My company, Salix Technologies (www.salix.com) is currently between the announcement and the close of an aquisition by Tellabs (www.tellabs.com). So, I've been doing a lot of research on this since its quite relavent to me. =)
There are two types of stock options non-qualified (NQ) and incentive (ISO). The ramifications of either have to do mainly with two issues, vesting period and tax implications. I'll talk briefly about each.
Some people refer to NQ as the ``bad'' kind and ISO as the ``good'' kind. Its my opinion that they both have their advantages and disadvantages so these labels are not really applicable.
In general, NQ options will not vest immediately when an aquisition or IPO takes place and ISO options are generally set up such that vesting accelerates. As an example, lets say you have 5000 shares that vest over 4 years. If your company is bought in year 2 and you have NQ options, you'll probably still only have 1250 shares vested. If the options are ISO, the entire lot will likely automatically vest. Notice I use words like probably and may, each plan is individual.
From this description, you might wonder why you'd ever want NQ options vs. ISO's. The answer is in the dynamics of an aquisition or IPO underwriting. From the buyer's (or underwriters) perspective, NQs are better. Why? Because if everybody has ISO's they can walk out the door the next day with their money so your going to have to spend more for retention.
Ok, the other issue is taxes. When you exercise NQ options they are treated as regular income. When you exercise ISOs they are treated as Adjusted Minimum Tax (AMT) income. I won't get into AMT here but suffice to say, there is an entire other tax system out there designed to tax you when you get ISOs. Yes, it sucks. Anyway, AMT tax is basically a prepayment of capital gains taxes that you have to make due to a short term windfall, like an ISO exercise. While the rates are lower than income tax, you give the govt. your money much earlier so you lose the ability to earn interest on it yourself.
Anyway, thats a little bit about options that I hope helps some of you out there that might be being offered options.
So cynical are you. And your cynicism fits well with the prevailing winds on this site. I wonder if it occured to anyone that he may actually want to do exactly what he says he wants to do. When you've got that much money already, I doubt that increasing your nestegg is a major driver. Its more about what gets you out of bed in the morning. For Gates, it appears that that has always been building software, for better or worse...
The main problem here is not with the technology, its with the mindset that any kind of security can actually be put in place for any persistent software content. It doesnt matter if the average Joe can do it or not, if one person can do it anywhere, illegal copies will be made. The main problem with DVD is that the copies are perfect, making them difficult to distinguish from an original. With this type of problem, effort has to be put into law enforcement, and I dont mean throwing those that hack the encryption in jail, I mean putting those that willfully distribute copyrighted material for a profit in jail.
I've recently upgraded my commercial site to a 192Kbps SDSL connection in Maryland. I wanted to used Bell Atlantic for this but found them less than friendly on two points. First, the were averse to giving me fixed IP addresses and second, when I told them I was running FreeBSD, they basically just said sorry and hung up the phone. I then went to Erols and they gave me exactly what I wanted, fixed IP addresses, DNS hosting, etc. all part of the installation. It seems to me I read something about a guy going through this with Bell Atlantic or another company on/. sometime ago. I'm wondering how much business Bell Atlantic is going to lose because of their Windows-centric approach? I think that most of the DSL activity in this area is in the business arena still and probably a lot of those people are going to want to connect the DSL modem to a Linux or FreeBSD box. If Bell Atlantic is trying to take market share from Comcast, it seems to me it would be in their best interest to be more accomodating to the needs of their customers.
I think that this is just the beginning of an inevitable homogenization of the operating system for use in the desktop world. One big reason that applications proliferate is the consistency that is imposed by a single point of control. While Red Hat has and will continue to have (I hope) only the best intentions, and they will release all their source code, you cannot deny that they have a leadership position. This position so granted will allow them to introduce consistency in user interface, installation, device support, etc. that user's (new users, corporate users) want. This will happen, however subliminally. Get ready for it, theres nothing that can be done about it. It has to happen.
Mir has been in orbit years longer than it was originally designed for. There have been fires, life support failures and collisions. Crews living there spend all their time just trying to keep the thing running. There hasnt been any useful science come out of the platform for quite awhile. While it provided invaluable experience in long-term habitation in space, which our space program is now taking advantage of, its time has long since past.
