It's really hard to review what Microsoft is questioning, because the references to comments posted to Slashdot are not themselves hyperlinks. Perhaps the story could be edited so that the references to comments could be clicked through? --
As I said in my story submission on this subject (that was rejected), U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner Robert Pitofsky said, ""The FTC estimates that U.S. consumers may have paid as much as $480 million more than they should have for CDs and other music because of these policies over the last three years." If you turn over your envelope and do the arithmetic that's nearly $2 stolen by the recording industry for each man, woman, and child alive in the United States today. And this is just over the last three years.
It's so obvious why the recording industry settled this case. Taking it to court would have raised the profile of the case, and eventually some journalist who thinks for himself would have asked the inevitable question: Is the mp3 issue the biggest problem facing the entertainment industry, or is the real story that the entertainment industry takes every opportunity to act in unison, to the detriment of the consumer.
I argue that we ought to be looking at a lot more than CD prices here. What about the price of movie tickets? What about the cost and features of your local cable television monopoly^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H service? What about the retail cost of (ahem) Microsoft Windows and business applications for the PC when they are not bundled into a PC at purchase?
There are dozens of examples of consumer goods and services where no effective competition exists, at least in the industrialized countries. I am not as much of a populist as it might seem from what I've said. But, the least these multi-national companies could do is to let the retailers compete on the price. --
I think it's great that a story about the details of the judges ruling made the cut as a Slashdot story. I have gotten myself into discussions with lawyers about this issue, and they keep pointing me back to the "Fair Use" Doctrine.
When I started to read about it, I realized how many factors have to be weighed in order to make a legal decision like this one. As much as many of us would like to believe it, the issue cannot be boiled down to "mp3 format good, media companies bad.".
What would probably be of most interest to market research groups like Nielsen would be information on what recorded programs a TiVo or Replay user saved to their VCRs.
It took a little experimentation to get "Save to VCR" working on my home theater system, but so far I have recorded that Code Rush documentary about Mozilla and the movie Apocalypse Now that was shown on IFC. This is really valuable because now I have the opportunity to watch these things with friends who do not get to see what is on DirecTV because they don't come to my house as often as I get to their place. --
As far as I can tell after having the unit for a couple of weeks, TiVo does not distinguish between users at all. Whoever picks up the remote can say whether they like or dislike a program (by clicking the thumbs up or thumbs down buttons) and that is the rating for that program for your household. --
I bought a TiVo a couple of weeks ago so that I could watch a TV program or two a week that I would otherwise miss, since I have been getting home from work at 10:30pm lately. Before I installed it, I did not realize that each day TiVo would attempt to fill the hard drive with programs it chooses via collaborative filtering.
My brother noted that so far, the thing only records things like ER, political shows, business and entrepreneurship programs, and European bicycle racing. I guess I'll have to click the "thumbs up" button a few more times for some diversity in the mix of recorded programming.
The Slashdot effect that always surprises me is the tendency by some in this community to think that all of the issues that matter to us have become part of the mainstream political debate. I don't know what the demographics of voters are in other countries, but in the United States, technical communities like ours are not on the political RADAR screen at all.
It's only within the last four years that the traditional technology community (hardware manufacturers, networking companies, mega-ISPs, and proprietary software companies) have achieved political influence. The best indication of this is the Microsoft Anti-Trust Case. This was only brought to a head by years and millions of dollars spent on lobbying in Washington.
Real political influence (in the United States) comes from corporations spending money to promote their issues. This is how the DMCA and UCITA became law. If you want to have that kind of influence, here's what to do:
Start a political action committee.
Get the Linux-oriented companies that have gone public to join and contribute millions to the effort.
Start lobbying for repeal of the laws you don't like and/or lawsuits which would result in these laws being declared unconstitutional.
If you don't like this, because it concentrates power in the hands of capitalists, that's tough. The only alternative is to build a grassroots organization like the AARP, the NRA, or the National Federation of Independent Businesses. I bet when you read about what these organizations do, a lot of you will be equally opposed to turning ourselves into an organization like them.
I'm only saying this because a lot of people think we are close to achieving political influence through the EFF, or through some sort of effort that brings a bunch of individuals together around a single issue. In my opinion, we aren't close to having real political influence, at least in the United States. --
Dave Aiello
Geographic Screening = Wrong Thing, Wrong Way
on
Geographic Screening
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· Score: 2
Geographic Screening could be the worst idea to come along in software development since copy protected floppy disks. Not only will it not work, but continued efforts to perfect it will give the Old Guard Media hope that they can bring back the good old days.
I'm not normally this quick to shout "paradigm shift", but this is such a no brainer. Let's fool the Emperor by gagging his loyal subjects and banning mirrors thoughout the world!
