Microsoft was granted the option to acquire expanded licensing rights, at its election, that would result in additional payments to us if exercised. In connection with the execution of the first license agreement, we granted a warrant to the licensee to purchase up to 210,000 shares of our common stock, for a period of five years, at a price of $1.83 per share.
So Microsoft (and Sun) gave SCO a $13 million fighting fund with an offer of more to come. In return SCO gave Microsoft a license and shares which if they sold them today would yield a profit of nearly $3 million. If SCO can talk their shares up to $60 Microsoft will break even.
Re:Orwell's vision was true!
on
Gates and Security
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· Score: 2, Informative
In order to come up with this completely arbitrary future time period, Orwell simply reversed the last two digits of the year he wrote it: 1948.
Orwell originally called it 1948, his publisher made him change it.
But what does this all mean? Honestly I have no idea.
C'mon, you must have some idea or you wouldn't keep posting this.
Five years ago I doubt Slashdot was on Microsoft's radar. They probably just thought OSDN was a new software operation that might invent something they could buy up later. Or if it looked like turning into a threat just withdraw the funding and, hey-presto, another dead competitor.
People also forget that the US is in fact facing a deadly threat, and that there is no garantee that it will survive this war against terrorism.
They don't forget, they just don't believe it. However, I think you may be correct. The current administration represents the greatest genuine threat America has ever had to face.
Re:Right tool for the job
on
Linus on DRM
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· Score: 1
When ideals get in the way of actually achieving your goals they are doing more harm than good for the cause.
The ends justify the means. Those people are standing in the way of my anti-death program, I'd better kill them.
Actually, the reality is that free market economics always works to the poors benefit, and socialism always works to their detriment.
Strange then, isn't it, how the rich and the poor both tend to support the system that works to the other's benefit. How selfless people are!
This isn't a straw man-- when jobs move overseas, liberals whine and complain about losing american jobs. they don't get excited tht americans move to higher paying jobs, and the poor people in the other country get the high paying factory jobs (that are too low paying for americans to do.)
This is a different point with little bearing on your original strawman. Are you saying that in America, when they close a factory, they give all the workers higher paying jobs than they had before? That's not how they do things here in Europe.
And on the sweatshop thing-- the liberals hate sweatshops because they hate the poor. They'd ratehr that someone who makes $5 a day sewing shoes for Nike be reduced to making $1 a day scavaging rusted cans, or whatever. If these "sweatshops" are so bad, then why are they preferred by the people who work in them to the alternatives? What, because there are no alternatives? And you would rather have them, thus be removed from the freedom of the one alternative they have? You'd rather they be jobless?
Being a radical myself I can't speak for liberals but I can point out the strawness of your man. You are making up objections which liberals do not have. It is the working conditions in these sweatshops not the fact that poor people are being employed that All Right Thinking People (TM) find objectionable
And we know how much the rich love the poor. After all, who else would work in their sweatshops?
Perhaps the reason liberals always try to shut you up is that you always talk crap?
Why not go to the source [middleware-company.com] and draw your own conclusion. I looked at the report and it seemed more than fair. This was a straight up "best practices vs. best practices" competition, using Sun's recommended coding standards.
Companies like Microsoft are sustaining it's dominate position in the markeplace by using a state-constructed and granted monopoly, which gives Microsoft the monopoly over it's protocols
Microsoft, it seems to me, is an excellent example of a monopoly which is not due entirely to government interference in the market. Copyright protection is not a big factor in MS' hegemony. Even if copright was abolished tomorrow all MS would have to do is keep their source code secret and change their protocols whenever someone else reverse-engineered them.
In addition to the three causes of monopoly given by Smith there are also barriers to entry and vendor lockin neither of which need any help from government to work. Of course MS employs both ruthlessly.
Barriers to entry include:
the huge investment any would-be competitor would have to make to duplicate MS' major products
the 40 gigabucks MS has in the bank to enable them to undercut any commercial competitor's prices
the exclusive contracts and financial leverage MS has over their resellers
Interesting post though. I really should read Wealth of Nations one day.
I would like to read "Programming For.Net and J2EE in Python". A step by step guide to writing enterprise software that runs on both frameworks, and therefore multiple platforms, unchanged. Or failing that, the equivalent book for java.
... he's been releasing unlistenable CDs for years.
