Apparently Dreamworks feels they lost money on 'Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit' and 'Flushed Away.'
After checking the box office figures (over at boxofficemojo.com) I can buy that 'Flushed Away' was a loss with a production budget of $149 million and just a lifetime boxoffice gross of $170 million. But 'Curse of the Were Rabbit' did very nicely since with its smaller $30 million budget it pulled in a worldwide gross of $192 million. Haven't seen 'Flushed Away' so it's hard for me to judge on how much a quality difference and how much it was mis-timing (happens more often with animations I heard). With a luckily timed release, not too expensive production and perhaps a good idea handle of the demographics you can make money on almost anything... "Stomp the Yard' is cementing itself in the IMDB Bottom 100 but it has still made 3 times its (smallish) production budget in 3 weeks.
IANASB either but according to my research you're correct. Investopedia.com says if a company trades under the minimum share price ($1) or the minimum market capitalization ($5 million) for 30 business days (i.e. 6 weeks in most cases) the company will get a delisting notice from NASDAQ that they have 90 days to get their stock to comply with the minimum value rules.
Btw, that's not the only way to get a delisting notice. SCOX became SCOXE for a short while after they got a delisting notice because they hadn't filed their 10-K in a timely fashion. SCOX press release from that time at http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=1561 92.
...IBM could make arrangements with some of the larger private (non-employee)
stock holders to buy the stock at a higher price so the upper management doesn't
reap the rewards of a buy out...
Besides the posion pill plan there are other problems: According Yahoo Finance 44.5% of the shares are held by insiders. I would be very very surprised if at least 6% of the shares is held by some non-insider that is very close and comfy with the insiders. Indirect indications of this is were the keeping up of the share price by somone who bought sizeable chunks (relative to the days trade) of stock near the end of the day.
But here is the real kicker... about riskfactors from their 10Q:
The right of our Board of Directors to authorize additional shares of preferred stock could adversely impact the rights of holders of our common stock.
Our Board of Directors currently has the right, with respect to the 5,000,000 shares of our preferred stock, to authorize the issuance of one or more additional series of our preferred stock with such voting, dividend and other rights as our directors determine. The Board of Directors can designate new series of preferred stock without the approval of the holders of our common stock. The rights of holders of our common stock may be adversely affected by the rights of any holders of additional shares of preferred stock that may be issued in the future, including without limitation, further dilution of the equity ownership percentage of our holders of common stock and their voting power if we issue preferred stock with voting rights. Additionally, the issuance of preferred stock could make it more difficult for a third party to acquire a majority of our outstanding voting stock.
Now isn't that a nice (in the most cynical manner) way to have pretty much full control over what happens with your stock - 45% is held by insiders... who can choose to dilute the voting power of common stock holders.
(Bold emphasis added by me)
First: The board of SCOX has adopted a poison pill plan which pretty much allows them to set any price regardless of what the company is worth on the stockmarket, should anyone be as daft as want to buy it. If you buy a company you also buy their liabilities. (And remember that some 45% of the shares is still held by insiders in the company) Darl McBride said in 2004:
In an apparent response to industry rumors that SCO may become the target of a hostile takeover bid, SCO's Board of Directors has implemented a "shareholders rights plan" designed to deter unsolicited takeover attempts, McBride said. "We believe that this will basically keep any outside offers or potential takeovers that are not in the best interest of the shareholders at bay," he said.
The plan, which was adopted by the board on Aug. 10, gives SCO's board the right to determine the "fair value" of the company in the event of a takeover attempt, McBride said.
Client Access Licenses (CAL) can be hard to figure out. Basically they say: you want to know the cost we will tell you since it's to complex to figure it out yourself. Microsoft themselves say:
If your company's workstations are networked, you will utilize a network server and the workstations on the network will access that server(s) software to perform certain functions such as file and print sharing. In order to legally access this server software, a client access license or CAL may be required. A CAL is not a software product; rather it is a license that gives a user the right to access the services of the server.....This guide is for reference purposes only and should not be used for purchasing decisions. Before purchasing you should visit the "How to Buy" section for each product and consult your local reseller.[1]
As I read it... without a third party (reseller who asked the "right questions" from Microsofts view) to blame for lacking CAL:s you're up the creek and the only paddle is as much money as Microsoft wants.
...Reality shows would have to stick in advertising land, because no-one would pay for that crap...
It's sad but you are wrong about that part. The makers of reality shows, especially 24/7 ones like Big Brother, already make a sizeable chunk of money on webcast subscriptions. If anything there would be even more of that reality crap with the direct model because the main constraint for them would go away namely availability of airtime. Part of why reality shows are popular among the tv networks is that they expose the makers to smaller financial risks than other productions and have a significantly shorter lead times. Instead of actors you have idiots appearing for free and specially constructed props/locations are not used that much.
