"It is all about the psychological sad state of these trolls. Every 3rd party app they attacked was successful in its own segment, respected and known for code quality."
And being responsive to and honest about issues, with fast turn-arounds for fixes, while most open source projects are written by people who devote a lot of time and effort without expecting any financial gain. Picking on these to "get revenge" on Apple is the act of either a very spoilt child who can't get his own way, and hits out at anyone and everyone in a tantrum, or an adult who is a selfish sociopathic piece of crap. Having read as much as I could stomach from some of their blogs, I am left with the impression that they were written by very childish adults, or extremely disturbed children with a pathetic need to show everyone how very clever they are.
I fail to see how an alternative browser to the one Apple supply and an open source project few Mac users know about, about let alone use, are "sexier" than a set of notably popular (and in the case of Office, expensive) applications by the biggest software company in the world.
"In theory it's possible they're trying to settle this outside of court first."
If it's settled without ever going to court then there's no lawsuit. There's a big difference between _threatening_ somebody with a lawsuit, and actually suing them.
"I find it unlikely with Apple, they seem ready to goto court on anything."
They go to court on anything they think they stand a reasonable chance of winning. However, in this particular case, it's difficult to see what Apple could sue any of these people for, let alone have any likelihood of winning.
" Lies like the natives were "uncivilized", in various forms mostly, when in fact the early settlers here learned an amazing amounts from the natives, including some fundamental concepts of democracy."
Although it's often a synonym for "unrefined" or "uneducated" in common usage, anthropologists and historians generally use "civilised" and "uncivilised" purely as a means of describing how a people is organised, with no implication that one is inherently superior to the other being either intended or implied by use of either term. They similarly tend to describe certain ancient "old world" peoples as "barbarians" without intending it to imply any of the negative connotations commonly associated with the term -- Celts and Mongols for example are both classed as barbarians despite having cultures that were in certain respects more sophisticated than many civilisations.
The problem is not therefore with the word itself, but the fact that teachers don't ensure their pupils understand that it has a very specific meaning in this context, and as with similar uses of barbarian, should not be taken as implying that the people being described didn't have a rich and sophisticated culture.
Not to mention the fact that cycling against a high wind is both exhausting and slow, while cycling with a high wind hitting you from the side can be downright dangerous.
They have to prove it to _win_ a lawsuit, not to file one, and in civil suits, "proof" is simply a preponderance of evidence, not the "beyond reasonable doubt" of criminal law. If your main goal is intimidating people, then the act of filing a lawsuit may be more than sufficient, especially if their lawyer tells them that it will cost significantly more to fight the case than accept the proffered settlement.
"I have a friend in the security community who insists that there was also a lawsuit by Apple against David Maynor because of this incident. But he says he can't give me details because they're still confidential."
I call BS because lawsuits are a matter of public record, so their existence cannot by definition be confidential. Judges can order certain parts of a case to be sealed (and in some rare circumstances all of it) because of confidential content, but the fact that Apple Inc. (or at that time, Apple Computer Inc.) sued David Maynor on such-and-such a date would be in the public records of the jurisdiction where it was filed, even if matters of national security are involved, as for example AT&T are claiming is the case in a current lawsuit. Judges sometimes allow a defendant to use a pseudonym, but this is very rare, and wouldn't be granted because somebody's got a new job.
"Omniweb and Omni Group fixed it in 2 hours, Sunday, Macworld times. Those assholes still didn't update their lame , trying to be funny page suggesting people to use another browser."
Which of course brings up another point: how does fucking over Omni Group (who have an excellent record of responding to such things very promptly) by publicising a bug without telling them about it first count as "revenge on Apple"? How does "outing" multi-platform bugs in open source projects instead of simply supplying patches to fix them do anything whatsoever to Apple? If these people had a beef against Apple for something or other, then take it out on Apple, not products or projects that have no connection with them besides running on Apple's OS.
NB: I don't know if I'm the only one who noticed that MOAB didn't publish a single bug in Microsoft Office for the Mac despite it (a) having rather a lot of them, and (b) being much more popular on OS X than any of the 3rd. party products or projects they did "examine". Given Microsoft's notably poor record with security issues in Office for Windows, I would have thought that this would have been the first non-Apple product they looked at (closely followed by IE, MSN Messenger, Media Player, and various other known sources of a multitude of exploits on Windows). I'm not suggesting this indicates any involvement by MS in MOAB (I'm not a conspiracy theorist who believes that they're behind every spiteful bunch of childish wankers with a vitriolic hatred of Apple, Linux, or whatever), but rather that it's possibly indicative of a notable bias which the so-called "computer press" doesn't seem to have noticed.
"I hope that you are trolling and I have to say that you made me laugh out loud"
Damn you sir, I hoped that it might be subtle enough to provoke a storm of protest from the statisticians among you. I obviously failed:-(
"If I am looking at a dataset containing several million items and I'm trying to establish that X is popular, finding that it has occured at least once is not evidence."
(Puts serious face on). In the case we're discussing, you are of course absolutely correct. However, the usefulness or otherwise of (for want of a better term) "binary" data from very small sample sets obviously depends on what one is trying to achieve. Not all uses of statistics require anything beyond a yes or no answer, and in these cases a few data points indicating that X > 0 may be sufficient. The problems come when people try to use such data as a basis for conclusions that it simply isn't capable of providing, which is obviously what you were referring to in your (increasingly annoyed) posts, i.e. that a small group which fits a very specific set of parameters isn't statistically representative of a larger, more general group most members of which are outside those parameters.
"I think that you'll find this is the common dictionary definition; observations that support a hypothosis".
