It is because they fear you. Why would 80% of all Candians live next to the US border? They simply do not wish to fund your imminent invasion of the US.
I use IM on a Treo. It is used to have a conversation with someone else, or just to get information, when in a meeting. Take for example, the situation when the meeting goes off on a tangent or is covering a section which does not apply to you. You can't leave because you need to be there for one part or another but right now you are stuck. You can't openly talk on a phone so you IM. Yes, you could get up and leave to make a call but then that might be disruptive. So you whip out the Treo do something else and when the mucky-mucks finally get around to the good stuff you are ready.
I think the homeowner probably just laughed. In this day and age when you see a computer generated report which is totally outside the norm you can assume error. Maybe one day in the past someone would have sweat but it seems there are so many errors nowdays (we have accepted a certain level of fault with all things computer) that it just was -- they screwed up again.
Simply because you are working with others in different time zones doesn't mean you have to work longer. All you need to do is shift your start or end time. Instead of working 9-5 (don't we all wish) work 6-2 or 12-8. And have one or two persons in the other time zone similiarly shift a few hours. This will allow you to overlap with the other people.
A lot of industries do this. Take for example stock brokers on the west coast. They have to be in their office when the stock markets open on the east coast. So, they tend to be in by 5am and out by 1pm. They don't work longer hours because of it, but just modify their work day. Now, you shouldn't have to do this everyday you could do one or two days a week, while someone else does the other days. That way someone can pass off information and no one is working excessive hours.
Actually it will have the opposite effect. This will just be one more reason not to upgrade and stick with what is working currently. I don't know of too many businesses which value "pretty interface" over a regular interface which costs less and works just fine.
Microsoft makes its revenue by enticing people to upgrade. While they took out some features in order to ship this product it appears the main selling point being picked up in the media is the interface and the strict requirements needed to run the interface. If Microsoft doesn't spin the marketing soon as to why this is the ultimate upgrade sales are not going to meet their expectations.
Speculation that Apple plans to buy handheld maker Palm has been revived by a call from two leading Palm investors for the company to be put up for sale, according to the local paper of both companies.
Mike Nelson, who owns eight per cent of Palm shares, argued that the company is poorly equipped to dominate the market for smartphones which are beginning to eat into sales of traditional PDAs, reports Siliconvalley.com , online edition of the San Jose Mercury.
The drift from PDAs to smartphones is borne out today by a report from analysts IDG.
Palm has sold one million phone-enabled Treos and its stock has nearly doubled in value over the past year.
But Nelson is reported to have told the Palm board that competitors are developing products quickly and could afford to sacrifice profits to gain market penetration.
Another shareholder, with five per cent of Palm shares, also urged a sale of the company late last year.
The fact that Apple has been named as a possible buyer may seem strange to those who recall that one of the most controversial acts of CEO Steve Jobs was to kill off the pen-driven Apple Newton, a pre-cursor of the Palm Pilot, when he returned to the company after a 10-year absence in 1996.
Yet the two companies are closely linked. They are near neighbours and several early Palm employees, including co-founder and former company president Donna Dubinsky, previously worked with Apple.
Palm, at least in its early days, also enjoyed the kind of anything-but-Microsoft fan base that has long sustained Apple.
Jobs tried to buy the company in the late nineties, according to the Mercury. Neither Apple nor Palm has given any sign that there is any basis for the renewed speculation but there are obvious fits between the two companies.
Apple's Ipod boom can hardly be sustained unless it can head off competition from PDAs and smartphones that can pack music players along with a host a other functions.
Palm itself was slow off the mark in adding tricky telephony technology to its products and Apple would have a hard time starting from scratch in the market.
Also, for all their vaunted style, the latest Apple notebooks look like antiques beside the latest pen-driven Tablet PCs.
The company will sooner or later be forced to offer a pen interface, and could benefit from Palm expertise in the area - especially as tablets are getting smaller, and may eventually supersede the PDA.
