Process is approximatly as follows: first you have the District Courts (tingsrätten) decision which both the accused and the prosecutor may take to Court of Appeals (hovrätten). If one of the parties feel that there is still something that could change they can file it with the Supreme Court (Högsta Domstolen) which will first say if it merits yet another trial and if so they will grant it if they believe it will clarify some of the legal questions in the case.
Prosecutor aren't elected in Sweden. They're civil servants without official political affiliations and since the prosecutorial office is pretty much a meritocracy based on convictions there is more to be lost if a prosecutor affiliates him/her to any politcal party because it would make them more vulnerable to appeals. Very few legal professionals in Swedish politics over all.
I'm not a legal professional in Sweden but AFAIK: if a prosecutor authorizes any action without legal reason they can be found guilty of official miscondut. This means that the state will have to compensate the party being hurt by that action and that the prosecutor may face fines and/or dismissal. However this is quite uncommon in Sweden since prosecutorial occupation isn't an elected position but more of a meritocracy based on convictions and if someone oversteps their boundries they're effectivly cutting their professional career short (and there isn't much of a political career to be made by being a legal professional here).
In this case I suspect that they prosecution is trying out some rather uncharted legal territory in Sweden (the laws on infringement changed a few years ago and there haven't been that many cases) and if he/she fails then it will not count be much of a black mark but if there is a success then it will be feather in his/her hat.
(It should be noted that the law in Sweden is a Civil Law system variation and does not put anywhere as much weight in precedents as a Common Law system and probably because of that there is less drive to redefine previous judgements)
Does NASDAQ accept reverse stock splits as a method to regain compliance with the minimum bid price requirement?
Yes. NASDAQ views reverse stock splits as an acceptable method to regain compliance.
It's because when a stocks value go that low it becomes very easy to manipulate in various ways (such as different pump-and-dump schemes etc) since even a very small swing in paid price means many percent in profit. Basically the stock price becomes much more unreliable as an indicator of the actual value of the company and that in turn would reflect badly on the stock exchange where it is trade.
The FSF and the SFLC are about Free Software, not Open Source. Come on! It's in the name!:)
From the SFLC homepage: "We provide legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software." And the X.org project is an example of one of their clients that aren't connected to Free Software.
Maybe it's because I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about, or maybe I am just stupid...why does ANYONE care what Microsoft charges for ANYTHING?
Well, I would not say stupid but perhaps ignorant of the facts in this case. First you must realise that in this case it's not about the price of any ordinary Microsoft product... those Microsoft can price pretty much any way they want. No, this is about Microsoft being found guilty of anti-competetive conduct according to EU rules. As a remedy they have been forced to reveal certain server interface specifications and the EU agreed to let them license them for a reasonable amount. Now of course it lies in Microsofts interest to hike up those license charges as much as possibly so that they can at least partly nullify losing the competetive edge those protocols gave them. EU is seeing what they doing and saying that we will not allow you to water down the obligations we laid down for you.
Why do people care what they charge? Just like any other company, if you don't like the price....DON'T FUCKING BUY IT.
Conversly: if you don't like the legal system which you must operate under to do business in a certain area... then don't do business there. Of course that would cost them a bit too dearly...
You need to get out of, lets say, the "playground mentality" and look at the realites of such an action. The basic and very obvious reason is: money.
They can't just drop the EU market because it's the same size that the US one. It's a publicly traded company and investors would very much like to know if was a fiscally sound decision (i.e. did they lose more than staying would have cost). If they don't get the answers they want the stock tanks and I doubt shareholder lawsuits would be far behind. And add to that the worldwide worries wether you can trust Microsoft with your IT infrastructure. Buyers would ask themselves: will they try the same tactics in our market? what will they demand of us to keep on selling their products? can we afford that?
The EU has already overstepped their bounds. No government should be allowed to tell a company what it is they can charge for a product nor whether their individual products are "innovative" or just "patentable"
If the government hadn't granted the companies certain rights (protection of copyrights, patents and trade secrets) the companies would have almost nothing to protect. It's highly absurd to say that a government should have no say whatsoever when it comes to limiting the very rights they themselves have bestowed. You can't both have a cake an eat it.