I fail to see where this definition excludes anecdotal information, given that a hypothesis is no more than a supposition. I would also say that vast quantities of statistics have been generated from purely anecdotal information such as telephone surveys, mail-in questionnaires, exit polls, etc. Just because they gather lots of anecdotal information doesn't make it less anecdotal, because everything they have still comes from what some people said, and as exit polls rather convincingly demonstrate, there are times when what's said bears little relationship to what people do.
"Or maybe you're not using the dictionary definition of popularity?"
"Anecdotal Evidence is an oxymoron and should always be treated as such."
You are obviously working with some new, private definition of the term "evidence", while mere mortals like us are erroneously using the one in dictionaries. You'll have to forgive us for being so stupid.
"If I mention that X happened exactly once, then it is true that it does not imply that X has not happened multiple times. However it is also true that if I do not mention X at all then it does not imply that X has not happened multiple time."
The difference of course is that in the first case you have proven that X > 0, whereas in the second case you have proven nothing, The first case thus has statistical significance, whereas the second case has none.
" If I know a single person who has had X happen to them this does not give me any evidence to infer the popularity of X"
It gives you enough evidence to infer that the popularity of X > 0. If I know one person who has been struck by lightning, then I can say that there is _a_ statistical probability of me also being struck by lightning. Thus, while the data is very imprecise and therefore cannot answer questions that aren't expressible in a single binary digit, it is still data, and therefore more useful than an absence of data, which would mean that I had no idea whether it is _possible_ for a person to be struck by lightning. Imprecise evidence != no evidence.
"However it is also true that if I do not mention X at all then it does not imply that X has not happened multiple time"
It also doesn't imply that X occurs at all, whereas one truthful anecdote proves it does occur. Being able to show that X occurs >0 times is statistically more significant that not knowing whether X occurs.
"If you could understand logic then I would be able to explain to you that one occurance of X is independent of the frequent occurance of X"
One occurrence of X is not independent of how frequently X occurs because X >0 proves X has _a_ frequency_. To be independent of frequency would imply that 0 occurrences are also a frequency, whereas clearly this isn't the case in statistics (or for that matter in physics, where waves must have a frequency above 0 Hz to qualify as waves). Not saying anything about frequency beyond the fact that there is one isn't therefore the same as being independent of frequency.
"It depends on the copyright law, but yes - copyright infringement *should* require redistribution."
The name suggests it covers copying, but countries like the US have "fair use" provisions that allow copying for private purposes, so in these cases it effectively governs distribution -- note though that such fair use provisions aren't in place everywhere. I do however not know of anywhere that prohibits one from modifying a legally obtained copyrighted work, even though some might have laws that prohibit making copies of it even if they're only for personal use. If I want to rip pages out of a book I own, or "tipex" out words and write others in their place, or burn the whole thing to keep my hands warm in winter, then I can, and by the same token, I can hack the legal copy of Windows XP Pro running on my laptop without breaking any laws. The GPL does not therefore give me or anyone else any _modification rights_ that one doesn't have with non-GPL stuff, and this is what my comment was about.
"The latter -- Client and infoworker make more gross than the company does as whole net."
I thought this was probably the case, as it would be rather worrying (for shareholders, not me) if they were making more gross income that the company was!
"now these are just rough numbers from their balance sheet. maybe you can come up with a way to say it without accidentally using negative percentages(which are completely valid in the world of finance
This "financial validity" you speak of is obviously the reason financial figures are always quoted in terms like "Income dropped by 7% compared with the same quarter last year while costs rose 4%, so revenues were down by 11%" and such.
"Windows division : gross REVENUE(not income) - costs of the division : 10 billion dollars Office division: Gross revenue - costs of the division: 9.6 Billion dollars Server and Tools division: 3 Billion dollars Entertainment: 1.3 billion Corporate level activity : -5 Billion Total Operating income: 16.5 billion
So, what percent of the company's total operating income do the windows division and office division create?"
I would be pleased to do so if the numbers you included actually added up to 16.5 billion instead of 18.9 billion.
"but, after you get done telling me what percent they make, I'd love to hear where you heard the BS that you can't have negative percentages."
No negative percentages are necessary. It's a very simple calculation that most children could do, assuming of course that they were given valid numbers to work with.
"my handy wikipedia says"
Something irrelevant because Wikepedia entries carry no more weight than what some guy in a bar says. A beowulf-cluster of idiots can produce a much greater volume of rubbish that one idiot, but it' still rubbish.
"oh, also for your reading so maybe you don't have to argue the definition of a percent(incorrectly)"
LOL!
"when learning about the breakdown of a company"
We start by using some figures that actually add up to their claimed total, unlike the ones you put in here...
"also, if you think bigger than infinity has no meaning, check out c and aleph naught."
Somebody who can't add up five numbers shouldn't be arguing this type of stuff at all. Aleph-null denotes that a set has the same cardinality as the set of natural numbers, which requires that the set be a countable (denumerable) infinite set. I presume by "c" your are referring to the continuum, i.e. the set of real numbers, which is an (but not the only) uncountable infinite set. I also presume by this you are attempting to show that one type of infinity is somehow "bigger" than another while completely missing the fact that things things like aleph numbers are used because concepts like "bigger infinity" are mathematically paradoxical. Thus, while it is true that countable infinite sets are are subsets of uncountable infinite sets, this doesn't mean in mathematical terms that one is "bigger" than the other, because neither has any finite bounds, so terms like "size" have no meaning. Once you start messing around with mathematical concepts of infinity, and especially continua, you enter profoundly non-intuitive territory where most of the things one would think are true turn out not to be, e.g:
A line or line segment has exactly the same number of points on it as a plane, a three dimensional space, or a finite "volume" of hyperspace because it can be proven that each forms a set that has a one-to-one correspondence with the others' sets. This is true irrespective of the size of the continua, so a line 1 cm long is exactly the same "size" as the Earth in continuum terms because the same number of infinitely small points can be put on both (points have no dimensions in mathematics).