I'd expect, like you, that a directly-paid model would actually create some good quality material. But the majority would still be crap. You'd see every Tom, Dick and Harry Productions scrape together a couple of hundred thousand dollars to make a bunch of pilot episodes, include a couple of "shock-value" ones and give the first ones away for free and then set up a subscription service.
Googled a bit and found that it probably was cellphones with built in GPS tracking. "Babylon uses its GPS-enabled cellphones and supporting software every day to help make work like sweeping streets and filling potholes more efficient." [1]. Maybe they police and the town doesn't want to advertise that there are some 300 phones if to steal if you can get to them (and of course shut down the GPS in them!)
n principle, I like this idea. I don't really see a problem with it.
If someone else gets access to that movie and spreads it, should you be held liable? You have X and someone manages to lay their hands on it and makes copies. If X is a DVD movie you wouldn't be liable (unless you helped the person in some way. But if X is a downloaded movie and the watermarking is to be any useful you must be liable... otherwise you can just say "uuuuh, somebody stole it from my computer... I didn't do nothing... you have to show I did it".
A major swedish newspaper (www.dn.se) write that the amount is somewhere over 1.1 million USD (8 million SEK). A sizeable chunk of money but perhaps not the most anyone has gotten hold of in this. Other types of financial fraud go way over that. Last year a financial officer of a company fudged the numbers in the computer and transfered 3+ million to her own account (and used a good part of it as well... just hang around to long I guess).
...Basically, I want to be able to sever my connection to the grid except for emergency needs...
It would make much more sense, as I see it, to keep the grid connection and sell back the surplus energy. Everybody doing the own thing would probably mean more over-engineered solutions and unnecessary duplication of effort. Of course it sounds a lot cooler to say that you have no grid connection but should we try to be "cool" or sensible?
Maybe because NetHack is like reading a book and not watching a movie. It demands more from the player to enjoy it since the action takes place in your head and not on the screen. NetHack creates a wonderful universe to play in... but only if you have the imagination yourself to put the oh so well constructed pieces and connections together in your mind.
Not a really great NetHack player. But I've kept returning to it for years... again and again and again. Can't recall a time when I've thought "that's just wrong"... just the times wondering "what didn't I get?"
I agree with you but I guess that genetically modified cows would be a better source for tailored proteins. If there is a problem with getting enough viable animals (as has been with cloneing) to produce these tailored proteins then cows should be able to make massive amounts of these over their lifetime compared to chicken.
As for the "rightness" of manipulating animals to produce these proteins I think it's way more justified than just using them for our food. Any animal actually producing medical help will be a much better treated than ordinary farmstock because they're so much more valuable to us.
Not a vegan/vegetarian/whateverian. Farm animals have their place in the food chain. Let's not just take it to extremes.
More facts about Sweden: the Stockholm Stock exchange has done better the last 5 years than Dow-Jones [1] (I've been told that the last 20 years have done better but couldn't present evidence though).
National debt is under control and is at 50.4% of GDP compared to 64.7% of GDP for the US [2]
Unemployment could be better but there are differences between the countries that aren't of a direct economical nature. For example, if Sweden would choose to have as many prisoners per capita as the US that would cut down unemployment with an estimated 1% or more.
...I don't know why some company doesn't just put up a few Million dollars (or 10s of millions) to buy SCO and put all these stupid legal battles behind us...
Besides all the other reasons mentioned before you will not be able to buy SCOX for what it's worth on the stock exchange because the SCOX board has adopted a poision pill to deter hostile takeovers. Basically they say "We (the major insiders) determine what we should get paid - not the market!" (About 45% of the company is held by insiders... who wants to get a payoff) From Infoworld 2004-08-31:
In an apparent response to industry rumors that SCO may become the target of a hostile takeover bid, SCO's Board of Directors has implemented a "shareholders rights plan" designed to deter unsolicited takeover attempts, McBride said. "We believe that this will basically keep any outside offers or potential takeovers that are not in the best interest of the shareholders at bay," he said.
The plan, which was adopted by the board on Aug. 10, gives SCO's board the right to determine the "fair value" of the company in the event of a takeover attempt, McBride said.
I thought it was a bit higher than that (still not 90% though). Did some digging and wikipedia came up with that the velocity of propagation was about.79 for a coax cable according to it. Checked a supplier of coax cables and they quoted velocity of propagation at.66 C to.84 C (latter for 1.13 mm copper KTV cable with PE insulation)
...My thought at the time was that someone stupid enough to do that most likely had a problem that wasn't going to be solved by reading warning labels.