Or is this like if we considered Windows XP was the only revenue source of Microsoft during those years? And there I thought Microsoft had quite a few products (even if you don't count the "at a loss" ones).
In a way yes... I agree with you that it seems to be a flawed way to spread the legal costs. I think you suggest that it would be better to spread over the whole revenue line... another way would be to spread it over positive income generating divisions. Lets say we take the entertainment division of MSFT for example - it's been one huge economic sinkhole. The loss of the entertainment divison has accumulated during the last 3 years (according to the MSFT 10-K) is over $4 billion (yes - $4000 million in loss). The money to prop up that division has to come from areas with a posititve income: Server, Client and Tools, Business. So in a way an XP buyer also has to pay some "Xbox tax" as well (Xbox is the lions part of the entertainment division).
Not that I think there is a black and white way to spread the costs. I bet there are many different ways that you could argue in favour of.
Now, I have a bit of a mean streak so I would like to suggest the following modification: instead of a fixed inteval it should be random, say between 5 - 20 minutes, coupled to how fast the pranked person responds... just to throw him of her off their rocks a bit. And finally... there shouldn't be a full volume alarm... I think a combination of gentle coughs or throat clearing sounds would be most effective.
Of course this is not recommended for US citizens unless you have the financial means to pay for the pranked persons long term psychiatric care....
I think that's a rather hypothetical question since Baystar that put $50 million into SCOX did it after the lawsuit was launched (lawsuit file in March 2003, BayStar invests in October 2003). It was just an investment into a IP related lawsuit and not into any actual products developed by a severly stagnant company.
NASDAQ also has a minimum regarding the market value of the company and that is set to $5 million which means that they can't continue doing reverse splits ad infinitum. Current market value of SCOX is just shy of $20 million.
USB allows for half a Watt for powered devices. A HDD spinning up can easily draw over 20W. Most USB controllers will handle quite a lot more than the spec'd 0.5W, but 40x more really pushes your luck.
Actually, that is 2.5 watts, not.5 watts (check the USB specs). And the devices he's talking about are built around 2.5 inch laptop drives. Of course you're technically right that powering ordinary drives via USB... but hey, the parent poster didn't suggest that (and I've never seen anyone else do that!). These USB powered discs actually work and are correctly designed... lots of companies make them and has for years.
I don't thing this could be useful for any Alzheimers treatement in a very long time if ever (and we've probably solved it in another way even if it ever gets there).
As I understand it Alzheimers is basically a case of protein misfolding creating amyloid plaques on the neurons and that really screws up the functions (perhaps some with actual medical/biological knowledge can expand on that). Anyway, it's not just one part that you can hot-swap to use a computer term... it's happening all over the affected area. So you're not going to just plop in a new frontal lobe and call that a cure are you?
And yet the researcher goes on and makes a big point of this:
Today an estimated 4.5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's, at an annual cost of some $100 billion, according to the Alzheimer's Association and the National Institute on Aging. "And those figures are just going to climb as my generation gets older," says Berger, who can rattle off the grim statistics from Alzheimer's and other brain disorders that disturb memory. Another 5.3 million Americans are victims of traumatic brain injuries
I do belive that this technology could have many many wonderful uses but that Alzheimers isn't one of them... and by using on of the scariest biggest diseases just to flag down some interest he's doing not only himself but the whole research area a disfavour.
Homoeopaths might carry no weight in Swedish medical circles, but neither do evolution-deniers hold any sway in American biology circles. I don't understand why you'd bring this up.
Because you brought up homeopathy in Sweden as a response about my argument faith-based entities are influencing decision-making processes in the US. I claimed that homeopathy isn't in any way influencal in Sweden. And right now I cant think of any other faith-based groups having any influence.
know there ARE several homoeopathic "schools" in Sweden, but I assume these are privately funded?
I'd assume so because all this is requiered to call oneself a homeopath in Sweden is to say so. Any park-bench alcoholic may title themselves as an homeopath since there is no legal defintion for that title. It's a free-for-all. They are not funded by the state and you cannot get state funded student loans to attend them (excluded educations include homeopathy, aromeatherapy, healing etc).[1]
I did also find this:Since July 1999, homeopathic doctors should be reimbursed fully (anamnesis and repertorization on time-based scale) by federal basic health insurance. Patients treated by NMQPës need an additional insurance for this. This is the decision of the national health authority. A clear statement of acknowledgment for Homeopathy. Homeopathic remedies prescribed by physicians are paid already by the official tariff.