I think you'd need some sound statistical evidence to make the "most" claim. Without that, all one can say is that some organisations fail when they lose a leader, while others don't, and there are many examples where removing a charismatic but otherwise poor leader has improved things.
"In the case of Microsoft, though, the two divisions that I listed, Windows Client and Information Worker, make more in gross income (~24G/yr) taken alone than the company as a whole makes taken together."
Do you mean that the gross income of these two divisions is greater than Microsoft's gross income because of the sums that the loss-making divisions subtract from that gross income, or that their gross income is greater than Microsoft's _net_ income. I'm not disputing anything here, but simply asking for a clarification (not being a MS shareholder means that I have no idea what various bits of the company earn).
"If one ignores the expenses of those two divisions -- as other have done, and as you have not -- then it appears that the rest of the company must lose money."
I can see what you're getting at. A lot of people also seem to mistake the departments that have the largest gross income for being the most profitable ones, whereas it's often much smaller departments with a far lower cost to income ration that are the most profitable (at least in percentage terms) despite having significantly lower sales overall.
"In fact, most of the company's divisions would be profitable corporations in their own right, even were they spun off."
Indeed, and it sometimes seems strange that MS don't do this. However, if they did, they'd lose the ability to use profitable divisions to subsidise others which are currently struggling, which is something all big companies do to some degree if they regard maintaining a market presence in a particular sector to be more important in a long-term sense than whether it makes or loses money in the short term.
"As you say, both in spite of and because of their incredible earning power, Information Worker and Windows Client are now drags on the company's growth."
They've also been expensive recently because of the very large costs involved in developing Vista and the latest Office offering.
"Given Microsoft's niggling dividends, their non-contribution to the share price is bad, not good. As a shareholder, I'd like to see that change -- either the two divisions should be spun off as an industrial-style dividend yielding corporation, or the per share dividend from MSFT should be raised."
From what I can gather, a lot of shareholders feel the same way. However, from the Ballmer / Gates POV, operating systems were the key to Microsoft moving from being a small language house to one of the biggest and most powerful corporations that's ever existed, so I think there's an element of both fear and sentimentality that makes it almost impossible for them to imagine setting that part adrift from "the mothership". Likewise, they're probably afraid that IW might put just a little too much effort into their Mac (and possibly a Linux) version of Office thereby making the Windows Client part less vital than it currently is in their bread-and-butter corporate stronghold. So under the current management, the best you can probably hope for is a better dividend, which could well materialise once there's been some ROI on the significant development costs that both divisions have incurred.
"Again, I'm not really disagreeing with you, just clarifying what I mean by my use of percentages."
"Every time someone attacks the court system in the US, they take approximately 1/1000th of the cases ever filed in the US and cite those as proof of the brokenness of the system. You do that now. Our system works, but the media doesn't report the cases that come out rightly; they only report those that come out wrongly. "
And then, after criticising people for making unfounded assumption, you do the same:
"Loser-pays is not a solution to "rich guy always wins"; in fact, it would perpetuate the system because poor guy would never ever sue someone richer than him."
There are many countries which have "loser pays" systems where "little guys" sue big rich ones quite frequently and win, which you would know if, like the others who cited a admitted minority of US cases, you'd actually had the courtesy to do the same for one or more "loser pays" countries instead of getting all hot and bothered because somebody dared to suggest that the US legal system might not be as wonderful as Americans keep telling themselves and everyone else.
It's a big world with many countries and therefore many legal systems, and as astonishing as this may seem to some people in the US, some of them are better in certain (but by no means all) respects than yours, while others are of course notably worse in every conceivable way.
"The total ("gross") income from Windows Client and Office does, in fact, exceed the "net" income of the company"
This is the same for _every_ company (and for that matter, nearly every person), because net income is gross income - expenses. Thus, unless one has no expenses (in which case net income will be equal to gross income), gross income will always be more than net income.
"That means that one can pretend that the rest of the company, taken together, along with the expenses of Windows and Office, loses money".
How can one pretend that when Microsoft makes rather than loses money?
"Don't lie, though -- that is pretense, and nothing more"
It would be rather difficult for me to lie about this given the fact that I haven't mentioned it!
"The Windows Client and Office divisions are far and away the largest portions of the company, and earn less per employee than, say, SQL or Exchange. The truth is that SQL and Exchange, neither or which leverages either of the monopolies, are both hugely profitable."
All true.
"MS loses money on Home and Entertainment and on the CRM division. H&E is dragged down by the XBox, which is still not profitable."
Again, true. Note though that Microsoft also lost money on Windows with versions 1, 2, and 386, and also on Word and Excel for DOS (the early Mac versions made money) but continued with them despite this, and they're now very successful products. One of the reasons for competitors having learned to fear MS is due to their capacity for sheer dogged persistence once they set their sights on a market, even if their initial attempts at products seem laughably poor. They refine and re-launch, refine and re-launch, and so on until they either "get it right" or finally give in after a long and bloody fight that can destroy some competitors. Thus, although it still loses money, this version of the XBox has been rather more successful than the last one, so MS will be encouraged by it, and therefore probably launch at least one more.
NB: most companies expect the majority of their products (around 90%) to fail in the market place. MS have thus actually had a much better success rate than most because they don't assume that a flop invalidates an idea, but only the current implementation of it.
"CRM is just a money sink, which, IMHO as a shareholder, they should spin off."
I think Microsoft has to try new markets, because the only computer-related one that currently offers any real opportunities for growth is their server software. If they squashed Apple and Linux on the desktop tomorrow, they'd see a one-time spurt of 7% or so, and then have to concentrate on less computerised economies such as China who aren't as amenable to giving their IT infrastructure to a foreign company as the Europeans have been, because as is now the case with office automation software, they'd be relying on upgrades or machine turnover for the entirety of their Western income. It'd still be a lot of money, but big shareholders love growth above all things because it's what guarantees an increase in the value of their investment, hence the fact that fast growing Apple's shares are worth much more than slow-growing Microsoft's, even though Microsoft are one of the most profitable companies in the world.
