the way, with no real definition) I'd be looking first at the hardware and operating system and pulling out absolutely everything it does not need, then moving to the custom software and pairing everything down to its absolute purest, most minimal set of features and functions.
Think in terms of simplifying the environment, the platform, and then your code. Its the external factors that are going to kill you. Get rid of as many as you can.
1. Figure out how to generate nutrinos with just the right spin :-)
2. Open storefront nutrino generate based radioactive waste disposalsites
3. Profit!
...This kind of remote data gathering is in production use in tens of thousands of factories, farms, forests, and wildlife preserves all over the world. So they're sending different data. So what?
May have to be some exceptions for Parkinsons because sufferers have such a hard time accurately clicking the unsubscribe buttons, and Alzheimers patiences who subscribe to the same list every day.
Ok, yes, I'm in a truly insensitive and utterly evil mode. I'll duck now, as I turn off the Karma bonus on this one.
If, for example, consumers find they can use Verizon's VOD well but not Google's; yet Google has the better product, consumers may well opt to get their network service from the Cable Company instead.
The real issue is if Verizon is required to provide equal access to the local POP or not. This is a regulation issue -- is owning the copper to the home a monopoly?
So called 'departmental' I.T. solutions, along with the developers and admin who support them, tend to be focused on line of business needs. Their target-locked on needs based designs. From their perspective, this means cheaper, faster to live, and more adaptive solutions that enable real world business. From the internal "CIO" direct reporting structure, these represent a problem because they tend to be built without regard to what the "strategic I.T. direction" may be, and their lower cost and faster results make the big fancy projects look bad in the short term.
So who's right?
Well, both are right -- and wrong. If the CIO's vision is really as good as he thinks, then clearly the departmental application is a problem. Mostly, the CIO's vision is corrupted so fully by the time it impacts departmental level projects that what's left of that vision is little more than an attempt to garner a larger 'empire' of control regardless of cost of feasibility. That's not even counting the "cool tech" projects which often make no sense.
I've definately seen both as an outside consultant (and one who really does try to be honest about his work). In the end, you have to follow your own joy. Do what are paid to do as best you can, and always remember to "dance with the one that brung 'ya" -- remember your loyalties and morals. If doing those things is too frustrating or is mutually exclusive, its time to find another job.
AP
Where is my affordable FLYING CAR? Its 2006 and I'm STILL WAITING. Who f'ing cares if it drives itself. When it can FLY itself I'll be all over it.
IBM is effectively saying "If your product is targetted at x86 servers -- even multiprocessor/multi-core -- you don't really have a product."
Microsoft's market is exclusively (or nearly so) now forced to compete against a product that most of the industry considers vastly superior, and yet is free to anyone using it on a scale that Microsoft typically sells to.
IBM Isn't, and has never been effective at selling to SOHO. By giving away this market, they have the opportunity to capture some of it, poison the water supply of their competitor in Microsoft SQL, and for those successful companies that grow from PC based servers to serious hardware they can easily migrate them to iSeries or zSeries big boxes with lots of zeros on the price tag.
Its a solid strategy and a good product.
I remember doing a side by side comparison of Oracle to DB2 for a service company planning to scale up around 1999. I fully expected to pick Oracle -- but they were so difficult to deal with, that with no real advantage you'd be stupid to go with them. At the same time, no matter what oddball "what-if" question we came up with for a future direction IBM had a product integration path to handle the need.
In short, DB2 was a more mature, more powerful, and more extensible tool. At the time, MS Sql wasn't even in the running. Today's MSSQL is much stronger, but still not in the league of DB2 and Oracle.
I've used rebates many times - and whenever I've done the work, I've gotten the check. Sure, I'd prefer they did it at the register or just LOWERED THE PRICE, but I suspect that accounting rules and who is selling what tend to make that complicated more than it should be.