The quote given refers to SWITZERLAND and not SWEDEN. Switzerland isn't even part of the EU.
Furthermore, to sell a homepathic remedy in Sweden it must be registered with the national Medical Product Agency (Läkemedelsverket) and a remedy can have no stated therapeutical effect (because otherwise it has to go through normal medical testing) and must be diluted to at least 1/10000 of the original mix or 1/100 of any prescribed drug. [2]
So to sum things up: Sweden probably has homeopathic educations... these are not state funded and you cannot even get state funded student loans to attend them. Sweden does not include homeopathy in its universal healthcare and you cannot get homeopathic remedies witin that universal insurance (Sweden is not Switzerland;). Anyone can call title themselves as a homeopath. To sell homeopathic remedies these have to be registered and to be shown according to certain standards to be harmless.
Sorry about the strawman reference (only excuse I have is that english is my third language;). As for the ad hominem that's a personal reflection that I still feel is apropriate since started of with a character description that is quite clear in its meaning (being on a high horse - according to Merriam-Webster "having an arrogant and unyielding mood or attitude" - I sure didn't get that one wrong). That has nothing in it about inquiring the correctness of my statements... it's actually stating that I'm an arrogant/unyielding person and that therefor most people would assume (at least on a cursory reading) that I was wrong if they trusted you more... regardless of the actual facts.
You will need to consult someone knowing swedish to read these references (including them for full reference):
And add to this that failure of one optical disc is less catastrophic. If one optical disc fails you have a lot less loss than if one drive does... of course that means more work but there is always a trade-off, isn't there. You could argue that you should have more than one drive but the same goes for optical disc.
From personal experience optical discs might need one more step though: to verify that the write was ok. I don't have any optical discs that have failed me yet after I started to check writes... turns out the only problem was that I had a writer that was about to give up. Hence not a read error but a write one... after that I always run a check.
And a anecodotal story against those who says that it will "allways fail in N months". A swedish tv program took some burned DVDs, put them in a plastic bag and chucked them outside under a bush for about 3 months no problem reading them. So with optical media: check your write + store them as proper archieval media should be.
And exactly how has the belief in homeopathy influenced any governing body in Sweden? It's when you start allowing non-rational belief influencing the decision making process that you get problems. Homeopathics carry no weight what so ever in medical circles in Sweden. Why? They have been shown to have no effiacy. Because they have been, as I said pretty much ad verbatim, the programs have been evaluated according to their individual effiency without putting the word "Faith" in there.
Any reasonable evaluation of any program uses reason. Like Sweden has done with the use of homeopathy when it comes to governemt support. In essence what you are bringing up is nothing but a strawman argument. And to compound matters you follow up matters with an ad hominem attack with refering to me as being on a "high-horse".
It's also a function of influences of the differing belief systems on the state. Here in Sweden the doubters of evolution (not equal to strict believers in creationism) has been polled at around 25%. But we do lack the number of evangelical people influencing policy that the US has. While in the US you even have Bush giving money to something called Faith Based and Community Initiatives. For me that doesn't bode well for the separation of church and state... shurely the proper way would be to evaluate each program based according to their individual effiency without putting the word "Faith" in there. Unless it is a support system for the faiths in question.
Isn't knowledge of assembly language for microprocessors required to create a higher level programming language?
To create - yes. To use as a programmer - no. You can still be a good programmer if you know the cost (in terms of resources) for the operations you choose to make use of. A higher level language will most likely give you a wider range of ways to solve a problem within the given limitations. But only if you actually know the computational characteristics of the system (as a whole) that you are using. Simply put you need to realise which operations are expensive and which are cheap from a total perspective.