NB: I haven't disputed (or prior to this post) mentioned any of these points. I only had issues with the way you used percentages, not anything else you said.
"my god... your foolishness knows no bounds. 120% of their net income is equal to the net income of those 2 divisions"
The net income of those two divisions cannot exceed 100% because that's what the term "percent" means. It is a ratio expressed as hundredths of a whole, so values of less than 0 or greater than 100 have no meaning, just like "bigger than infinity" has no meaning.
"obviously, there is a division of their business that makes -20%"
There is not. The minimum amount that can be expressed as a percentage is 0% -- negative percentages have no more meaning than ones greater than a hundred. Percentages aren't an axis -- they are ratios expressed as hundredth parts of a whole, and "more than a whole" or "minus whole" have no meaning. You can have a negative income (i.e. make a loss), but this cannot be expressed as a negative percentage because negative percentages don't exist
NB: I know that many people say things such as "we had 150% growth" or "I expect 110% effort", but they're talking nonsense.
"I guess its much too complex for you to consider that some divisions in major companies are profitable while others are not..."
What division is or isn't profitable has no relevance whatsoever to the fact that you cannot have more than 100 percent of anything or less than 0%-
"Granted, you could just be trying to joke or be a smart ass."
Knowing the correct definition of percentage isn't "smart". Indeed, I would have assumed that everyone on Slashdot was aware of it -- sadly, I was wrong.
"but it seems people here talk out of their asses in regards to the financial positions of Microsoft."
They do indeed, as you have so excellently demonstrated.
"The GPL only comes into play when you try to do things that are normally prevented by copyright law - modifying the software or redistributing copies or modfied versions of the software".
Copyright law doesn't prevent you from modifying your own copy of something.
"Too bad the people who invested most in this circus won't really sue them because they knew full well this was only an effort to smear the reputation of Linux and other free software"
It was actually an attempt by a company with an obviously failing business model to make a nuisance of themselves so that IBM would buy them out. Microsoft were simply opportunists who stepped in with some cash after it had become clear that IBM was going to fight, because the FUD SCO was spread about Linux containing their IP was far too useful to lose just because SCO didn't have enough cash for a long legal fight. They lost interest when the computer press lost interest due to things dragging on for so long without SCO producing their much-vaunted "smoking gun" of all that IP which IBM was supposed to have misappropriated, and turned elsewhere for their FUD needs (with the latest strategy being to make Novell, also proud possessors of a failing business strategy, into Steve Ballmer's bitch).
Not at prices consumers are willing to pay, but then the PS/2 line wasn't targeted at consumers anyway. You still see nice designs with higher-priced hardware such as Apple's PowerMacs (not as well designed as the PS/2, but good nonetheless) and various servers that are built to a specification rather than a price, but the throwaway nature of modern consumer PCs means that there's little point investing significant engineering resources in them.
"they make about 120% of their net income on the divisions of their business that include office and windows"
No wonder they're wealthy -- other companies have to fit all their net income into 100 _per cents_, whereas Microsoft are given 120 of them just for two products.
"Tonight, I have decided to be on Ballmer's side, even though I am probably the only one here."
You're not the only one here. I'm going to stick my neck out, and be on Billy G's side as well, because I could do with a few million extra dollars right now, and I happen to know that both of them have vast amounts of the stuff. OK, so a lot of it's tied up in stocks rather than laying around in the form of cash, but I'm not fussy or greedy, and would be more than happy to accept a few tens of thousands of MS shares in lieu, if that's more convenient. So if Bill or Steve (or somebody who knows them) is reading this, I'm more than willing to say what a great pair of guys you are for a sum that neither of you would even notice wasn't there any more, yet would be an absolute fortune to a modest person like myself.
Hey, Billie and Stevie, I just _love_ you guys to death, and would be _so_ happy to be seen with you (well, maybe not you Steve), so just contact me, and I'll tell you who to make the cheque out to, OK?
"Whether or not Wii titles that are not from Nintendo will sell well compared to other consoles is still an open question. Current numbers don't look promising. Call of duty 3 has sold 1 million on 360, 600 thousand on PS2, 250 thousand on Wii, and 200 thousand on PS3. Madden 07 has sold 3.2 million on PS2, 1.2 million on 360, 350 thousand on PS3, and 300 thousand on Wii."
There is however another possible explanation for these figures, i.e. that the markets Nintendo are pushing (and selling) the Wii to just aren't greatly interested in those sorts of games. I can't speak for the US, but Nintendo's advertising here in Europe has concentrated on the Wii's social aspects, something that's made my 12 year-old niece desperate to get one despite having a PlayStation 2 that she's never shown any interest in (it was bought by someone as a gift, and went into storage a couple of days later). Apparently, all her friends want them too, the more so because they're next to impossible to find, so having one is probably a status symbol with that age group; I can say with some confidence that the "girl between 11 and 14" demographic they represent won't be asking for Call Of Duty 3 or Madden to play on them (few people in Europe would want Madden anyway because what we term "American football" hasn't got any real following here).
So rather than indicating that third party games aren't viable on the Wii, these figures could simply show that porting games which are popular on other consoles isn't viable because a significant proportion of the Wii market consists of people who've never had any prior interest in games consoles, and therefore also have no interest in games that were written for them. I'm not saying this _is_ the case, but simply pointing out that poor sales figures of two ports from other consoles could say rather more about what was ported than the viability of third party software on the Wii in general.
Slashdot Mirror
"It is all about the psychological sad state of these trolls. Every 3rd party app they attacked was successful in its own segment, respected and known for code quality."