I'll give Katz credit for putting the DMCA in terms that would make everyone but Fidel Castro and Scientologists want to oppose it. --
Let's face facts for a minute. Internet Telephony isn't capable of swamping the infrastructure of major research universities. But, it sure puts a crimp in the campus IT budget if a major source of their funding is inflated long distance charges they put on students and faculty.
This is a serious dilemma from a operations standpoint, but it doesn't make sense to raise false issues. AFAIK, the vast majority of the technically savvy students have a far better grasp of the true network performance than campus bureaucrats anyway. The staff that is as good as the students is often two or three rungs below the people who get quoted.
I'm just an alumnus of an engineering school now, and not on campus on a daily basis. So, let me know if I'm off base. --
Nokia has Wireless LAN Products as well. I expect that they will be easier to get in Europe than the Lucent stuff.
The other day, I was going to post an "Ask Slashdot" to see if anyone had tried to use Nokia Wireless LAN products, if anyone knew if they were planning to explicitly support Linux, and how best to pressure them to do so. Sounds like it will be easier given the fact that we can point to Lucent support for Linux.
If anyone has any answers to the questions I asked above, let me know. --
BTW, I think it's great that Real is planning to put more effort behind Linux support. I'd love to see Apple step up with QuickTime support for Linux as well. --
A lot of people writing on this subject say that it's obvious that Slashdot is allowing VA to influence the editorial direction of Slashdot already. But, I was with these guys yesterday, and I am sure that they did not have time to develop a scheme to fool the community with propaganda.
I was at the Javits Center in NYC for about three hours. I talked to Rob Malda for quite a while about the Slash engine. I saw Hemos, Roblimo, and a number of other people around the booth. They were getting ready for their party, where they gave out some awards. They looked like they hadn't slept well in a few days.
The conclusion that I came to, and it seems obvious from my perspective, is that articles posted about the Andover-VA merger are being posted because the Slashdot authors think that they will help the community understand what's happening, and what people are thinking at the moment. Whether that is actually true or not is entirely dependent upon your perspective.
I've worked trade shows in the past. The world outside the convention center could have ended yesterday, and people working the show floor probably didn't notice. You have a tendency to think you are aware of what's happening in the world, but you almost certainly miss a lot.
I think the Slashdot authors will produce more understandable, insightful stuff about the merger once they get a chance to go back and sleep in their own beds for a few days. But, considering the environment they are in at the moment, they are doing a pretty good job. --
Although at first glance, this appears to be a direct result of collective bargaining between Ford and the United Auto Workers union in the United States, the implications are more profound than that. This deal represents both a workforce communications and a fringe benefits revolution.
Ford CEO Jac Nasser currently communicates with Ford's white-collar employees via a weekly e-mail newsletter. Putting computers in the homes of all Ford employees would allow him to access the automaker's entire work force via the Internet, even those employees who do not have desks because they work on assembly lines.
Looked at from a historical perspective, this deal could represent a major social revolution. It appears that Ford will be the first major company to offer all of its employees home computers at no cost. It was also the company that pioneered the five dollar day. This dramatically boosted workers take home pay in the early 1900s and allowed assembly line workers to afford the Model Ts that they produced.
This does not even consider the goodwill that the company and the union will engender in the workforce by providing a free computer for use in every employee's home. Think of the educational possibilities for the children of each Ford employee.
What would happen if a benefit like this were available to the employees of other large companies? --
I have to admit that I didn't understand what VA Linux meant when they said that they wanted to expand into Linux-oriented services. I originally thought that they would roll out services that supported their hardware business. Now, I see that they mean to provide services to support OpenSource development. This means that VA has undergone a pretty amazing transformation. Does this mean that the hardware end of the company is less strategically important than it was yesterday?
I think that their track record of support for major Open Source projects ensures that the Slash Engine will continue to be a strong project. I'm not sure what this will mean for the project that is called Area 51. It will be interesting to see how SourceForge and Freshmeat interact.
In any case, I think a combined VA-Andover has a tremendous supply of proven talent. They have the people in place to create a lot of new and interesting software and Web Sites. I think it will be interesting to see whether the majority of these people will stick around, or if they will leave, as many did when RedHat bought Cygnus.
If the Post Office really wants to survive in the 21st Century, they need to do the following:
1) Get Congress to modify the laws so that the other express carriers can deliver to P.O. Boxes.
2) Develop a next generation Post Office that would make practical the delivery of every thing one can buy via e-commerce, particularly perishable goods. These Post Offices will need to be open and staffed 24 x 7. You would get your packages stored there for a modest monthly fee based on your historical package volume and/or type.