The biggest anti-competetive fine EU has handed down so for went to the german company ThyssenKrupp: 479 million ($630 million). And a lot of smaller companies got heavy fines in the same judgement. Anyone claiming protectionism should try to back it up with facts. And, oh yeah, this investigation into Microsoft didn't originate within the EU... it wsa a complaint filed by SUN (which you all know is very much a US company).
think the thing that is hard to understand is that the law in this case is almost perversely refusing to say what it is that they *actually* want Microsoft to do, and continually just telling Microsoft: "That's not good enough".
No. The hard thing to understand is the following: Microsoft got to pick their own jury by submitting a shortlist of people able to judge if they were complying. The EU then picked one of them and he sadi "Not good enough". If you are fully free to pick your own experts for compliance... why can't you comply?
Neeelie Kroes is the European Commissioner for Competition... she's the one that heads up all anti-competition investigations... which basically means she weilds a steeled fist. And before anyone goes all "It's protectionism" you should consider that the biggest fines has been levied against EU companies and there is no over-representation against non-EU entities.
Slashdot Mirror
Process is approximatly as follows: first you have the District Courts (tingsrätten) decision which both the accused and the prosecutor may take to Court of Appeals (hovrätten). If one of the parties feel that there is still something that could change they can file it with the Supreme Court (Högsta Domstolen) which will first say if it merits yet another trial and if so they will grant it if they believe it will clarify some of the legal questions in the case.
Prosecutor aren't elected in Sweden. They're civil servants without official political affiliations and since the prosecutorial office is pretty much a meritocracy based on convictions there is more to be lost if a prosecutor affiliates him/her to any politcal party because it would make them more vulnerable to appeals. Very few legal professionals in Swedish politics over all.
I'm not a legal professional in Sweden but AFAIK: if a prosecutor authorizes any action without legal reason they can be found guilty of official miscondut. This means that the state will have to compensate the party being hurt by that action and that the prosecutor may face fines and/or dismissal. However this is quite uncommon in Sweden since prosecutorial occupation isn't an elected position but more of a meritocracy based on convictions and if someone oversteps their boundries they're effectivly cutting their professional career short (and there isn't much of a political career to be made by being a legal professional here).
In this case I suspect that they prosecution is trying out some rather uncharted legal territory in Sweden (the laws on infringement changed a few years ago and there haven't been that many cases) and if he/she fails then it will not count be much of a black mark but if there is a success then it will be feather in his/her hat.
(It should be noted that the law in Sweden is a Civil Law system variation and does not put anywhere as much weight in precedents as a Common Law system and probably because of that there is less drive to redefine previous judgements)
It's because when a stocks value go that low it becomes very easy to manipulate in various ways (such as different pump-and-dump schemes etc) since even a very small swing in paid price means many percent in profit. Basically the stock price becomes much more unreliable as an indicator of the actual value of the company and that in turn would reflect badly on the stock exchange where it is trade.
t ock_Fraud
More about penny stock fraud at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_stocks#Penny_S
You need to get out of, lets say, the "playground mentality" and look at the realites of such an action. The basic and very obvious reason is: money.
They can't just drop the EU market because it's the same size that the US one. It's a publicly traded company and investors would very much like to know if was a fiscally sound decision (i.e. did they lose more than staying would have cost). If they don't get the answers they want the stock tanks and I doubt shareholder lawsuits would be far behind. And add to that the worldwide worries wether you can trust Microsoft with your IT infrastructure. Buyers would ask themselves: will they try the same tactics in our market? what will they demand of us to keep on selling their products? can we afford that?
...in an area which is in a de facto civil war will be inherently dangerous to anyone on site.
I recall reading about that study and did a search. A BBC News article can be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6152646.stm
Not that I think there is a black and white way to spread the costs. I bet there are many different ways that you could argue in favour of.
Kudos to your friend for a masterful prank!
Now, I have a bit of a mean streak so I would like to suggest the following modification: instead of a fixed inteval it should be random, say between 5 - 20 minutes, coupled to how fast the pranked person responds... just to throw him of her off their rocks a bit. And finally... there shouldn't be a full volume alarm... I think a combination of gentle coughs or throat clearing sounds would be most effective.
Of course this is not recommended for US citizens unless you have the financial means to pay for the pranked persons long term psychiatric care....