The main reason the Russians want to keep it going is that they built it by themselves and they, like everyone, want to keep their baby running as long as they can.
As the Int'l Space Station becomes permanently habitable over the next few years, it will more than make up for the capability lost on Mir.
An interesting point, I watch closely the Russians moves in the construction of the Int'l Space Station. They seem reluctant to put their money and expertise into this Int'l project. One might even call the Int'l Space station the Open-Source Space Station, everyone is going to contribute and see what everyone else is doing and use it. It will be very difficult for any one country to monopolize it since everyone has contributed. I think the Russians see this and are having, IMHO understandable, reservations about jumping in with both feet.
I hope over time tho, that everyone sees the benefits that will present themselves as we all progress together.
This response will likely be very unpopular, but I've just plain had enough.
I've been reading Katz on/. since he started. I find him to be oppurtunistic even beyond what I see in the mainstream media. I am particularly disgusted by his slanted view on the "tyranny" that our young people have to endure in their lives, in high school and such. While there are probably excesses in many instances, life is not fair and you just have to deal with it. Its more important for the administrations of these schools to provide a safe environment that it is for a few "oppressed" individuals to be given their "right" to wear a black trenchcoat.
I was a geek like many of those whose comments I've read here, member of the chess club, spent all my time on computers, etc. You should have seen my yearbook pictures, not pretty. The difference was, somehow I managed to realize that despite having to put up with a lot of harassment from just about everybody, it was going to end after four years. If you want to pursue your own way of looking at things, there is a price. Freedom is not free, you just have to deal with that.
Anyway, wrt to this most recent article, this is the end. I'm finally taking the step of cutting out Katz from those articles I want displayed.
Those 14 and 15 year olds shouldnt be watching South Park the movie, they shouldnt be watching the TV show and they shouldnt be downloading it from the net. The mother who brought them there to drop them to see it was negligent in my view for doing so. I applaud the theatre for finally enforcing a policy that should be enforced, since it is not by the parents who should be. Katz should not have been allowed to "escort" them in by the theatre but what really amazes me is that the mother would allow him to escort them for her! What was she thinking? Were I to allow my children in the same situation, I cant even imagine letting them go off into the theatre with some total stranger.
I am aware that there are single mothers in the world that need to find entertainment for their children while they work. Dropping them at the South Park movie and letting them be escorted in by a complete stranger is not it.
The bottom line is, Katz needs to learn that just because a child wants to do something doesnt mean they should be able to do it. I'm sick of listening to his drivel, he sounds like one of the 14 year olds he champions.
The problem with disks is not transfer times but seek times, which are still in the millisecond range. This fact feeds the rather energetic use of intelligent prefetching in all applications to hide seek latency.
Actually, the NetBSD system is superior. The VM system for NetBSD was recently replaced with a new design that is superior to the Mach-based VM design present in the MacOS X implementation. I am under the impression that the new VM design is in this port, someone from NetBSD can verify this. Also, NetBSD traces its lineage to the 4.4BSD Lite release whereas MacOS X traces back to the Next implementation which uses the 4.4BSD server on top of the Mach ``microkernel''. These two implementations are significantly different. The main similarity is at the kernel API level.
Was just sitting here thinking. Kind of interesting that I'm reading yet another oppurtunistic rant from Katz about "censorship" and then scrolling down to read my level 3 and above comments.
First, if certification is valuable at all, it is almost certainly not equally valuable for all types of programming. I would really like to see real-time or embedded programming certification, in the same vein as PE's are certified for more traditional engineering. However, I can't see someone writing VB code for a database application really needing to be certified in any real sense.
Second, there are other mechanisms that can serve the same purpose. At my current employer, quality in employees is a top priority. We would rather not fill a position that fill it with a "body". We have a strict, rigorous interview process that weeds out many not having the required skills for the job we perform. Certification might make this a little easier, but my point is, if an employer wants to hire someone, its up to them what standards they want to apply.
There are a number of reasons why UNIX vendors would not be unifying behind Linux as the "unified" UNIX.
1) These vendors have invested huge amounts of development effort in putting together their own implementations. They will not just walk away from their own design decisions because of Linux's rising market share.