3) Begin closing the legacy Post Offices around the country and opening these Post Offices in strip shopping malls with lots of parking.
I believe this will work as a strategy because a lot more people who do not have computers today can be convinced to get computers or internet appliances if they think e-commerce is useful. The problem is that large scale business-to-consumer e-commerce cannot be made practical until delivery of perishable and large items can be made secure and relatively inexpensive for the shipper.
If people really bought into this, the Post Office could end up being a strip shopping center anchor tenant in many towns. By this I mean, the size of a supermarket. I'm not sure how this would work in cities, although I'm pretty sure that this would not be an issue in places like Manhattan, due to the fact that door-to-door delivery with extended hours.
I agree that WAP and SMS (Short Message Service) will not actually go away. I mean, if magazine articles can be believed, SMS is more popular in Skandinavia than all of AOLs Instant Messaging protocols combined. AFAIK, that's enough to sustain developer support.
But, the point I am trying to make is that a lot of the rationale for WAP goes away as wireless bandwidth increases.
Two small points in rebuttal to the previous post: Twenty percent of the US population is still over 50 million units. And, a large part of that 20 percent of the US population has shown a willingness to treat mobile technology as disposable over several technology cycles.
I am normally with the intellectual property traditionalists in that I believe that patents and copyrights serve a valid purpose in our society, in most cases. Therefore, I typically say that a company holding a valid patent has a right to set the terms at which it licenses its technology.
The difference in this case is that levying a fee on the WAP-server side is impractical. A small fee per physical WAP-enabled device is easily embedded in the cost of the unit, takes place once, and is easy to account for. But any fee on the server side is inherently unfair because it is bound to be collected inconsistantly, and generally serves as a depressant to the size of the content base for these devices.
Having said all of this, I feel that the entire argument will be moot soon. My guess is that WAP will be a transitional technology, because it is not based on the standards of the rest of the Web and it is a solution that presumes low bandwidth.
I think once the display size and wireless bandwidth problems are addressed, everyone will have ultraportable devices that will use the existing standards for display and interaction -- in other words, not WAP. I would also mention power consumption, but Transmeta may have addressed that yesterday.
Putting on my Sybase/MS SQL Server DBA hat for a moment, be very careful that you understand the differences between Transact-SQL and NmySQL's SQL language implementation. If you are using a lot of server side logic in MS SQL Server -- stored procedures, for example -- you ought to consider moving to Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux.
I realize that Sybase costs money when it is implemented in production, and I mean no disrespect to mySQL, which I consider an unbelievable value. I just want to suggest that the analysis of your existing application needs to be quite thorough before making this move.
I think the O'Reilly mySQL book does a fairly credible job pointing out some of the issues associated with going to mySQL from a traditional, enterprise-class RDBMS. So, check that out, if you don't know what all the issues are.
However, if there is no server side logic at all, or if the logic that does exist executes equally well in Access as it does in MS SQL Server, I think the path is clear to go to mySQL. My advice to anyone that wants to scale up from Access would be to consider mySQL and Sybase ASE on Linux first.
FWIW, I have not used PostgreSQL, so I have no opinion on that. The competing Enterprise-class RDBMSes, Oracle and Informix are quite good, but they are not similar enough from SQL dialect and tools perspective to satisfy someone with an investment in understanding MS SQL / Sybase.
It's rather difficult to get detailed information from the American media about the charges levied against you in connection with trading in Corel stock. There's no doubt that someone in your position cannot comment too much about these allegations. But, can you explain what government entity brought the charges, what the allegations are, and what the circumstances were that they feel constitute illegal activity? Also, what is the disposition of the case?
I don't agree with the quote attributed to Bruce Perens in the BusinessWeek article:
"It will only make the real Linux companies look bad and hurt our chances at convincing people that this is a real operating system."
A couple of weeks ago, when there was speculation about RedHat buying Corel, everyone here was saying how much credence some people in the investment community give to the discussions on Slashdot. If the majority of the comments regarding LinuxOne say that the company adds no value to the Linux community and will not help Linux expand its presence in any market, won't the "smart money" avoid the stock? (And, what could anyone do to protect the dumb money? Even the SEC can't stop every scam.)
If anything, I would argue that LinuxOne could benefit the community by clearly pointing out the value that companies like RedHat, VA Linux, and LinuxCare are bringing to the market.
What has your relationship been, if any, with the larger, more established Intel-based hardware vendors? Do you feel that there is any opportunity for a Linux-centric hardware vendor like VA to work with these companies?