Quit thinking so rational (and being so realistic). This is an article on Slashdot and you are supposed to be for the norm, against the norm, outraged, inraged, surprised, not surprised and so on. The discussion is not meant to be rational, but to be outrageous! You should be outraged that x did y! It doesn't matter that it was right or wrong you should be against it or for it, but in a non-rational manner.
I would not say it is extortion, but a new business strategy. Big businesses which can afford to pay for updates now will. All others will get them on the monthly plan. It is setting up a division of resources, depending on how much you are willing to pay. This could be very lucrative for Microsoft.
>>Sure there is -- there is no Constitutional provision for the Federal government to deny my anonymity. Therefore, anonymity is my right
Your logic is flawed. Let me give you an example. The constitution has no provision in it about me hacking into your computer, therefore it is my right to do so. Right? Nope.
There is a federal law which says you can't do this, so you can't. There is a federal law which says you have to show ID, then you have to show ID. What makes it a constitutional issue is whether the right you are complaining about is enumerated in the constitution or flows naturally from it. There is none of this, therefore you don't have a constitutional issue. You essentially have a right to be left alone but not with anonymity.
>>If you ask for an ID with a credit card, and that card is signed on the back, you can loose your merchant account.
This used to be the standard, but now they don't even care. I have brought this issue up and as long as it is not unreasonable they won't even blink an eye nowdays. Basically, it helps them by reducing fradulent transactions so they don't care.
If the courts are to enforce natural rights, where do they get a listing? What is a natural right to one person is not to another. So, whose would be right?
The other theory is that there are no natural rights, just what is enumerated in the laws and the extensions of those laws.
Yeah, well that's another issue I have problems with too. I think the airline industry should sink or swim by itself--they need to eliminate the airlines running under a constant loss. However, it is GE Capital keeping them afloat in this issue.
But, merely accepting money from the federal government does not make the corporation federally run. Chrystler/Dodge took a bunch of money to stay afloat. You wouldn't say they are federally run? How about a small business loan from the government? You wouldn't call that business federally run?
I don't think the writers of the DoI wrote pursuit of happiness by horse, but just the pursuit. Actually this document is not a part of the federal constitution but I will bite.
Just as you have to have the right of pursuit of happiness by car does that mean if my defination of the "right of pursuit of happiness by a harem" does that mean I can sue to get a harem of blondes, brunettes and redheads?
>>If your only mode of travel is to walk from California to the District of Columbia in order to petition your government, then you are *effectively* denied your right to petition.
Nope, you just choose not to walk. No one is saying you can't petition, you just have to get their however you choose. The basis for the argument is that there is no "right" to travel by airline. It's a privlege, not a right.
Yes, and if the airlines require everyone to wear a pink tutu before traveling they can. That fact just strengthens the argument that the airlines can require as much ID as they want to over and above any federal laws. Granted while idiot at the airline with his secret law was just trying to "be someone", the airlines can make up rules as they see fit. See, for example, size of carry-ons, no use of cell-phones, require you to buy earphones for the movie, etc.
Just as you have no constitutional right to no abide by these regulations/rules you have no constitutional right to travel by airline, thus the basis for the ruling is correct. You have a right to public school because it is run by a governmental agency. You have a right to due process in a criminal case because the government is charging you with a crime. You don't have a right to a constitutional challenge against Chrystler because you car broke just because they, a private corporation, received a federal loan. It's about control, the federal government does not run the airlines. And even if they did, there is no right to be anonymous when exercising every right you have. Look at driver's licenses. They are controlled by the government but you have provide all your information to gain that right.
This was a no brainer. The airline industry is a private corporation, not a federally run operation. (Yes, they are regulated by the FAA, a governmental agency). He didn't have to travel by air. It is like driving a car. It is not a right but a privledge. Travel by airline is not federal transportation, it's just more convienent.
What is more disturbing is the trend that if you walk down the street and are required to present identification by police. That is closer to the "let me see your papers" problem as there is a right to freely walk without problems.