Re:Why are we always on the defensive?
on
CPRM Smokescreen
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· Score: 1
"One action might be assassination of key figures, such as Valenti, Rosen etc."
...
"Posting anonymous for very obvious reasons."
You are Jack Valenti and I claim my five pounds.
Re:Abandoned sanitoriums
on
Infiltration
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· Score: 1
But having lived inside Founder's (the Holloway building at Egham) for a year I can tell you it's pretty damn fun for exploring, especially after some hallucinogens...
Man, that takes me back. Mushroom picking on Prune Hill. The horsey girl was so shocked when I explained what all the hippies were doing in her field:-)
Crap. Information cannot be owned in the same sense as material objects. If you want to treat your personal info as property I suggest you trademark it. Make all the other John Saul Montoyas pay you a royalty to use your name, the thieving bastards.
e-gold looks interesting. However, what is needed is a standard for micropayments, otherwise buyers and sellers will both have to use the same e-currency provider in order to trade.
Fortunately the World Wide Web Consortium has one cooking.
So where the dangers surrounding Napster, regarding viruses and child molesters, were moderately nebulous, they're going to be very severe with Gnutella.
He forgot to mention the communists, terrorists, hackers and cannibals.
This guy is going to make a packet before the music biz finally expires. I just hope he doesn't manage to screw music lovers in the process.
France banned hormone-injected American beef that was not labelled.
In fact the EU has banned the use of Bovine Somatatropin (BST) in beef for human consumption on human health and animal welfare grounds. The import of BST raised beef (or milk) is also illegal, regardless of the country of origin or labelling.
The reason the French won't abandon their "medieval" farming practices is that unlike the average American (or Brit) they care far more about the quality of their food than its price. Hence the targetting of McDonalds.
Re:Some copyright is good (heresy, heresy!)
on
At The Crossroads
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· Score: 1
The claim that one cannot own an idea is nonsense in many cases.
It is nonsense to think one can own an idea, at least once you let it out of your brain and into someone else's. All this talk about Intellectual Property is NewSpeak; call it property and people can only think of it as property. Copyright and patents are not "natural" rights nor do they confer ownership in the material sense. They are privileges granted by the state to creators in order to foster creativity. Creators are allowed exclusive benefit for a time so that everyone will benefit in the long run.
This is good. Ideas are not property. Breach of copyright is not theft.
As Jefferson himself said: "Home taping is not killing music."
"Go ahead and call me names if you like, but at its most fundamental level, life looks designed."
Hmm. In many peoples' minds this idea was discredited decades ago.
"Like an accumulation of genetic errors, or noise in analog duplication, each successive Bert Bert was less of an image of Quater."
Clearly Bert Bert forgot to evolve by natural selection.
Your premise that we cannot create something better then ourselves is disproved by the whole history of technology. A stone axe cuts better than my hand does. A bicycle travels faster than I can run. A computer may one day be more intelligent and more conscious than (even:) I am.
Slashdot Mirror
So Microsoft (and Sun) gave SCO a $13 million fighting fund with an offer of more to come. In return SCO gave Microsoft a license and shares which if they sold them today would yield a profit of nearly $3 million. If SCO can talk their shares up to $60 Microsoft will break even.
Orwell originally called it 1948, his publisher made him change it.
C'mon, you must have some idea or you wouldn't keep posting this.
Five years ago I doubt Slashdot was on Microsoft's radar. They probably just thought OSDN was a new software operation that might invent something they could buy up later. Or if it looked like turning into a threat just withdraw the funding and, hey-presto, another dead competitor.
Was Slashdot even a part of OSDN five years ago?
They don't forget, they just don't believe it. However, I think you may be correct. The current administration represents the greatest genuine threat America has ever had to face.
The ends justify the means. Those people are standing in the way of my anti-death program, I'd better kill them.
Go Charlie!
Apart from writing great science fiction Charlie writes the Linux column in the UK's Computer Shopper magazine.
Strange then, isn't it, how the rich and the poor both tend to support the system that works to the other's benefit. How selfless people are!
This is a different point with little bearing on your original strawman. Are you saying that in America, when they close a factory, they give all the workers higher paying jobs than they had before? That's not how they do things here in Europe.
Being a radical myself I can't speak for liberals but I can point out the strawness of your man. You are making up objections which liberals do not have. It is the working conditions in these sweatshops not the fact that poor people are being employed that All Right Thinking People (TM) find objectionable
And we know how much the rich love the poor. After all, who else would work in their sweatshops?