It's really easy for someone to complain that I didn't release a new version of the source code every week. Its also easy to forget that in the last 6 months we've doubled in traffic and we've had to optimize our code and hardware to handle that. A new source release is secondary: Our
job is running Slashdot. We want to release new versions of Slash, but it is a definite second priority to keeping Slashdot moving.
I'm really glad Rob said this.
For those of you who don't know, Temple Hoff is running a mailing list called Slash-help: the Slash Code Support Group. This is for anyone who is trying to take the 0.3 release of the code and make it work on their own server.
The list has been a little slow for the past couple of months now. But, it's gotten more lively in the past week or so, because many of the people who have made postings critical of Rob and Jeff here today have been refining their arguments.
It's sort of funny that people are complaining about the delays associated with a 0.4 release because these same people would be complaining loudly if 0.4 were out now and the main Slashdot site was suffering repeated outages.
Another thing that seems to be getting lost is that releasing a new version of the code in an OpenSource project is a two edged sword. Sure, you can put out a partially functional application -- some would say that's a good description of 0.3. But, if they put 0.4 out in an incomplete state, and people responded with fixes for problems, many would complain about the speed at which changes were incorporated into the CVS tree.
I've invested a lot of time modifying 0.3 to work in a different environment. It's been one of the best learning experience I've had in years. I recommend it highly to anyone who is really interested in how a content management system works. A lot of the techniques they use in 0.3 are available elsewhere, in systems like Vignette and Interwoven. The only thing is that they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement.
When 0.4 is released, we will evaluate it and probably incorporate some of its features into what we are doing. Most people who have some real investment in the Slashdot architecture will have to do that also.
If you are sitting out there observing this, trying to figure out who's right, ask yourself this question: Do the people who are shouting the loudest for releasing the latest source have anything invested in understanding, operating, and enhancing the Slash environment? If not, have they seriously evaluated what is available, or do they come from the "Boycott {insert evil capitalist enterprise name here}!" School of Idealism?
You are entitled to any opinion about this process that you want to assert. But, I guarantee that 0.4 will have as many support issues as 0.3, if not more. It's going to be more complicated. Regardless of how many people are involved in the enhancement process, it will be some time before you can install and operate this in anything close to a turn-key fashion.
At the end of the day, I come from the school that believes in an author's right to determine the circumstances underwhich he releases his code. If Rob and Jeff want to go slowly, that is their right and we ought to respect that. And, the fact that there has been a long gap between the 0.3 and 0.4 releases does not suddenly make the Slash engine a Closed Source product.
Sorry if this seems off-topic, but, does anyone who follows space science issues think that space.com is a good / credible source of information?
Several months ago, Lou Dobbs, VP of CNN and the host of the show MoneyLine, left that organization and became Chairman and CEO of space.com. He got a lot of publicity on TV and radio at that time.
A lot of people thought that the Web Site in question was not a big enough business and did not have enough potential to fully occupy a man of his talents. OTOH, some said that space.com had the potential to expand into its own cable channel, and it could become similar to CourtTV, which I guess is a successful business.
I realize Dobbs is a media darling, and that's why I'm asking the question here. A lot of people in the community just ignore media hype when it's coming from traditional media sources.
I don't care if the site is popular with the average Internet user, is the information on it accurate and useful?
The article in Daily Radar is quite comical, actually. I am sure the analysts from Wall Street brokerage houses that browse Slashdot got a laugh out of reading this article because it makes so many, how should I put it, questionable conclusions.
Let me begin by pointing you to the Fundam entals page for Sony on CBS Marketwatch. Sony is currently valued by the market at around $110 billion -- this is the market capitalization. There are, according to this page, 411 million shares outstanding. Over the last 200 trading days, an average of 205,100 shares have been traded each day, or 4/100ths of 1 percent of the shares.
I compared this stock to General Electric, which is another extremely large, established company. In spite of the fact that General Electric is worth about 4 times as much as Sony (comparing market caps), 3 times as many shares in GE as a percentage of its total number of shares outstanding trade each day.
This means that GE is much more liquid (easy to trade) than Sony. That is potentially a good reason to split Sony stock, because the easier it is to buy or sell a stock, the less wildly the price tends to swing. Liquidity is considered a good thing by institutional investors and people who trade stocks for a living. By contrast, lack of liquidity is the reason that Internet companies move up and down fairly violently on a daily basis.
The reason that some stock market newcomers think stock splits are indicators that the company is moving boldly is that recently, many companies that have announced splits have seen their stock prices soar immediately afterward. This initially happened with Internet-related companies like Amazo n.com, but it has gotten really out of hand lately, with companies like Qualc omm.