And being responsive to and honest about issues, with fast turn-arounds for fixes, while most open source projects are written by people who devote a lot of time and effort without expecting any financial gain. Picking on these to "get revenge" on Apple is the act of either a very spoilt child who can't get his own way, and hits out at anyone and everyone in a tantrum, or an adult who is a selfish sociopathic piece of crap. Having read as much as I could stomach from some of their blogs, I am left with the impression that they were written by very childish adults, or extremely disturbed children with a pathetic need to show everyone how very clever they are.
"Because MS Office isn't sexy enough"
I fail to see how an alternative browser to the one Apple supply and an open source project few Mac users know about, about let alone use, are "sexier" than a set of notably popular (and in the case of Office, expensive) applications by the biggest software company in the world.
"In theory it's possible they're trying to settle this outside of court first."
If it's settled without ever going to court then there's no lawsuit. There's a big difference between _threatening_ somebody with a lawsuit, and actually suing them.
"I find it unlikely with Apple, they seem ready to goto court on anything."
They go to court on anything they think they stand a reasonable chance of winning. However, in this particular case, it's difficult to see what Apple could sue any of these people for, let alone have any likelihood of winning.
" Lies like the natives were "uncivilized", in various forms mostly, when in fact the early settlers here learned an amazing amounts from the natives, including some fundamental concepts of democracy."
Although it's often a synonym for "unrefined" or "uneducated" in common usage, anthropologists and historians generally use "civilised" and "uncivilised" purely as a means of describing how a people is organised, with no implication that one is inherently superior to the other being either intended or implied by use of either term. They similarly tend to describe certain ancient "old world" peoples as "barbarians" without intending it to imply any of the negative connotations commonly associated with the term -- Celts and Mongols for example are both classed as barbarians despite having cultures that were in certain respects more sophisticated than many civilisations.
The problem is not therefore with the word itself, but the fact that teachers don't ensure their pupils understand that it has a very specific meaning in this context, and as with similar uses of barbarian, should not be taken as implying that the people being described didn't have a rich and sophisticated culture.
Not to mention the fact that cycling against a high wind is both exhausting and slow, while cycling with a high wind hitting you from the side can be downright dangerous.
"Which they still have to prove to sue people"
They have to prove it to _win_ a lawsuit, not to file one, and in civil suits, "proof" is simply a preponderance of evidence, not the "beyond reasonable doubt" of criminal law. If your main goal is intimidating people, then the act of filing a lawsuit may be more than sufficient, especially if their lawyer tells them that it will cost significantly more to fight the case than accept the proffered settlement.
"I have a friend in the security community who insists that there was also a lawsuit by Apple against David Maynor because of this incident. But he says he can't give me details because they're still confidential."
I call BS because lawsuits are a matter of public record, so their existence cannot by definition be confidential. Judges can order certain parts of a case to be sealed (and in some rare circumstances all of it) because of confidential content, but the fact that Apple Inc. (or at that time, Apple Computer Inc.) sued David Maynor on such-and-such a date would be in the public records of the jurisdiction where it was filed, even if matters of national security are involved, as for example AT&T are claiming is the case in a current lawsuit. Judges sometimes allow a defendant to use a pseudonym, but this is very rare, and wouldn't be granted because somebody's got a new job.
"Omniweb and Omni Group fixed it in 2 hours, Sunday, Macworld times. Those assholes still didn't update their lame , trying to be funny page suggesting people to use another browser."
Which of course brings up another point: how does fucking over Omni Group (who have an excellent record of responding to such things very promptly) by publicising a bug without telling them about it first count as "revenge on Apple"? How does "outing" multi-platform bugs in open source projects instead of simply supplying patches to fix them do anything whatsoever to Apple? If these people had a beef against Apple for something or other, then take it out on Apple, not products or projects that have no connection with them besides running on Apple's OS.
NB: I don't know if I'm the only one who noticed that MOAB didn't publish a single bug in Microsoft Office for the Mac despite it (a) having rather a lot of them, and (b) being much more popular on OS X than any of the 3rd. party products or projects they did "examine". Given Microsoft's notably poor record with security issues in Office for Windows, I would have thought that this would have been the first non-Apple product they looked at (closely followed by IE, MSN Messenger, Media Player, and various other known sources of a multitude of exploits on Windows). I'm not suggesting this indicates any involvement by MS in MOAB (I'm not a conspiracy theorist who believes that they're behind every spiteful bunch of childish wankers with a vitriolic hatred of Apple, Linux, or whatever), but rather that it's possibly indicative of a notable bias which the so-called "computer press" doesn't seem to have noticed.
"I hope that you are trolling and I have to say that you made me laugh out loud"
:-(
Damn you sir, I hoped that it might be subtle enough to provoke a storm of protest from the statisticians among you. I obviously failed
"If I am looking at a dataset containing several million items and I'm trying to establish that X is popular, finding that it has occured at least once is not evidence."
(Puts serious face on). In the case we're discussing, you are of course absolutely correct. However, the usefulness or otherwise of (for want of a better term) "binary" data from very small sample sets obviously depends on what one is trying to achieve. Not all uses of statistics require anything beyond a yes or no answer, and in these cases a few data points indicating that X > 0 may be sufficient. The problems come when people try to use such data as a basis for conclusions that it simply isn't capable of providing, which is obviously what you were referring to in your (increasingly annoyed) posts, i.e. that a small group which fits a very specific set of parameters isn't statistically representative of a larger, more general group most members of which are outside those parameters.
"I think that you'll find this is the common dictionary definition; observations that support a hypothosis".
I fail to see where this definition excludes anecdotal information, given that a hypothesis is no more than a supposition. I would also say that vast quantities of statistics have been generated from purely anecdotal information such as telephone surveys, mail-in questionnaires, exit polls, etc. Just because they gather lots of anecdotal information doesn't make it less anecdotal, because everything they have still comes from what some people said, and as exit polls rather convincingly demonstrate, there are times when what's said bears little relationship to what people do.