The warning isn't put there to solve the problem... they're there to absolve the producer from responsibility for stupid people.
I do belive that the speed of the hd cluster would indeed matter. I think you underestiamted the amount of data that needs to be manipulated. Let's guesstimate that only 1% of the neurons are activly used in the average case and only those needs to be changed in the model. An example: per 1 TB discspace, with 1% neuron utilization and a 6 Hz functional frequency you would need to at least access 60 GB per second .
Storage space wise we seem to be getting there a couple of hd generations even if were not there yet (in terms of affordability). Brain has around 10^11 neurons (one terabyte is 10^12 bytes, SI standard). Each neuron can make connections to thousands or ten thousands other ones. Even with some clever mapping of connections I'm guessing we would need something in the petabyte scale. (Source for number of neurons and connections: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/brain/d n9969)
Then of course there's the question if having a brain mapped out on something as relativly slow as a hd cluster could be useful.
So you are imaging VMWare, instead of imaging disk drives - same thing as far as I can figure.
With less complexity. You can move it to a shared server for the duration when you're fixing the old server/getting a new one. Or if/when you move it to a virgin server there is less need to match the replacement server in absolute physical terms... the abstraction of using virtualization makes things easy. Personally I wouldn't feel that comfortable with imaging a disk drive from one server with hardware configuration A to one with hardware configuration B...
AC is very right. Except perhaps that 1) should be
1) Fault tolerance. Same thing as what AC said + if you have some service set up and the server croaks then it's a breeze to get that service up and running in a heartbeat. Case where I wished I had dealt with a virtulized install: print server dies after a blackout and of course this is the same day that they HAVE to deliver a bid/proposal (small consulting company). Instead of hunting down all install options and docs for the network printer/copier took a little doing (just getting any printer going was easy).
So take your pick: pay the poaching fine or pay for the robotic damage. If the hunter KNEW it was a robotic deer and shot it anyway then it's vandalism. Slam dunk for the prosecutor, not the poacher. Surely you're not suggesting that it's ok to shoot anything that isn't a deer just because it's not fenced in/locked in/guared by a person/etc.
The sorry thing is that he probably will (if he goes relativly free from this court process). He will not be usable for anything that comes close to normal producing company... but I'm guessing that some really ruthless "IP investment and monetization firm" (read "patent-blackmailing") could actually hire him. To me that kind of firms seems to be essentially a gambling setup financed by backers who doesn't risk anything and don't care if the firm folds.
Slashdot Mirror
IANASB either but according to my research you're correct. Investopedia.com says if a company trades under the minimum share price ($1) or the minimum market capitalization ($5 million) for 30 business days (i.e. 6 weeks in most cases) the company will get a delisting notice from NASDAQ that they have 90 days to get their stock to comply with the minimum value rules.
1 92.
p
Btw, that's not the only way to get a delisting notice. SCOX became SCOXE for a short while after they got a delisting notice because they hadn't filed their 10-K in a timely fashion. SCOX press release from that time at http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=156
Link to Investopedia article: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/02/032002.as
But here is the real kicker... about riskfactors from their 10Q: Now isn't that a nice (in the most cynical manner) way to have pretty much full control over what happens with your stock - 45% is held by insiders... who can choose to dilute the voting power of common stock holders. (Bold emphasis added by me)
First: The board of SCOX has adopted a poison pill plan which pretty much allows them to set any price regardless of what the company is worth on the stockmarket, should anyone be as daft as want to buy it. If you buy a company you also buy their liabilities. (And remember that some 45% of the shares is still held by insiders in the company) Darl McBride said in 2004: And that fits pretty well with the suspicion that their original plan was to force a buyout from IBM (Source http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/08/31/HNscoca
Second: as many others have pointed out - give in to extortion tacticts and they will just keep coming again and again and again.
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sam/lic_cal.ms
I'd expect, like you, that a directly-paid model would actually create some good quality material. But the majority would still be crap. You'd see every Tom, Dick and Harry Productions scrape together a couple of hundred thousand dollars to make a bunch of pilot episodes, include a couple of "shock-value" ones and give the first ones away for free and then set up a subscription service.
Googled a bit and found that it probably was cellphones with built in GPS tracking. "Babylon uses its GPS-enabled cellphones and supporting software every day to help make work like sweeping streets and filling potholes more efficient." [1]. Maybe they police and the town doesn't want to advertise that there are some 300 phones if to steal if you can get to them (and of course shut down the GPS in them!)
m e.jsp
[1] http://developer.sprint.com/site/global/home/p_ho
Of course my point was that different liabilities don't make that much sense.