Stock splits are really market neutral events. If a stock is at 100 the day before the split, and it splits 2-for-1, it's value at the open should be 50. I say "should be" because a stock often does not open at exactly the same price as it closes, so if there is a 2-for-1 split, the stock should open at around half the price of the close the previous day.
This brings us to another fallacy in the article. It says that a stock split is a "financial maneuver that is a risky move". The stock that traded for 100 per share yesterday was not issued by the company yesterday -- it was issued at some time in the past. The trade at 100 that took place yesterday was between two participants in the stock market who (probably) had no relationship to the company.
So, when the stock opens at 50 on the next day, after splitting two for one, not only did the people who traded the stock not lose anything (since they automatically have 2x the number of shares), but the company did not lose anything since they did not own the stock that was traded yesterday. Of course, any stock that the company is holding on its balance sheet (generally called treasury shares) did not increase or decrease in value, since the number of shares doubled while the price was cut in half.
I could go on with this analysis all night, but let me jump to the end of the Daily Radar article. The author makes the statement:
The company is building its entire product line around the PlayStation2. If the console fails, Sony's entire market plan will be lost.
All I can say about this is that he must mean that the company is building its entire video game console product line around PlayStation2. Sony does a lot more than produce game consoles. In addition to its video game console business, it owns 11 different recording labels, a TV and movie production business which produces such insignificant products as the TV series Dawson's Creek, and Sony Electronics which makes everything from chips to Jumbotrons.
That's why the company is worth over $110 billion, and that's just a few reasons why this article is so humorous to people who enjoy analyzing businesses and buying small pieces of them.
You are probably both correct. Sony does make the bulk of its revenue from consumer electronics (TVs, stereos, VCR, Walkman(s)), corporate, and industrial sales. They make a fair number of the components in PCs (perhaps only the high end models these days, due to the commoditization of CD-ROM, floppy, and DVD drives).
If your statement that Sony gets a $7 license fee per PlayStation cartridge is true, that's a huge royalty when measured against the retail price of each cartridge. It's even more astounding when measured against the wholesale price of the units, which is the only money that the cartridge developer ever sees.
One question I have about the assertion that Nintendo was a $5 billion company before Pokemon: $5 billion in what, sales or market capitalization? Perhaps they had $5 billion in annual sales. But, according to Marketwatch, Nint endo's market capitalization (another name for the total market value of the company) is only $2.9 billion.
I'd like to own a company that's worth that much, but it's tiny compared to Sony's market cap of over $110 billion.
Slashdot Mirror
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Dave Aiello
It's so obvious why the recording industry settled this case. Taking it to court would have raised the profile of the case, and eventually some journalist who thinks for himself would have asked the inevitable question: Is the mp3 issue the biggest problem facing the entertainment industry, or is the real story that the entertainment industry takes every opportunity to act in unison, to the detriment of the consumer.
I argue that we ought to be looking at a lot more than CD prices here. What about the price of movie tickets? What about the cost and features of your local cable television monopoly^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H service? What about the retail cost of (ahem) Microsoft Windows and business applications for the PC when they are not bundled into a PC at purchase?
There are dozens of examples of consumer goods and services where no effective competition exists, at least in the industrialized countries. I am not as much of a populist as it might seem from what I've said. But, the least these multi-national companies could do is to let the retailers compete on the price.
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Dave Aiello
When I started to read about it, I realized how many factors have to be weighed in order to make a legal decision like this one. As much as many of us would like to believe it, the issue cannot be boiled down to "mp3 format good, media companies bad.".
If you are interested, check out the Copyright and Fair Use Web Site at Stanford.
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Dave Aiello
It took a little experimentation to get "Save to VCR" working on my home theater system, but so far I have recorded that Code Rush documentary about Mozilla and the movie Apocalypse Now that was shown on IFC. This is really valuable because now I have the opportunity to watch these things with friends who do not get to see what is on DirecTV because they don't come to my house as often as I get to their place.
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Dave Aiello
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Dave Aiello
My brother noted that so far, the thing only records things like ER, political shows, business and entrepreneurship programs, and European bicycle racing. I guess I'll have to click the "thumbs up" button a few more times for some diversity in the mix of recorded programming.
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Dave Aiello
It's only within the last four years that the traditional technology community (hardware manufacturers, networking companies, mega-ISPs, and proprietary software companies) have achieved political influence. The best indication of this is the Microsoft Anti-Trust Case. This was only brought to a head by years and millions of dollars spent on lobbying in Washington.
Real political influence (in the United States) comes from corporations spending money to promote their issues. This is how the DMCA and UCITA became law. If you want to have that kind of influence, here's what to do:
- Start a political action committee.
- Get the Linux-oriented companies that have gone public to join and contribute millions to the effort.