"Or maybe you're not using the dictionary definition of popularity?"
LOL! Touché, sir.
"Anecdotal Evidence is an oxymoron and should always be treated as such."
You are obviously working with some new, private definition of the term "evidence", while mere mortals like us are erroneously using the one in dictionaries. You'll have to forgive us for being so stupid.
"If I mention that X happened exactly once, then it is true that it does not imply that X has not happened multiple times. However it is also true that if I do not mention X at all then it does not imply that X has not happened multiple time."
The difference of course is that in the first case you have proven that X > 0, whereas in the second case you have proven nothing, The first case thus has statistical significance, whereas the second case has none.
" If I know a single person who has had X happen to them this does not give me any evidence to infer the popularity of X"
It gives you enough evidence to infer that the popularity of X > 0. If I know one person who has been struck by lightning, then I can say that there is _a_ statistical probability of me also being struck by lightning. Thus, while the data is very imprecise and therefore cannot answer questions that aren't expressible in a single binary digit, it is still data, and therefore more useful than an absence of data, which would mean that I had no idea whether it is _possible_ for a person to be struck by lightning. Imprecise evidence != no evidence.
"However it is also true that if I do not mention X at all then it does not imply that X has not happened multiple time"
It also doesn't imply that X occurs at all, whereas one truthful anecdote proves it does occur. Being able to show that X occurs >0 times is statistically more significant that not knowing whether X occurs.
"If you could understand logic then I would be able to explain to you that one occurance of X is independent of the frequent occurance of X"
One occurrence of X is not independent of how frequently X occurs because X >0 proves X has _a_ frequency_. To be independent of frequency would imply that 0 occurrences are also a frequency, whereas clearly this isn't the case in statistics (or for that matter in physics, where waves must have a frequency above 0 Hz to qualify as waves). Not saying anything about frequency beyond the fact that there is one isn't therefore the same as being independent of frequency.
"It depends on the copyright law, but yes - copyright infringement *should* require redistribution."
The name suggests it covers copying, but countries like the US have "fair use" provisions that allow copying for private purposes, so in these cases it effectively governs distribution -- note though that such fair use provisions aren't in place everywhere. I do however not know of anywhere that prohibits one from modifying a legally obtained copyrighted work, even though some might have laws that prohibit making copies of it even if they're only for personal use. If I want to rip pages out of a book I own, or "tipex" out words and write others in their place, or burn the whole thing to keep my hands warm in winter, then I can, and by the same token, I can hack the legal copy of Windows XP Pro running on my laptop without breaking any laws. The GPL does not therefore give me or anyone else any _modification rights_ that one doesn't have with non-GPL stuff, and this is what my comment was about.
"The latter -- Client and infoworker make more gross than the company does as whole net."
I thought this was probably the case, as it would be rather worrying (for shareholders, not me) if they were making more gross income that the company was!
"now these are just rough numbers from their balance sheet. maybe you can come up with a way to say it without accidentally using negative percentages(which are completely valid in the world of finance
This "financial validity" you speak of is obviously the reason financial figures are always quoted in terms like "Income dropped by 7% compared with the same quarter last year while costs rose 4%, so revenues were down by 11%" and such.
"Windows division : gross REVENUE(not income) - costs of the division : 10 billion dollars
Office division: Gross revenue - costs of the division: 9.6 Billion dollars
Server and Tools division: 3 Billion dollars
Entertainment: 1.3 billion
Corporate level activity : -5 Billion
Total Operating income: 16.5 billion
So, what percent of the company's total operating income do the windows division and office division create?"
I would be pleased to do so if the numbers you included actually added up to 16.5 billion instead of 18.9 billion.
"but, after you get done telling me what percent they make, I'd love to hear where you heard the BS that you can't have negative percentages."
No negative percentages are necessary. It's a very simple calculation that most children could do, assuming of course that they were given valid numbers to work with.
"my handy wikipedia says"
Something irrelevant because Wikepedia entries carry no more weight than what some guy in a bar says. A beowulf-cluster of idiots can produce a much greater volume of rubbish that one idiot, but it' still rubbish.
"oh, also for your reading so maybe you don't have to argue the definition of a percent(incorrectly)"
LOL!
"when learning about the breakdown of a company"
We start by using some figures that actually add up to their claimed total, unlike the ones you put in here...
"also, if you think bigger than infinity has no meaning, check out c and aleph naught."
Somebody who can't add up five numbers shouldn't be arguing this type of stuff at all. Aleph-null denotes that a set has the same cardinality as the set of natural numbers, which requires that the set be a countable (denumerable) infinite set. I presume by "c" your are referring to the continuum, i.e. the set of real numbers, which is an (but not the only) uncountable infinite set. I also presume by this you are attempting to show that one type of infinity is somehow "bigger" than another while completely missing the fact that things things like aleph numbers are used because concepts like "bigger infinity" are mathematically paradoxical. Thus, while it is true that countable infinite sets are are subsets of uncountable infinite sets, this doesn't mean in mathematical terms that one is "bigger" than the other, because neither has any finite bounds, so terms like "size" have no meaning. Once you start messing around with mathematical concepts of infinity, and especially continua, you enter profoundly non-intuitive territory where most of the things one would think are true turn out not to be, e.g:
A line or line segment has exactly the same number of points on it as a plane, a three dimensional space, or a finite "volume" of hyperspace because it can be proven that each forms a set that has a one-to-one correspondence with the others' sets. This is true irrespective of the size of the continua, so a line 1 cm long is exactly the same "size" as the Earth in continuum terms because the same number of infinitely small points can be put on both (points have no dimensions in mathematics).
"Yes, but most don't."