In any case, I know the game. The manufacturer counts on you NOT redeeming all the rebates. Fair enough. It lets them offer deeper discounts. I assume the possibility of failing to get the rebate when I buy the product. These electronic rebates reduce that liklihood, and as a result I'm more likely to get the product.
I agree completely with what you're saying. If you improve the library or add to it -- you should be contributing that back and of course not making money on the work that's already been done for you. Stack libraries and protocols are a bit different though, no? The code you do has literally nothing to do with the protocol other than as a user of it. Is it the same?
Not trying to be an ass, or weasel out of something -- the gpl is what is and I agree with it. I just want to bring up that it often fails to meet this kind of need. By virtue of the poor way its addressed (individually) it prevents me even trying out many GPL'd tools because I don't want to invest the time to learn them only to later find out I can't use them.
Maybe I don't have a good feel for the community then. The success of open source, the availability of tools, and the usefulness of those tools are not diminished by the existance of proprietary software. Keep in mind, I'm talking about things like libraries which are only useful if the software is going to - by its nature - take part in an open standard.
In the example I gave, if I wanted to build something that "speaks" IAX2 instead of SIP, and to do so I want to have the legal right (which I would presumably have to pay for) to incorporate the existing work someone has done to build the iaxclient.dll itself, isn't that in general GOOD not BAD for the overall success of IAX2, Open Source in general, and the expansion of the platforms that use the open standard connection protocol itself?
I guess I just don't see how that's bad. Is it bad to make a career out of developing software? I'm all for support and living within the standards. 100% for it. I'd MUCH rather support a standard than not. Not everything is standardized, and not everything should be. Does that mean if I build something which is inherently proprietary that communicates openly with something that isn't, that I'm hurting the industry?
I was just thinking to myself, "what I really want is an elevator ride a few times a day where I cannot predict the number of stops, the order of stops, or how long it will take to get to my floor."
Well, look -- someone made one. Excellent. THIS will really play hell with the kids in hotels that push EVERY button a thousand times. Between them and the greedy, loud-cell-phone-talking, expensive-shoes-wearing yuppies pushing their button a thousand times to get priority, here's what I expect to see:
"Error: Overflow error 2102 adding user 32768. (A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore, (F)all to your death?"
So, its annoying, unpredictable, and dangerous -- but at least it will be expensive.
There are absolutely times when you're willing to try climbing out the mythical hole in the top of all TV elevators just get away from some seriously bad perfume or B.O.
...only to accept reasonable payment to allow it to be used as part of a closed solution in addition to remaining open for others to use under GPL.
Using libraries and such you don't always know which you'll want to use until you've tried several. For me, its also an iterative process as I'm learning the technology at the same time I'm looking into the available code. That means trying out lots of things. Since the commercial use arrangements are difficult to track down, I usually try to avoid the whole mess except in those rare occasions when I already KNOW the tool I need.
Recent example - I'm doing some custom work which uses VOIP as a backbone transport. IAX2 is, IMO, the better protocol. The open sourced project which produces the iaxclient.dll is built to make that easier. Figuring out just how to take advantage of that, however, is quite hard. Since the client is Windoze based, it was WAY easier to use the Microsoft RTC Client libraries and use SIP for the session management. I hate SIP compared to IAX2, and I'm working toward my own implimentation of the IAX2 protocol so I can use that -- but its a great case where some excellent technology is just unworkable (for me, and those like me) in its present form resulting from its open source roots. Its great tech, its functional, its a better design, the code is probably much better --- but it isn't really "finished" at all.
Some tools are valuable as 'free' for use. Some represent a small niche market for very specific kinds of work. Making the choice between either not doing the work at all or doing it without hope of recovering revenue from it is the place the GPL leaves you.
Thank you, that's helpful. I've looked at LGPL to some extent,and it makes sense. GPL is too heavy handed. Its like you give me a hammer and tell me that if I build a house with it that I must let everyone live in it.
This deserves a +1 for humor & accurate sarcasm.