- Start lobbying for repeal of the laws you don't like and/or lawsuits which would result in these laws being declared unconstitutional.
If you don't like this, because it concentrates power in the hands of capitalists, that's tough. The only alternative is to build a grassroots organization like the AARP, the NRA, or the National Federation of Independent Businesses. I bet when you read about what these organizations do, a lot of you will be equally opposed to turning ourselves into an organization like them.I'm only saying this because a lot of people think we are close to achieving political influence through the EFF, or through some sort of effort that brings a bunch of individuals together around a single issue. In my opinion, we aren't close to having real political influence, at least in the United States.
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Dave Aiello
I'm not normally this quick to shout "paradigm shift", but this is such a no brainer. Let's fool the Emperor by gagging his loyal subjects and banning mirrors thoughout the world!
I'll give Katz credit for putting the DMCA in terms that would make everyone but Fidel Castro and Scientologists want to oppose it.
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Dave Aiello
This is a serious dilemma from a operations standpoint, but it doesn't make sense to raise false issues. AFAIK, the vast majority of the technically savvy students have a far better grasp of the true network performance than campus bureaucrats anyway. The staff that is as good as the students is often two or three rungs below the people who get quoted.
I'm just an alumnus of an engineering school now, and not on campus on a daily basis. So, let me know if I'm off base.
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Dave Aiello
The other day, I was going to post an "Ask Slashdot" to see if anyone had tried to use Nokia Wireless LAN products, if anyone knew if they were planning to explicitly support Linux, and how best to pressure them to do so. Sounds like it will be easier given the fact that we can point to Lucent support for Linux.
If anyone has any answers to the questions I asked above, let me know.
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Dave Aiello
BTW, I think it's great that Real is planning to put more effort behind Linux support. I'd love to see Apple step up with QuickTime support for Linux as well.
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Dave Aiello
I was at the Javits Center in NYC for about three hours. I talked to Rob Malda for quite a while about the Slash engine. I saw Hemos, Roblimo, and a number of other people around the booth. They were getting ready for their party, where they gave out some awards. They looked like they hadn't slept well in a few days.
The conclusion that I came to, and it seems obvious from my perspective, is that articles posted about the Andover-VA merger are being posted because the Slashdot authors think that they will help the community understand what's happening, and what people are thinking at the moment. Whether that is actually true or not is entirely dependent upon your perspective.
I've worked trade shows in the past. The world outside the convention center could have ended yesterday, and people working the show floor probably didn't notice. You have a tendency to think you are aware of what's happening in the world, but you almost certainly miss a lot.
I think the Slashdot authors will produce more understandable, insightful stuff about the merger once they get a chance to go back and sleep in their own beds for a few days. But, considering the environment they are in at the moment, they are doing a pretty good job.
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Dave Aiello
Ford CEO Jac Nasser currently communicates with Ford's white-collar employees via a weekly e-mail newsletter. Putting computers in the homes of all Ford employees would allow him to access the automaker's entire work force via the Internet, even those employees who do not have desks because they work on assembly lines.
Looked at from a historical perspective, this deal could represent a major social revolution. It appears that Ford will be the first major company to offer all of its employees home computers at no cost. It was also the company that pioneered the five dollar day. This dramatically boosted workers take home pay in the early 1900s and allowed assembly line workers to afford the Model Ts that they produced.
This does not even consider the goodwill that the company and the union will engender in the workforce by providing a free computer for use in every employee's home. Think of the educational possibilities for the children of each Ford employee.
What would happen if a benefit like this were available to the employees of other large companies?
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Dave Aiello
I think that their track record of support for major Open Source projects ensures that the Slash Engine will continue to be a strong project. I'm not sure what this will mean for the project that is called Area 51. It will be interesting to see how SourceForge and Freshmeat interact.
In any case, I think a combined VA-Andover has a tremendous supply of proven talent. They have the people in place to create a lot of new and interesting software and Web Sites. I think it will be interesting to see whether the majority of these people will stick around, or if they will leave, as many did when RedHat bought Cygnus.
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Dave Aiello
1) Get Congress to modify the laws so that the other express carriers can deliver to P.O. Boxes.
2) Develop a next generation Post Office that would make practical the delivery of every thing one can buy via e-commerce, particularly perishable goods. These Post Offices will need to be open and staffed 24 x 7. You would get your packages stored there for a modest monthly fee based on your historical package volume and/or type.
3) Begin closing the legacy Post Offices around the country and opening these Post Offices in strip shopping malls with lots of parking.
