Shareholder lawsuits are so ridiculous as to defy description. The shareholders *own* the company, and are therefore suing themselves. Which guarantees that only the lawyers make any money off the deal (besides a few "lead" plaintiffs). No one in management is going to pay a dime of his own money in any kind of award or settlement.
The right way to handle this is to start telling the board of directors you want the offer accepted. The board will do what the majority of the shareholders want. Or they won't be the board for long. Anyway, you can always call up Microsoft and inform them you're willing to sell at their price. Yahoo's board and management really cannot stop a sale. All Microsoft has to do is place a limit order for 1,390,000,000 (actually only half that plus one) shares at $31.
But, it's another money-maker for lawyers; and in the USA, nothing interferes with money-makers for lawyers.
Whatever. If so many people are willing to pay higher and higher tolls for a crammed road, then they'll use the money to build more roads. And/or eventually, people *will* avoid high-cost/high-crowding roads.
Except that the application in question (like the SAP shit that runs HR at my company) was designed specifically for IE6 (apparently). Read my lips: IT DOES NOT WORK with IE7 or any other browser. It's all very nice they want to be more compliant, but they induced a great deal of non-standards-compliant applications with their previous crappy browser versions.
I don't think my fellow employees are going to be too happy when they can't see their pay-stubs or update their personal information at home anymore.
WTF is MS thinking? They're going to get 1000 lawsuits, and are going to be right back in court on anti-trust again. And guess what, we don't need a democrat prez, we just need a democrat campaign. Bush & the Repubs will cave on this like a house of cards in a hurricane.
btw, in case I've given you the wrong impression, I think this is great!
You don't have to be rude about it. But, you're right... the poor have to do without a lot of things, or else they wouldn't be poor. And I don't know why people are starting to think that there is some universal right to medical care. There isn't. Doctors and nurses and hospitals and drugs cost money. So poor people are dependent on charity, or they go without. That's just the way the math works.
So why does the government have to be involved in the charity business? Because its so good at running things efficiently? Because the majority thinks that some people wouldn't pay "enough" to charity without being forced to?
I give about 2% of my income to charity. The governments take around 35%. I might be willing to cough up more if I had more of it to cough up.
So quit whining about "society". Society could do a lot more for everyone if the government wasn't sucking as much out of the economy as it can get away with.
Of all the stupid and evil things about the American legal system, I do believe the absolute stupidest (if not the most evil) is allowing the owners of a company to sue themselves. A shareholder lawsuit is nothing else, and is a complete waste of time and money for everyone involved.
As seems to be usual, you're confusing RAM with disk drives. RAM is restricted to powers of two by its nature; disk drives are not. Using 1GB to mean 1073741824 bytes of RAM is a convenience, not a definition.
Show me one example of a disk drive capacity *ever* being advertised in binary-power prefixes. I think you're just wishing they once did it.
The whole confusion comes from using the prefixes to express powers of two that RAM capacity naturally was sized in. Disk drives have never been restricted to powers-of-two capacities.
Your surprise is surprising. The courts remain broken, because this lawsuit was stupider than SCO vs. IBM. Seagate, along with all other disk drive manufacturers, have always used the standard decimal power notation for disk drive capacity. Because that's what the Greek prefixes mean, and has been since they were invented many centuries ago.
Then along came RAM, which can only be reasonably be made in quantities of powers of two, and the inaccurate usage of the greek prefixes began. Windows, in one of the 8k ways it is a piece of shit, reports disk drive capacities inaccurately, by dividing the capacity by powers of two.
And because so many people are greedy morons, this idiotic lawsuit progressed to the point where Seagate decided it was sensible to just accept the fact that a large portion of their customers are greedy morons, and cave.
If I was a disk manufacturer, from now on I would state drive capacity as e.g. 400,000,000,000 bytes. Whine about that, bitches.
There are far too many restrictions placed on corporate networks and computers that are touted as "security", but are actually nothing but rules to make lazy sysadmins' jobs easier. I used to work as a mainframe systems programmer and the same mindset infected almost all my colleagues. For their pains, they came close to destroying the platform.
The current situation is as if auto mechanics were in charge of roads, licensing, and police. Where you'd have to have permission (and a "good reason") to go anywhere off your assigned route to and from your job. Where the car you got, how much gas you got, how fast you could drive, etc. were all controlled by a gang of nerds whose main skills consisted of knowing how to change the oil and filters, but were put in charge of all automotive concerns by virtue of few people knowing much about how they operate.
But eventually, people will realize that with more or less complete freedom at home, they really don't have all that many problems. Eventually, repressive administrators will be put in their place. So enjoy your unbridled freedom while you can. Sooner or later, you're going to have to work, rather than dictating that no one is allowed to cause you any problems.
Sorry for the sloppy grammar and syntax. Sorry for ignoring your side of the argument. Busy.
This is nothing but political grandstanding. Congress does nothing but pass out pork and blow smoke up the voters' assess.
If one of the Telcos are sued, the government will invoke the "national security prevents us from allowing this trial" rule. Why would they worry about any other bullshit laws passed by Congress?