I could tell you but then I would have to kill you.
Seriously, the gist is that the government wants the search records so they can promote/support their war on porn. The law is that the government issued a subpoena, which is a court order, i.e., legal requirement to do something. Google said no because the subpoena essentially is not valid. This is the long story very abbreviated.
I bet there will be a media and protester circus outside the courthouse on this one. Then again, maybe CourtTV will have the hearing live. This will be interesting and will definately shape the discussion on the Justice Department and internal US spying.
Not quite. The profit is after expenses. However, if you have taken accounting you will know you get to take expenses out for which you did not actually pay any money for (think depreciation, it is a non-cash outlay expense for which you get to take over time.) To actually look at the impact of the fine you have to look at what their actual cash flow is. From their statement:
Net free cash flow (net cash provided by operations less capital
expenditures) was $180.2 million for the twelve months ended December
31, 2005, which compares to net free cash flow of $182.1 million for
the same period in 2004. Excluding the cash paid during 2005 related
to the fraudulent data access discussed above, net free cash flow would
have been $193.8 million for 2005.
- During 2005, approximately 2.9 million shares were repurchased for
$125.6 million at an average price of $42.59, leaving $124.4 million
authorized in the Company's buyback program.
If you see the end number they had cash coming in in 2005 of $180.2 million dollars. It would have been $193.8 million but they had to pay the lawyers fighting this fine. And if you add in what they spent buying back their own stock their cash coming in from revenues is $180.2 + $125.6 = $305.8 million dollars. And if you add in what they spent on legal fees fighting this equals $319.4 million dollars. Subtract $10 million from this number and you get chump change.
Slashdot Mirror
White text on a black background; that sure beats that old OSX graphical interface.
Right, can I have your job?
And in other news 99.999% of all Slashdot users read Slashdot strictly for business reasons.
It is because they fear you. Why would 80% of all Candians live next to the US border? They simply do not wish to fund your imminent invasion of the US.
I use IM on a Treo. It is used to have a conversation with someone else, or just to get information, when in a meeting. Take for example, the situation when the meeting goes off on a tangent or is covering a section which does not apply to you. You can't leave because you need to be there for one part or another but right now you are stuck. You can't openly talk on a phone so you IM. Yes, you could get up and leave to make a call but then that might be disruptive. So you whip out the Treo do something else and when the mucky-mucks finally get around to the good stuff you are ready.
I think the homeowner probably just laughed. In this day and age when you see a computer generated report which is totally outside the norm you can assume error. Maybe one day in the past someone would have sweat but it seems there are so many errors nowdays (we have accepted a certain level of fault with all things computer) that it just was -- they screwed up again.
Simply because you are working with others in different time zones doesn't mean you have to work longer. All you need to do is shift your start or end time. Instead of working 9-5 (don't we all wish) work 6-2 or 12-8. And have one or two persons in the other time zone similiarly shift a few hours. This will allow you to overlap with the other people.
A lot of industries do this. Take for example stock brokers on the west coast. They have to be in their office when the stock markets open on the east coast. So, they tend to be in by 5am and out by 1pm. They don't work longer hours because of it, but just modify their work day. Now, you shouldn't have to do this everyday you could do one or two days a week, while someone else does the other days. That way someone can pass off information and no one is working excessive hours.
Actually it will have the opposite effect. This will just be one more reason not to upgrade and stick with what is working currently. I don't know of too many businesses which value "pretty interface" over a regular interface which costs less and works just fine.
Microsoft makes its revenue by enticing people to upgrade. While they took out some features in order to ship this product it appears the main selling point being picked up in the media is the interface and the strict requirements needed to run the interface. If Microsoft doesn't spin the marketing soon as to why this is the ultimate upgrade sales are not going to meet their expectations.
Speculation that Apple plans to buy handheld maker Palm has been revived by a call from two leading Palm investors for the company to be put up for sale, according to the local paper of both companies.