I believe this will work as a strategy because a lot more people who do not have computers today can be convinced to get computers or internet appliances if they think e-commerce is useful. The problem is that large scale business-to-consumer e-commerce cannot be made practical until delivery of perishable and large items can be made secure and relatively inexpensive for the shipper.
If people really bought into this, the Post Office could end up being a strip shopping center anchor tenant in many towns. By this I mean, the size of a supermarket. I'm not sure how this would work in cities, although I'm pretty sure that this would not be an issue in places like Manhattan, due to the fact that door-to-door delivery with extended hours.
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Dave Aiello
But, the point I am trying to make is that a lot of the rationale for WAP goes away as wireless bandwidth increases.
Two small points in rebuttal to the previous post: Twenty percent of the US population is still over 50 million units. And, a large part of that 20 percent of the US population has shown a willingness to treat mobile technology as disposable over several technology cycles.
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Dave Aiello
The difference in this case is that levying a fee on the WAP-server side is impractical. A small fee per physical WAP-enabled device is easily embedded in the cost of the unit, takes place once, and is easy to account for. But any fee on the server side is inherently unfair because it is bound to be collected inconsistantly, and generally serves as a depressant to the size of the content base for these devices.
Having said all of this, I feel that the entire argument will be moot soon. My guess is that WAP will be a transitional technology, because it is not based on the standards of the rest of the Web and it is a solution that presumes low bandwidth.
I think once the display size and wireless bandwidth problems are addressed, everyone will have ultraportable devices that will use the existing standards for display and interaction -- in other words, not WAP. I would also mention power consumption, but Transmeta may have addressed that yesterday.
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Dave Aiello
I realize that Sybase costs money when it is implemented in production, and I mean no disrespect to mySQL, which I consider an unbelievable value. I just want to suggest that the analysis of your existing application needs to be quite thorough before making this move.
I think the O'Reilly mySQL book does a fairly credible job pointing out some of the issues associated with going to mySQL from a traditional, enterprise-class RDBMS. So, check that out, if you don't know what all the issues are.
However, if there is no server side logic at all, or if the logic that does exist executes equally well in Access as it does in MS SQL Server, I think the path is clear to go to mySQL. My advice to anyone that wants to scale up from Access would be to consider mySQL and Sybase ASE on Linux first.
FWIW, I have not used PostgreSQL, so I have no opinion on that. The competing Enterprise-class RDBMSes, Oracle and Informix are quite good, but they are not similar enough from SQL dialect and tools perspective to satisfy someone with an investment in understanding MS SQL / Sybase.
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Dave Aiello
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Dave Aiello
A couple of weeks ago, when there was speculation about RedHat buying Corel, everyone here was saying how much credence some people in the investment community give to the discussions on Slashdot. If the majority of the comments regarding LinuxOne say that the company adds no value to the Linux community and will not help Linux expand its presence in any market, won't the "smart money" avoid the stock? (And, what could anyone do to protect the dumb money? Even the SEC can't stop every scam.)
If anything, I would argue that LinuxOne could benefit the community by clearly pointing out the value that companies like RedHat, VA Linux, and LinuxCare are bringing to the market.
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Dave Aiello
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Dave Aiello
I'm really glad Rob said this.
For those of you who don't know, Temple Hoff is running a mailing list called Slash-help: the Slash Code Support Group. This is for anyone who is trying to take the 0.3 release of the code and make it work on their own server.
The list has been a little slow for the past couple of months now. But, it's gotten more lively in the past week or so, because many of the people who have made postings critical of Rob and Jeff here today have been refining their arguments.
It's sort of funny that people are complaining about the delays associated with a 0.4 release because these same people would be complaining loudly if 0.4 were out now and the main Slashdot site was suffering repeated outages.
Another thing that seems to be getting lost is that releasing a new version of the code in an OpenSource project is a two edged sword. Sure, you can put out a partially functional application -- some would say that's a good description of 0.3. But, if they put 0.4 out in an incomplete state, and people responded with fixes for problems, many would complain about the speed at which changes were incorporated into the CVS tree.
I've invested a lot of time modifying 0.3 to work in a different environment. It's been one of the best learning experience I've had in years. I recommend it highly to anyone who is really interested in how a content management system works. A lot of the techniques they use in 0.3 are available elsewhere, in systems like Vignette and Interwoven. The only thing is that they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement.
When 0.4 is released, we will evaluate it and probably incorporate some of its features into what we are doing. Most people who have some real investment in the Slashdot architecture will have to do that also.
If you are sitting out there observing this, trying to figure out who's right, ask yourself this question: Do the people who are shouting the loudest for releasing the latest source have anything invested in understanding, operating, and enhancing the Slash environment? If not, have they seriously evaluated what is available, or do they come from the "Boycott {insert evil capitalist enterprise name here}!" School of Idealism?