A. The Bush administration ignores any law it sees fit to because of "National Security". B. The Supreme Court kiboshes any trial because it might compromise "National Security". C. Welcome to Nazi America.
I've always wished eBay would just ban shipping charges altogether. Buyer bids, wins, pays his bid and nothing more. It would make comparison shopping a lot easier. This would likely hurt sellers for a time, but I think it would even out fairly soon.
The same goes for places like Amazon, although they *do* offer free shipping on almost everything.
And while I'm up here on the soapbox, how about requiring merchants to include sales tax in their prices? They do that in Europe, and it's extremely refreshing to buy a €24.95 radio and know that €25 will cover it.
True, but it's a rather bad rule. It adds no information, and generally is the reason the slower part of the population feels compelled to insert the infernal things into random plurals. See http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/apostrophes1.html/ for a more educated opinion.
In my neck of the woods, the current rule is that an apostrophe is required for words that end with 'day'. Every month, the secretary sends out "Birthday's and Anniversaries" (sic & sic) (I'll admit that English doesn't inspire much faith in consistency.). Managers routinely send emails referring to weekly reports due on "Tuesday's", "Monday's", etc.
Fairly often, actually. You do know that CmdrTaco(1) wrote the blurb, right? That's one digit, and a thin one at that. Seems like a bad place to start this pissing contest.
Then you are a fucking idiot. Just because you and a whole lot of other brainless twits wet their pants at the sight of exposed electronics or god forbid, play-doh, doesn't mean the law and the government should cater to your ridiculous craven fears.
Why don't you buy some land, and build a giant fortress where all you ninnies can enjoy life wearing nothing but paper gowns, everyone can submit to rectal probing twice a day, and nothing is allowed that isn't prescribed by the authorities.
I have to wonder what is wrong with Boston. They seem to have taken freaking out over the most silly things to unbelievable extremes.
I really hate myself for using profanity in public, but I've just had way too much of this "we have to err on the side of caution" bullshit. Caution is itself overrated, but this isn't caution, it's pure imbecility.
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I am far more fed up with the whining about cell phones here on /. than I'll ever be with actual people babbling on the phone.
People like to talk. Get over it.
Shareholder lawsuits are so ridiculous as to defy description. The shareholders *own* the company, and are therefore suing themselves. Which guarantees that only the lawyers make any money off the deal (besides a few "lead" plaintiffs). No one in management is going to pay a dime of his own money in any kind of award or settlement.
The right way to handle this is to start telling the board of directors you want the offer accepted. The board will do what the majority of the shareholders want. Or they won't be the board for long. Anyway, you can always call up Microsoft and inform them you're willing to sell at their price. Yahoo's board and management really cannot stop a sale. All Microsoft has to do is place a limit order for 1,390,000,000 (actually only half that plus one) shares at $31.
But, it's another money-maker for lawyers; and in the USA, nothing interferes with money-makers for lawyers.
And it doesn't weigh 3.5 pounds, either.
Whatever. If so many people are willing to pay higher and higher tolls for a crammed road, then they'll use the money to build more roads. And/or eventually, people *will* avoid high-cost/high-crowding roads.
It's all good.
Eventually.
Except that the application in question (like the SAP shit that runs HR at my company) was designed specifically for IE6 (apparently). Read my lips: IT DOES NOT WORK with IE7 or any other browser. It's all very nice they want to be more compliant, but they induced a great deal of non-standards-compliant applications with their previous crappy browser versions.
I don't think my fellow employees are going to be too happy when they can't see their pay-stubs or update their personal information at home anymore.
WTF is MS thinking? They're going to get 1000 lawsuits, and are going to be right back in court on anti-trust again. And guess what, we don't need a democrat prez, we just need a democrat campaign. Bush & the Repubs will cave on this like a house of cards in a hurricane.
btw, in case I've given you the wrong impression, I think this is great!
You don't have to be rude about it. But, you're right... the poor have to do without a lot of things, or else they wouldn't be poor. And I don't know why people are starting to think that there is some universal right to medical care. There isn't. Doctors and nurses and hospitals and drugs cost money. So poor people are dependent on charity, or they go without. That's just the way the math works.
So why does the government have to be involved in the charity business? Because its so good at running things efficiently? Because the majority thinks that some people wouldn't pay "enough" to charity without being forced to?
I give about 2% of my income to charity. The governments take around 35%. I might be willing to cough up more if I had more of it to cough up.
So quit whining about "society". Society could do a lot more for everyone if the government wasn't sucking as much out of the economy as it can get away with.
Of all the stupid and evil things about the American legal system, I do believe the absolute stupidest (if not the most evil) is allowing the owners of a company to sue themselves. A shareholder lawsuit is nothing else, and is a complete waste of time and money for everyone involved.
Except, of course, the lawyers.
It's their fault, idiots.
Whoever moderated this post as troll was abusive.
As seems to be usual, you're confusing RAM with disk drives. RAM is restricted to powers of two by its nature; disk drives are not. Using 1GB to mean 1073741824 bytes of RAM is a convenience, not a definition.