I think you'd need some sound statistical evidence to make the "most" claim. Without that, all one can say is that some organisations fail when they lose a leader, while others don't, and there are many examples where removing a charismatic but otherwise poor leader has improved things.
"In the case of Microsoft, though, the two divisions that I listed, Windows Client and Information Worker, make more in gross income (~24G/yr) taken alone than the company as a whole makes taken together."
Do you mean that the gross income of these two divisions is greater than Microsoft's gross income because of the sums that the loss-making divisions subtract from that gross income, or that their gross income is greater than Microsoft's _net_ income. I'm not disputing anything here, but simply asking for a clarification (not being a MS shareholder means that I have no idea what various bits of the company earn).
"If one ignores the expenses of those two divisions -- as other have done, and as you have not -- then it appears that the rest of the company must lose money."
I can see what you're getting at. A lot of people also seem to mistake the departments that have the largest gross income for being the most profitable ones, whereas it's often much smaller departments with a far lower cost to income ration that are the most profitable (at least in percentage terms) despite having significantly lower sales overall.
"In fact, most of the company's divisions would be profitable corporations in their own right, even were they spun off."
Indeed, and it sometimes seems strange that MS don't do this. However, if they did, they'd lose the ability to use profitable divisions to subsidise others which are currently struggling, which is something all big companies do to some degree if they regard maintaining a market presence in a particular sector to be more important in a long-term sense than whether it makes or loses money in the short term.
"As you say, both in spite of and because of their incredible earning power, Information Worker and Windows Client are now drags on the company's growth."
They've also been expensive recently because of the very large costs involved in developing Vista and the latest Office offering.
"Given Microsoft's niggling dividends, their non-contribution to the share price is bad, not good. As a shareholder, I'd like to see that change -- either the two divisions should be spun off as an industrial-style dividend yielding corporation, or the per share dividend from MSFT should be raised."
From what I can gather, a lot of shareholders feel the same way. However, from the Ballmer / Gates POV, operating systems were the key to Microsoft moving from being a small language house to one of the biggest and most powerful corporations that's ever existed, so I think there's an element of both fear and sentimentality that makes it almost impossible for them to imagine setting that part adrift from "the mothership". Likewise, they're probably afraid that IW might put just a little too much effort into their Mac (and possibly a Linux) version of Office thereby making the Windows Client part less vital than it currently is in their bread-and-butter corporate stronghold. So under the current management, the best you can probably hope for is a better dividend, which could well materialise once there's been some ROI on the significant development costs that both divisions have incurred.
"Again, I'm not really disagreeing with you, just clarifying what I mean by my use of percentages."
I appreciate the clarification.
First you say:
"Every time someone attacks the court system in the US, they take approximately 1/1000th of the cases ever filed in the US and cite those as proof of the brokenness of the system. You do that now. Our system works, but the media doesn't report the cases that come out rightly; they only report those that come out wrongly. "
And then, after criticising people for making unfounded assumption, you do the same:
"Loser-pays is not a solution to "rich guy always wins"; in fact, it would perpetuate the system because poor guy would never ever sue someone richer than him."
There are many countries which have "loser pays" systems where "little guys" sue big rich ones quite frequently and win, which you would know if, like the others who cited a admitted minority of US cases, you'd actually had the courtesy to do the same for one or more "loser pays" countries instead of getting all hot and bothered because somebody dared to suggest that the US legal system might not be as wonderful as Americans keep telling themselves and everyone else.
It's a big world with many countries and therefore many legal systems, and as astonishing as this may seem to some people in the US, some of them are better in certain (but by no means all) respects than yours, while others are of course notably worse in every conceivable way.
"The total ("gross") income from Windows Client and Office does, in fact, exceed the "net" income of the company"
This is the same for _every_ company (and for that matter, nearly every person), because net income is gross income - expenses. Thus, unless one has no expenses (in which case net income will be equal to gross income), gross income will always be more than net income.
"That means that one can pretend that the rest of the company, taken together, along with the expenses of Windows and Office, loses money".
How can one pretend that when Microsoft makes rather than loses money?
"Don't lie, though -- that is pretense, and nothing more"
It would be rather difficult for me to lie about this given the fact that I haven't mentioned it!
"The Windows Client and Office divisions are far and away the largest portions of the company, and earn less per employee than, say, SQL or Exchange. The truth is that SQL and Exchange, neither or which leverages either of the monopolies, are both hugely profitable."
All true.
"MS loses money on Home and Entertainment and on the CRM division. H&E is dragged down by the XBox, which is still not profitable."
Again, true. Note though that Microsoft also lost money on Windows with versions 1, 2, and 386, and also on Word and Excel for DOS (the early Mac versions made money) but continued with them despite this, and they're now very successful products. One of the reasons for competitors having learned to fear MS is due to their capacity for sheer dogged persistence once they set their sights on a market, even if their initial attempts at products seem laughably poor. They refine and re-launch, refine and re-launch, and so on until they either "get it right" or finally give in after a long and bloody fight that can destroy some competitors. Thus, although it still loses money, this version of the XBox has been rather more successful than the last one, so MS will be encouraged by it, and therefore probably launch at least one more.
NB: most companies expect the majority of their products (around 90%) to fail in the market place. MS have thus actually had a much better success rate than most because they don't assume that a flop invalidates an idea, but only the current implementation of it.
"CRM is just a money sink, which, IMHO as a shareholder, they should spin off."
I think Microsoft has to try new markets, because the only computer-related one that currently offers any real opportunities for growth is their server software. If they squashed Apple and Linux on the desktop tomorrow, they'd see a one-time spurt of 7% or so, and then have to concentrate on less computerised economies such as China who aren't as amenable to giving their IT infrastructure to a foreign company as the Europeans have been, because as is now the case with office automation software, they'd be relying on upgrades or machine turnover for the entirety of their Western income. It'd still be a lot of money, but big shareholders love growth above all things because it's what guarantees an increase in the value of their investment, hence the fact that fast growing Apple's shares are worth much more than slow-growing Microsoft's, even though Microsoft are one of the most profitable companies in the world.