You are entitled to any opinion about this process that you want to assert. But, I guarantee that 0.4 will have as many support issues as 0.3, if not more. It's going to be more complicated. Regardless of how many people are involved in the enhancement process, it will be some time before you can install and operate this in anything close to a turn-key fashion.
At the end of the day, I come from the school that believes in an author's right to determine the circumstances underwhich he releases his code. If Rob and Jeff want to go slowly, that is their right and we ought to respect that. And, the fact that there has been a long gap between the 0.3 and 0.4 releases does not suddenly make the Slash engine a Closed Source product.
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Dave Aiello
Several months ago, Lou Dobbs, VP of CNN and the host of the show MoneyLine, left that organization and became Chairman and CEO of space.com. He got a lot of publicity on TV and radio at that time.
A lot of people thought that the Web Site in question was not a big enough business and did not have enough potential to fully occupy a man of his talents. OTOH, some said that space.com had the potential to expand into its own cable channel, and it could become similar to CourtTV, which I guess is a successful business.
I realize Dobbs is a media darling, and that's why I'm asking the question here. A lot of people in the community just ignore media hype when it's coming from traditional media sources.
I don't care if the site is popular with the average Internet user, is the information on it accurate and useful?
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Dave Aiello
Let me begin by pointing you to the Fundam entals page for Sony on CBS Marketwatch. Sony is currently valued by the market at around $110 billion -- this is the market capitalization. There are, according to this page, 411 million shares outstanding. Over the last 200 trading days, an average of 205,100 shares have been traded each day, or 4/100ths of 1 percent of the shares.
I compared this stock to General Electric, which is another extremely large, established company. In spite of the fact that General Electric is worth about 4 times as much as Sony (comparing market caps), 3 times as many shares in GE as a percentage of its total number of shares outstanding trade each day.
This means that GE is much more liquid (easy to trade) than Sony. That is potentially a good reason to split Sony stock, because the easier it is to buy or sell a stock, the less wildly the price tends to swing. Liquidity is considered a good thing by institutional investors and people who trade stocks for a living. By contrast, lack of liquidity is the reason that Internet companies move up and down fairly violently on a daily basis.
The reason that some stock market newcomers think stock splits are indicators that the company is moving boldly is that recently, many companies that have announced splits have seen their stock prices soar immediately afterward. This initially happened with Internet-related companies like Amazo n.com, but it has gotten really out of hand lately, with companies like Qualc omm.
Stock splits are really market neutral events. If a stock is at 100 the day before the split, and it splits 2-for-1, it's value at the open should be 50. I say "should be" because a stock often does not open at exactly the same price as it closes, so if there is a 2-for-1 split, the stock should open at around half the price of the close the previous day.
This brings us to another fallacy in the article. It says that a stock split is a "financial maneuver that is a risky move". The stock that traded for 100 per share yesterday was not issued by the company yesterday -- it was issued at some time in the past. The trade at 100 that took place yesterday was between two participants in the stock market who (probably) had no relationship to the company.
So, when the stock opens at 50 on the next day, after splitting two for one, not only did the people who traded the stock not lose anything (since they automatically have 2x the number of shares), but the company did not lose anything since they did not own the stock that was traded yesterday. Of course, any stock that the company is holding on its balance sheet (generally called treasury shares) did not increase or decrease in value, since the number of shares doubled while the price was cut in half.
I could go on with this analysis all night, but let me jump to the end of the Daily Radar article. The author makes the statement:
All I can say about this is that he must mean that the company is building its entire video game console product line around PlayStation2. Sony does a lot more than produce game consoles. In addition to its video game console business, it owns 11 different recording labels, a TV and movie production business which produces such insignificant products as the TV series Dawson's Creek, and Sony Electronics which makes everything from chips to Jumbotrons.
That's why the company is worth over $110 billion, and that's just a few reasons why this article is so humorous to people who enjoy analyzing businesses and buying small pieces of them.
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Dave Aiello
If your statement that Sony gets a $7 license fee per PlayStation cartridge is true, that's a huge royalty when measured against the retail price of each cartridge. It's even more astounding when measured against the wholesale price of the units, which is the only money that the cartridge developer ever sees.
One question I have about the assertion that Nintendo was a $5 billion company before Pokemon: $5 billion in what, sales or market capitalization? Perhaps they had $5 billion in annual sales. But, according to Marketwatch, Nint endo's market capitalization (another name for the total market value of the company) is only $2.9 billion.
I'd like to own a company that's worth that much, but it's tiny compared to Sony's market cap of over $110 billion.
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Dave Aiello