Mike Nelson, who owns eight per cent of Palm shares, argued that the company is poorly equipped to dominate the market for smartphones which are beginning to eat into sales of traditional PDAs, reports Siliconvalley.com , online edition of the San Jose Mercury.
The drift from PDAs to smartphones is borne out today by a report from analysts IDG.
Palm has sold one million phone-enabled Treos and its stock has nearly doubled in value over the past year.
But Nelson is reported to have told the Palm board that competitors are developing products quickly and could afford to sacrifice profits to gain market penetration.
Another shareholder, with five per cent of Palm shares, also urged a sale of the company late last year.
The fact that Apple has been named as a possible buyer may seem strange to those who recall that one of the most controversial acts of CEO Steve Jobs was to kill off the pen-driven Apple Newton, a pre-cursor of the Palm Pilot, when he returned to the company after a 10-year absence in 1996.
Yet the two companies are closely linked. They are near neighbours and several early Palm employees, including co-founder and former company president Donna Dubinsky, previously worked with Apple.
Palm, at least in its early days, also enjoyed the kind of anything-but-Microsoft fan base that has long sustained Apple.
Jobs tried to buy the company in the late nineties, according to the Mercury.
Neither Apple nor Palm has given any sign that there is any basis for the renewed speculation but there are obvious fits between the two companies.
Apple's Ipod boom can hardly be sustained unless it can head off competition from PDAs and smartphones that can pack music players along with a host a other functions.
Palm itself was slow off the mark in adding tricky telephony technology to its products and Apple would have a hard time starting from scratch in the market.
Also, for all their vaunted style, the latest Apple notebooks look like antiques beside the latest pen-driven Tablet PCs.
The company will sooner or later be forced to offer a pen interface, and could benefit from Palm expertise in the area - especially as tablets are getting smaller, and may eventually supersede the PDA.
Quit thinking so rational (and being so realistic). This is an article on Slashdot and you are supposed to be for the norm, against the norm, outraged, inraged, surprised, not surprised and so on. The discussion is not meant to be rational, but to be outrageous! You should be outraged that x did y! It doesn't matter that it was right or wrong you should be against it or for it, but in a non-rational manner.
I would not say it is extortion, but a new business strategy. Big businesses which can afford to pay for updates now will. All others will get them on the monthly plan. It is setting up a division of resources, depending on how much you are willing to pay. This could be very lucrative for Microsoft.
>>Sure there is -- there is no Constitutional provision for the Federal government to deny my anonymity. Therefore, anonymity is my right
Your logic is flawed. Let me give you an example. The constitution has no provision in it about me hacking into your computer, therefore it is my right to do so. Right? Nope.
There is a federal law which says you can't do this, so you can't. There is a federal law which says you have to show ID, then you have to show ID. What makes it a constitutional issue is whether the right you are complaining about is enumerated in the constitution or flows naturally from it. There is none of this, therefore you don't have a constitutional issue. You essentially have a right to be left alone but not with anonymity.
>>If you ask for an ID with a credit card, and that card is signed on the back, you can loose your merchant account.
This used to be the standard, but now they don't even care. I have brought this issue up and as long as it is not unreasonable they won't even blink an eye nowdays. Basically, it helps them by reducing fradulent transactions so they don't care.
Well, now you are into judicial theory:
If the courts are to enforce natural rights, where do they get a listing? What is a natural right to one person is not to another. So, whose would be right?
The other theory is that there are no natural rights, just what is enumerated in the laws and the extensions of those laws.
Yeah, well that's another issue I have problems with too. I think the airline industry should sink or swim by itself--they need to eliminate the airlines running under a constant loss. However, it is GE Capital keeping them afloat in this issue.
But, merely accepting money from the federal government does not make the corporation federally run. Chrystler/Dodge took a bunch of money to stay afloat. You wouldn't say they are federally run? How about a small business loan from the government? You wouldn't call that business federally run?
I don't think the writers of the DoI wrote pursuit of happiness by horse, but just the pursuit. Actually this document is not a part of the federal constitution but I will bite.