NB: I haven't disputed (or prior to this post) mentioned any of these points. I only had issues with the way you used percentages, not anything else you said.
"my god... your foolishness knows no bounds. 120% of their net income is equal to the net income of those 2 divisions"
The net income of those two divisions cannot exceed 100% because that's what the term "percent" means. It is a ratio expressed as hundredths of a whole, so values of less than 0 or greater than 100 have no meaning, just like "bigger than infinity" has no meaning.
"obviously, there is a division of their business that makes -20%"
There is not. The minimum amount that can be expressed as a percentage is 0% -- negative percentages have no more meaning than ones greater than a hundred. Percentages aren't an axis -- they are ratios expressed as hundredth parts of a whole, and "more than a whole" or "minus whole" have no meaning. You can have a negative income (i.e. make a loss), but this cannot be expressed as a negative percentage because negative percentages don't exist
NB: I know that many people say things such as "we had 150% growth" or "I expect 110% effort", but they're talking nonsense.
"I guess its much too complex for you to consider that some divisions in major companies are profitable while others are not..."
What division is or isn't profitable has no relevance whatsoever to the fact that you cannot have more than 100 percent of anything or less than 0%-
"Granted, you could just be trying to joke or be a smart ass."
Knowing the correct definition of percentage isn't "smart". Indeed, I would have assumed that everyone on Slashdot was aware of it -- sadly, I was wrong.
"but it seems people here talk out of their asses in regards to the financial positions of Microsoft."
They do indeed, as you have so excellently demonstrated.
"The GPL only comes into play when you try to do things that are normally prevented by copyright law - modifying the software or redistributing copies or modfied versions of the software".
Copyright law doesn't prevent you from modifying your own copy of something.
"Too bad the people who invested most in this circus won't really sue them because they knew full well this was only an effort to smear the reputation of Linux and other free software"
It was actually an attempt by a company with an obviously failing business model to make a nuisance of themselves so that IBM would buy them out. Microsoft were simply opportunists who stepped in with some cash after it had become clear that IBM was going to fight, because the FUD SCO was spread about Linux containing their IP was far too useful to lose just because SCO didn't have enough cash for a long legal fight. They lost interest when the computer press lost interest due to things dragging on for so long without SCO producing their much-vaunted "smoking gun" of all that IP which IBM was supposed to have misappropriated, and turned elsewhere for their FUD needs (with the latest strategy being to make Novell, also proud possessors of a failing business strategy, into Steve Ballmer's bitch).
Not at prices consumers are willing to pay, but then the PS/2 line wasn't targeted at consumers anyway. You still see nice designs with higher-priced hardware such as Apple's PowerMacs (not as well designed as the PS/2, but good nonetheless) and various servers that are built to a specification rather than a price, but the throwaway nature of modern consumer PCs means that there's little point investing significant engineering resources in them.
Plenty of others have, however, e.g. The Roman Empire, GE, Ford, Remington, Caterpillar, Yamaha.
"they make about 120% of their net income on the divisions of their business that include office and windows"
No wonder they're wealthy -- other companies have to fit all their net income into 100 _per cents_, whereas Microsoft are given 120 of them just for two products.
"Tonight, I have decided to be on Ballmer's side, even though I am probably the only one here."
You're not the only one here. I'm going to stick my neck out, and be on Billy G's side as well, because I could do with a few million extra dollars right now, and I happen to know that both of them have vast amounts of the stuff. OK, so a lot of it's tied up in stocks rather than laying around in the form of cash, but I'm not fussy or greedy, and would be more than happy to accept a few tens of thousands of MS shares in lieu, if that's more convenient. So if Bill or Steve (or somebody who knows them) is reading this, I'm more than willing to say what a great pair of guys you are for a sum that neither of you would even notice wasn't there any more, yet would be an absolute fortune to a modest person like myself.
Hey, Billie and Stevie, I just _love_ you guys to death, and would be _so_ happy to be seen with you (well, maybe not you Steve), so just contact me, and I'll tell you who to make the cheque out to, OK?
X X X X
Weedles.
"Whether or not Wii titles that are not from Nintendo will sell well compared to other consoles is still an open question. Current numbers don't look promising. Call of duty 3 has sold 1 million on 360, 600 thousand on PS2, 250 thousand on Wii, and 200 thousand on PS3. Madden 07 has sold 3.2 million on PS2, 1.2 million on 360, 350 thousand on PS3, and 300 thousand on Wii."
There is however another possible explanation for these figures, i.e. that the markets Nintendo are pushing (and selling) the Wii to just aren't greatly interested in those sorts of games. I can't speak for the US, but Nintendo's advertising here in Europe has concentrated on the Wii's social aspects, something that's made my 12 year-old niece desperate to get one despite having a PlayStation 2 that she's never shown any interest in (it was bought by someone as a gift, and went into storage a couple of days later). Apparently, all her friends want them too, the more so because they're next to impossible to find, so having one is probably a status symbol with that age group; I can say with some confidence that the "girl between 11 and 14" demographic they represent won't be asking for Call Of Duty 3 or Madden to play on them (few people in Europe would want Madden anyway because what we term "American football" hasn't got any real following here).
So rather than indicating that third party games aren't viable on the Wii, these figures could simply show that porting games which are popular on other consoles isn't viable because a significant proportion of the Wii market consists of people who've never had any prior interest in games consoles, and therefore also have no interest in games that were written for them. I'm not saying this _is_ the case, but simply pointing out that poor sales figures of two ports from other consoles could say rather more about what was ported than the viability of third party software on the Wii in general.