A major swedish newspaper (www.dn.se) write that the amount is somewhere over 1.1 million USD (8 million SEK). A sizeable chunk of money but perhaps not the most anyone has gotten hold of in this. Other types of financial fraud go way over that. Last year a financial officer of a company fudged the numbers in the computer and transfered 3+ million to her own account (and used a good part of it as well... just hang around to long I guess).
Maybe because NetHack is like reading a book and not watching a movie. It demands more from the player to enjoy it since the action takes place in your head and not on the screen. NetHack creates a wonderful universe to play in... but only if you have the imagination yourself to put the oh so well constructed pieces and connections together in your mind.
Not a really great NetHack player. But I've kept returning to it for years... again and again and again. Can't recall a time when I've thought "that's just wrong"... just the times wondering "what didn't I get?"
I agree with you but I guess that genetically modified cows would be a better source for tailored proteins. If there is a problem with getting enough viable animals (as has been with cloneing) to produce these tailored proteins then cows should be able to make massive amounts of these over their lifetime compared to chicken.
As for the "rightness" of manipulating animals to produce these proteins I think it's way more justified than just using them for our food. Any animal actually producing medical help will be a much better treated than ordinary farmstock because they're so much more valuable to us.
Not a vegan/vegetarian/whateverian. Farm animals have their place in the food chain. Let's not just take it to extremes.
More facts about Sweden: the Stockholm Stock exchange has done better the last 5 years than Dow-Jones [1] (I've been told that the last 20 years have done better but couldn't present evidence though). National debt is under control and is at 50.4% of GDP compared to 64.7% of GDP for the US [2] Unemployment could be better but there are differences between the countries that aren't of a direct economical nature. For example, if Sweden would choose to have as many prisoners per capita as the US that would cut down unemployment with an estimated 1% or more.
e tail.page?magic=(cc%20(detail%20(tsid%2049534)%20( graph%20(period%205Y)%20(from%20null)%20(to%20null ))))
You can find both exchange rates between SEK/USD and Dow-Jones at http://finance.google.com/
k order/2186rank.html
[1] Stockholm exchange 5 year history: http://www.bors24.se/bors24.se/site/index/index_d
[2] https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ran
From Infoworld 2004-08-31: Source:http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/08/31/
I thought it was a bit higher than that (still not 90% though). Did some digging and wikipedia came up with that the velocity of propagation was about .79 for a coax cable according to it. Checked a supplier of coax cables and they quoted velocity of propagation at .66 C to .84 C (latter for 1.13 mm copper KTV cable with PE insulation)
i on
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_propagat
I do belive that the speed of the hd cluster would indeed matter. I think you underestiamted the amount of data that needs to be manipulated. Let's guesstimate that only 1% of the neurons are activly used in the average case and only those needs to be changed in the model. An example: per 1 TB discspace, with 1% neuron utilization and a 6 Hz functional frequency you would need to at least access 60 GB per second .
Storage space wise we seem to be getting there a couple of hd generations even if were not there yet (in terms of affordability). Brain has around 10^11 neurons (one terabyte is 10^12 bytes, SI standard). Each neuron can make connections to thousands or ten thousands other ones. Even with some clever mapping of connections I'm guessing we would need something in the petabyte scale. (Source for number of neurons and connections: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/brain/d n9969)
Then of course there's the question if having a brain mapped out on something as relativly slow as a hd cluster could be useful.
AC is very right. Except perhaps that 1) should be 1) Fault tolerance. Same thing as what AC said + if you have some service set up and the server croaks then it's a breeze to get that service up and running in a heartbeat. Case where I wished I had dealt with a virtulized install: print server dies after a blackout and of course this is the same day that they HAVE to deliver a bid/proposal (small consulting company). Instead of hunting down all install options and docs for the network printer/copier took a little doing (just getting any printer going was easy).
Wärtsilä is a finnish company. But then there are some people who think that Nokia is japanese as well so I guess you're in good company :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4
So take your pick: pay the poaching fine or pay for the robotic damage. If the hunter KNEW it was a robotic deer and shot it anyway then it's vandalism. Slam dunk for the prosecutor, not the poacher. Surely you're not suggesting that it's ok to shoot anything that isn't a deer just because it's not fenced in/locked in/guared by a person/etc.
The sorry thing is that he probably will (if he goes relativly free from this court process). He will not be usable for anything that comes close to normal producing company... but I'm guessing that some really ruthless "IP investment and monetization firm" (read "patent-blackmailing") could actually hire him. To me that kind of firms seems to be essentially a gambling setup financed by backers who doesn't risk anything and don't care if the firm folds.