I think that's a rather hypothetical question since Baystar that put $50 million into SCOX did it after the lawsuit was launched (lawsuit file in March 2003, BayStar invests in October 2003). It was just an investment into a IP related lawsuit and not into any actual products developed by a severly stagnant company.
NASDAQ also has a minimum regarding the market value of the company and that is set to $5 million which means that they can't continue doing reverse splits ad infinitum. Current market value of SCOX is just shy of $20 million.
As I understand it Alzheimers is basically a case of protein misfolding creating amyloid plaques on the neurons and that really screws up the functions (perhaps some with actual medical/biological knowledge can expand on that). Anyway, it's not just one part that you can hot-swap to use a computer term... it's happening all over the affected area. So you're not going to just plop in a new frontal lobe and call that a cure are you?
And yet the researcher goes on and makes a big point of this: I do belive that this technology could have many many wonderful uses but that Alzheimers isn't one of them... and by using on of the scariest biggest diseases just to flag down some interest he's doing not only himself but the whole research area a disfavour.
Furthermore, to sell a homepathic remedy in Sweden it must be registered with the national Medical Product Agency (Läkemedelsverket) and a remedy can have no stated therapeutical effect (because otherwise it has to go through normal medical testing) and must be diluted to at least 1/10000 of the original mix or 1/100 of any prescribed drug. [2]
So to sum things up: Sweden probably has homeopathic educations... these are not state funded and you cannot even get state funded student loans to attend them. Sweden does not include homeopathy in its universal healthcare and you cannot get homeopathic remedies witin that universal insurance (Sweden is not Switzerland
Sorry about the strawman reference (only excuse I have is that english is my third language
[1]http://csn.se/Avdelningar/Vidareinformator/R
[2]http://www.lakemedelsverket.se/upload/lvfs/LVF
And add to this that failure of one optical disc is less catastrophic. If one optical disc fails you have a lot less loss than if one drive does... of course that means more work but there is always a trade-off, isn't there. You could argue that you should have more than one drive but the same goes for optical disc.
From personal experience optical discs might need one more step though: to verify that the write was ok. I don't have any optical discs that have failed me yet after I started to check writes... turns out the only problem was that I had a writer that was about to give up. Hence not a read error but a write one... after that I always run a check.
And a anecodotal story against those who says that it will "allways fail in N months". A swedish tv program took some burned DVDs, put them in a plastic bag and chucked them outside under a bush for about 3 months no problem reading them. So with optical media: check your write + store them as proper archieval media should be.
And exactly how has the belief in homeopathy influenced any governing body in Sweden? It's when you start allowing non-rational belief influencing the decision making process that you get problems. Homeopathics carry no weight what so ever in medical circles in Sweden. Why? They have been shown to have no effiacy. Because they have been, as I said pretty much ad verbatim, the programs have been evaluated according to their individual effiency without putting the word "Faith" in there.
Any reasonable evaluation of any program uses reason. Like Sweden has done with the use of homeopathy when it comes to governemt support. In essence what you are bringing up is nothing but a strawman argument. And to compound matters you follow up matters with an ad hominem attack with refering to me as being on a "high-horse".
It's also a function of influences of the differing belief systems on the state. Here in Sweden the doubters of evolution (not equal to strict believers in creationism) has been polled at around 25%. But we do lack the number of evangelical people influencing policy that the US has. While in the US you even have Bush giving money to something called Faith Based and Community Initiatives. For me that doesn't bode well for the separation of church and state... shurely the proper way would be to evaluate each program based according to their individual effiency without putting the word "Faith" in there. Unless it is a support system for the faiths in question.
The biggest anti-competetive fine EU has handed down so for went to the german company ThyssenKrupp: 479 million ($630 million). And a lot of smaller companies got heavy fines in the same judgement. Anyone claiming protectionism should try to back it up with facts. And, oh yeah, this investigation into Microsoft didn't originate within the EU... it wsa a complaint filed by SUN (which you all know is very much a US company).
a rtel.php
See http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/21/business/c
Neeelie Kroes is the European Commissioner for Competition... she's the one that heads up all anti-competition investigations... which basically means she weilds a steeled fist. And before anyone goes all "It's protectionism" you should consider that the biggest fines has been levied against EU companies and there is no over-representation against non-EU entities.