Show me one example of a disk drive capacity *ever* being advertised in binary-power prefixes. I think you're just wishing they once did it.
The whole confusion comes from using the prefixes to express powers of two that RAM capacity naturally was sized in. Disk drives have never been restricted to powers-of-two capacities.
Your surprise is surprising. The courts remain broken, because this lawsuit was stupider than SCO vs. IBM. Seagate, along with all other disk drive manufacturers, have always used the standard decimal power notation for disk drive capacity. Because that's what the Greek prefixes mean, and has been since they were invented many centuries ago.
Then along came RAM, which can only be reasonably be made in quantities of powers of two, and the inaccurate usage of the greek prefixes began. Windows, in one of the 8k ways it is a piece of shit, reports disk drive capacities inaccurately, by dividing the capacity by powers of two.
And because so many people are greedy morons, this idiotic lawsuit progressed to the point where Seagate decided it was sensible to just accept the fact that a large portion of their customers are greedy morons, and cave.
If I was a disk manufacturer, from now on I would state drive capacity as e.g. 400,000,000,000 bytes. Whine about that, bitches.
Math would *never* make the mistake of saying ".50 cents".
There are far too many restrictions placed on corporate networks and computers that are touted as "security", but are actually nothing but rules to make lazy sysadmins' jobs easier. I used to work as a mainframe systems programmer and the same mindset infected almost all my colleagues. For their pains, they came close to destroying the platform.
The current situation is as if auto mechanics were in charge of roads, licensing, and police. Where you'd have to have permission (and a "good reason") to go anywhere off your assigned route to and from your job. Where the car you got, how much gas you got, how fast you could drive, etc. were all controlled by a gang of nerds whose main skills consisted of knowing how to change the oil and filters, but were put in charge of all automotive concerns by virtue of few people knowing much about how they operate.
But eventually, people will realize that with more or less complete freedom at home, they really don't have all that many problems. Eventually, repressive administrators will be put in their place. So enjoy your unbridled freedom while you can. Sooner or later, you're going to have to work, rather than dictating that no one is allowed to cause you any problems.
Sorry for the sloppy grammar and syntax. Sorry for ignoring your side of the argument. Busy.
This is nothing but political grandstanding. Congress does nothing but pass out pork and blow smoke up the voters' assess.
If one of the Telcos are sued, the government will invoke the "national security prevents us from allowing this trial" rule. Why would they worry about any other bullshit laws passed by Congress?
A. The Bush administration ignores any law it sees fit to because of "National Security".
B. The Supreme Court kiboshes any trial because it might compromise "National Security".
C. Welcome to Nazi America.
Getting married because you want to get laid is like buying a sewage plant because you want to take a dump.
I've always wished eBay would just ban shipping charges altogether. Buyer bids, wins, pays his bid and nothing more. It would make comparison shopping a lot easier. This would likely hurt sellers for a time, but I think it would even out fairly soon.
The same goes for places like Amazon, although they *do* offer free shipping on almost everything.
And while I'm up here on the soapbox, how about requiring merchants to include sales tax in their prices? They do that in Europe, and it's extremely refreshing to buy a €24.95 radio and know that €25 will cover it.
True, but it's a rather bad rule. It adds no information, and generally is the reason the slower part of the population feels compelled to insert the infernal things into random plurals. See http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/apostrophes1.html/ for a more educated opinion.
In my neck of the woods, the current rule is that an apostrophe is required for words that end with 'day'. Every month, the secretary sends out "Birthday's and Anniversaries" (sic & sic) (I'll admit that English doesn't inspire much faith in consistency.). Managers routinely send emails referring to weekly reports due on "Tuesday's", "Monday's", etc.
Not four digits, even with cents.
Fairly often, actually. You do know that CmdrTaco(1) wrote the blurb, right? That's one digit, and a thin one at that. Seems like a bad place to start this pissing contest.
More or less. But whay do you ask? The article clearly states the deadline was moved from 1/31/08* to 6/30/08. *Exactly* five months.
*Apologies to non USers: 31/1/2008 to 30/6/2008 or some such does indeed make more sense. But it confuses us.**
**Not because we're stupid (leaving open the question of whether we are), but because we're very used to M/D/Y order.
Then you are a fucking idiot. Just because you and a whole lot of other brainless twits wet their pants at the sight of exposed electronics or god forbid, play-doh, doesn't mean the law and the government should cater to your ridiculous craven fears.
Why don't you buy some land, and build a giant fortress where all you ninnies can enjoy life wearing nothing but paper gowns, everyone can submit to rectal probing twice a day, and nothing is allowed that isn't prescribed by the authorities.
I have to wonder what is wrong with Boston. They seem to have taken freaking out over the most silly things to unbelievable extremes.
I really hate myself for using profanity in public, but I've just had way too much of this "we have to err on the side of caution" bullshit. Caution is itself overrated, but this isn't caution, it's pure imbecility.
Socialism isn't free.
You just relax. Your profit is 100%. You can't "buy" worthless stock.