Just as you have to have the right of pursuit of happiness by car does that mean if my defination of the "right of pursuit of happiness by a harem" does that mean I can sue to get a harem of blondes, brunettes and redheads?
>>If your only mode of travel is to walk from California to the District of Columbia in order to petition your government, then you are *effectively* denied your right to petition.
Nope, you just choose not to walk. No one is saying you can't petition, you just have to get their however you choose. The basis for the argument is that there is no "right" to travel by airline. It's a privlege, not a right.
Yes, and if the airlines require everyone to wear a pink tutu before traveling they can. That fact just strengthens the argument that the airlines can require as much ID as they want to over and above any federal laws. Granted while idiot at the airline with his secret law was just trying to "be someone", the airlines can make up rules as they see fit. See, for example, size of carry-ons, no use of cell-phones, require you to buy earphones for the movie, etc.
Just as you have no constitutional right to no abide by these regulations/rules you have no constitutional right to travel by airline, thus the basis for the ruling is correct. You have a right to public school because it is run by a governmental agency. You have a right to due process in a criminal case because the government is charging you with a crime. You don't have a right to a constitutional challenge against Chrystler because you car broke just because they, a private corporation, received a federal loan. It's about control, the federal government does not run the airlines. And even if they did, there is no right to be anonymous when exercising every right you have. Look at driver's licenses. They are controlled by the government but you have provide all your information to gain that right.
Actually the question is "What federal law guarantees you the right to travel by other than your own means, that is, your own feet?"
This was a no brainer. The airline industry is a private corporation, not a federally run operation. (Yes, they are regulated by the FAA, a governmental agency). He didn't have to travel by air. It is like driving a car. It is not a right but a privledge. Travel by airline is not federal transportation, it's just more convienent.
What is more disturbing is the trend that if you walk down the street and are required to present identification by police. That is closer to the "let me see your papers" problem as there is a right to freely walk without problems.
I could tell you but then I would have to kill you.
Seriously, the gist is that the government wants the search records so they can promote/support their war on porn. The law is that the government issued a subpoena, which is a court order, i.e., legal requirement to do something. Google said no because the subpoena essentially is not valid. This is the long story very abbreviated.
That's because there is no potential profit from cooperating with the US government.
1. Create Search Engine
2. Cooperate|Not Cooperate
3. Media Exposure
4. Profit!
I bet there will be a media and protester circus outside the courthouse on this one. Then again, maybe CourtTV will have the hearing live. This will be interesting and will definately shape the discussion on the Justice Department and internal US spying.
When they sold the stock their creed changed from "Do no evil" to "Do no evil to our stockholders".
Not quite. The profit is after expenses. However, if you have taken accounting you will know you get to take expenses out for which you did not actually pay any money for (think depreciation, it is a non-cash outlay expense for which you get to take over time.) To actually look at the impact of the fine you have to look at what their actual cash flow is. From their statement:
Net free cash flow (net cash provided by operations less capital
expenditures) was $180.2 million for the twelve months ended December
31, 2005, which compares to net free cash flow of $182.1 million for
the same period in 2004. Excluding the cash paid during 2005 related
to the fraudulent data access discussed above, net free cash flow would
have been $193.8 million for 2005.
- During 2005, approximately 2.9 million shares were repurchased for
$125.6 million at an average price of $42.59, leaving $124.4 million
authorized in the Company's buyback program.
If you see the end number they had cash coming in in 2005 of $180.2 million dollars. It would have been $193.8 million but they had to pay the lawyers fighting this fine. And if you add in what they spent buying back their own stock their cash coming in from revenues is $180.2 + $125.6 = $305.8 million dollars. And if you add in what they spent on legal fees fighting this equals $319.4 million dollars. Subtract $10 million from this number and you get chump change.
For the three months ending Dec. 31, ChoicePoint said it earned $27.68 million on revenues of over one billion dollars in 2005