Perhaps the reason liberals always try to shut you up is that you always talk crap?
Fuck entertainment, I want art.
Obviously you did not read the rebuttal.
Some American evangelicals think that Deitrich Bonhoeffer "was unsound not only doctrinally, but also in practice."
Microsoft, it seems to me, is an excellent example of a monopoly which is not due entirely to government interference in the market. Copyright protection is not a big factor in MS' hegemony. Even if copright was abolished tomorrow all MS would have to do is keep their source code secret and change their protocols whenever someone else reverse-engineered them.
In addition to the three causes of monopoly given by Smith there are also barriers to entry and vendor lockin neither of which need any help from government to work. Of course MS employs both ruthlessly.
Barriers to entry include:
Interesting post though. I really should read Wealth of Nations one day.
I would like to read "Programming For .Net and J2EE in Python". A step by step guide to writing enterprise software that runs on both frameworks, and therefore multiple platforms, unchanged. Or failing that, the equivalent book for java.
... he's been releasing unlistenable CDs for years.
"One action might be assassination of key figures, such as Valenti, Rosen etc."
...
"Posting anonymous for very obvious reasons."
You are Jack Valenti and I claim my five pounds.
Man, that takes me back. Mushroom picking on Prune Hill. The horsey girl was so shocked when I explained what all the hippies were doing in her field :-)
Crap. Information cannot be owned in the same sense as material objects. If you want to treat your personal info as property I suggest you trademark it. Make all the other John Saul Montoyas pay you a royalty to use your name, the thieving bastards.
e-gold looks interesting. However, what is needed is a standard for micropayments, otherwise buyers and sellers will both have to use the same e-currency provider in order to trade.
Fortunately the World Wide Web Consortium has one cooking.
"The Americans have two political parties; one is like our Conservative Party and the other is like our Conservative Party."
-Old English proverb
Something that hangs off your belt. Or better, it is your belt. Try losing that!
2.Palm OS.
EPOC
3.Encrypted Wallet Application.
I prefer real cash myself.
4.WAP browser. (duh)
WAP is crap. Standard, open protocol web browser is much preferred.
5.Wireless antenna
One of those nice fractal jobs.
6.built-in cell phone
Integrated wireless comms with phone, data and pager functionality.
7.audio jack
I/O through HUD, phones, mic integrated into (mirror) shades. Typing by Dilbert-style finger waving. Connections by bluetooth.
8.dedicated storage expansion slot
Using a non-proprietory storage device.
9.IR port
For controlling your VCR and X10.
10.Standard integrated pager
See 6.
So where the dangers surrounding Napster, regarding viruses and child molesters, were moderately nebulous, they're going to be very severe with Gnutella.
He forgot to mention the communists, terrorists, hackers and cannibals.
This guy is going to make a packet before the music biz finally expires. I just hope he doesn't manage to screw music lovers in the process.
Won't that just be contributing to the problem?
In fact the EU has banned the use of Bovine Somatatropin (BST) in beef for human consumption on human health and animal welfare grounds. The import of BST raised beef (or milk) is also illegal, regardless of the country of origin or labelling.
The reason the French won't abandon their "medieval" farming practices is that unlike the average American (or Brit) they care far more about the quality of their food than its price. Hence the targetting of McDonalds.
It is nonsense to think one can own an idea, at least once you let it out of your brain and into someone else's. All this talk about Intellectual Property is NewSpeak; call it property and people can only think of it as property. Copyright and patents are not "natural" rights nor do they confer ownership in the material sense. They are privileges granted by the state to creators in order to foster creativity. Creators are allowed exclusive benefit for a time so that everyone will benefit in the long run.
This is good. Ideas are not property. Breach of copyright is not theft.
As Jefferson himself said: "Home taping is not killing music."
Hmm. In many peoples' minds this idea was discredited decades ago.
"Like an accumulation of genetic errors, or noise in analog duplication, each successive Bert Bert was less of an image of Quater."
Clearly Bert Bert forgot to evolve by natural selection.
Your premise that we cannot create something better then ourselves is disproved by the whole history of technology. A stone axe cuts better than my hand does. A bicycle travels faster than I can run. A computer may one day be more intelligent and more conscious than (even:) I am.