Ref - your comment to my third point about eyes not yet existing was to point out previous articles about the eyes. In fact, statement was specifically that the article does not actually represent advancement beyond what we've already seen printed about the science of artificial eyes.
Its INCREADIBLY cool what they've done -- however this article doesn't actually show advances in those technologies. Just the promise of smaller batteries based on some magic that doesn't really scale yet for eyes that aren't quiet there yet either.
Its a long way from a 16x16 matrix of pixels that allows general shape identification or the "zoom" identification of letters one at a time, to a working and functional eye at a resolution sufficient to be considered "vision" better than that which would be considered "legally blind".
As I said in my initial comment -- I watch and read and hope for a wearable eye replacement. Retinitus Pigmentosa and Macular Degeneration run in my wife's family and my step mother suffers another kind of blindness related to deterioration of the eye itself while the optic nerve remains undamaged. In the latter case, she's proven to be an excellent surgical patient and is young enough to be a good candidate for a workable implant if one can be developed in the next ten years.
1. They haven't developed the eyes any further than otherwise reported some time ago.
2. The batteries don't exist yet, really.
3. The batteries that don't yet exist are being designed for artificial eyes that don't yet exist.
I'm all for this technology to mature -- I have two blind relatives and it seems likely that others in my family will also have problems as they age. The kinds of work they're doing should help them if it matures. This article, however, doesn't actually show much advancement other than a new lab is working on a new thing, that could power a new device -- when they all get it figured out.
I wish
...about downloading and trying any GPL library because ultimately I've found too many unclear explanations on what I can and cannot do with it related to code I make money on. In some cases, I'd like to pay for the right to use it commercially but can't even figure out who to write the check to and for how much.
I wish authors releasing good libraries under GPL would also assume that is OK to make money with it too. Just spell out the terms and conditions for us commercial types too. Not all of what I do is commercial of course, some is free (as in beer) in which case GPL tends to be fine.
I hate being the kind of person who uses other people's contributions but can't contribute back all the time. I hope the new license clears some of this up for me.
Grow up boys, you're not Bill Gates. You're not going to be Bill Gates. That's not such a bad thing. People don't like Microsoft anyway.
QUIT running your companies like vengefull morons bent on doing everything with a goal of hurting Microsoft. Its getting predictable, boring, and less and less profitable.
Larry, you're not selling enough of your application suite to matter to anyone. Sorry to break that to you. Market share wise, you're still a database company and lately you're getting your clock cleaned on that front by MYSQL, MS SQL, and DB2 of all things. Why? Because you're so focused on your applications that nobody wants, that you make it impossible to do business with Oracle. You bought out Peoplesoft -- and trashed it. The folks I know in Munich can't stand what you've done to their work environment and projects. The problem, Larry, isn't Microsoft.
Scott.. WTF? Can't fine enough cool technology to give away this year? Your model is broken. Its been broken for years. The people who want non-microsoft servers are using Linux, not Solaris for new work. Its proving itself capable. Your hardware is too expensive for its performance -- its modeled after an old school "big blue" style sale with its service revenue coat-tails. How 70's and 80's. You've turned one of the most innovative and power companies in the world, into this decade's version of Silicon Graphics. Remember their last ditch effort? They came out with a high end graphics workstation with a non-standard embedded video rig that performed better but wasn't upgradeable. They were trying to compete with PC based workstations. Ooops. Now you're trying to compete with PC based servers without competing against IBM or Hitachi (et. al.). Ooops again.
Does anyone else but me remember the "Netscape-Sun-Aol Alliance" that was going to bring us J2EE based replacements for Windows servers and change all of us into J2EE freaks? Did ANYONE think an alliance like that could possible be stable? What are iPlanet sales like now?
The "Everyone but Bill" treehouse club is for 10 year olds. Its not for people running major corporations with a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Thank the FSM that I don't have any stock with you guys. You're like the poster children for why egomaniacs shouldn't be running public companies.