2) Despite the increasing popularity of Linux, newer, high-performance commodity and custom hardware devices are driven by proprietary UNIX implementations first. This may be changing but it still has a ways to go before it changes (if it ever does IMHO).
3) Culturally, Linux is NIH (Not Invented Here). This may sound silly but its very pervasive and there are some convincing arguments why it will continue. The developers and customers for a given UNIX, even it they are closet Linux hackers, will take product to market with an in-house solution over Linux first because it has a critical mass within the organization that allows faster time to market.
4) Linux may incorporate many very modern OS features and implementation designs but other UNIX vendors will always believe, justified or not, they have a superior design. In such a case it may incumbent on Linux to adapt to their design rather than the other way around.
All of these factors may wane over time, but I doubt they will disappear completely. The short history of operating systems has never seen a single UNIX spec and I'm unconvinced it will happen now.
The last year to eighteen months have seen a huge amount of energy spent on debating software licensing. This debate seems analagous in many ways to the pundits on the Sunday morning talk shows discussing what should be done about the President's indescretions, it smacks of proselytizing.
The license for a piece of software is decided by its author and noone else. If you don't like the license associated with a piece of software, you can either use a competing piece of software that has a more attractive license to you or you can write a competing piece of software and decide what license you want apply to it. Short of that, the rest of it is just so much hot air.
I was the primary subsystem engineer on the data systems network some years back at JSC. At that time, the network was spec'd as a Dual-redundant 100 Mbps FDDI ring with a 50-Mbps Ku-band uplink. The system was supposed to actually be linked directly to the internet. LynxOS was spec'd as the OS with X-Windows and a plethora of wonderful control and monitoring applications. I can't believe that after 10 years and how many billions of dollars, we end up with thinkpads that are going to have to be rebooted every hour.
All mine and others effort, flushed down the toilet with little to show in its place. I guess going back to school was the right decision after all, I just wouldnt have been able to take this had I stayed.
Slashdot Mirror
My company, Salix Technologies (www.salix.com) is currently between the announcement and the close of an aquisition by Tellabs (www.tellabs.com). So, I've been doing a lot of research on this since its quite relavent to me. =)
There are two types of stock options non-qualified (NQ) and incentive (ISO). The ramifications of either have to do mainly with two issues, vesting period and tax implications. I'll talk briefly about each.
Some people refer to NQ as the ``bad'' kind and ISO as the ``good'' kind. Its my opinion that they both have their advantages and disadvantages so these labels are not really applicable.
In general, NQ options will not vest immediately when an aquisition or IPO takes place and ISO options are generally set up such that vesting accelerates. As an example, lets say you have 5000 shares that vest over 4 years. If your company is bought in year 2 and you have NQ options, you'll probably still only have 1250 shares vested. If the options are ISO, the entire lot will likely automatically vest. Notice I use words like probably and may, each plan is individual.
From this description, you might wonder why you'd ever want NQ options vs. ISO's. The answer is in the dynamics of an aquisition or IPO underwriting. From the buyer's (or underwriters) perspective, NQs are better. Why? Because if everybody has ISO's they can walk out the door the next day with their money so your going to have to spend more for retention.
Ok, the other issue is taxes. When you exercise NQ options they are treated as regular income. When you exercise ISOs they are treated as Adjusted Minimum Tax (AMT) income. I won't get into AMT here but suffice to say, there is an entire other tax system out there designed to tax you when you get ISOs. Yes, it sucks. Anyway, AMT tax is basically a prepayment of capital gains taxes that you have to make due to a short term windfall, like an ISO exercise. While the rates are lower than income tax, you give the govt. your money much earlier so you lose the ability to earn interest on it yourself.
Anyway, thats a little bit about options that I hope helps some of you out there that might be being offered options.
So cynical are you. And your cynicism fits well with the prevailing winds on this site. I wonder if it occured to anyone that he may actually want to do exactly what he says he wants to do. When you've got that much money already, I doubt that increasing your nestegg is a major driver. Its more about what gets you out of bed in the morning. For Gates, it appears that that has always been building software, for better or worse...
The main problem here is not with the technology, its with the mindset that any kind of security can actually be put in place for any persistent software content. It doesnt matter if the average Joe can do it or not, if one person can do it anywhere, illegal copies will be made. The main problem with DVD is that the copies are perfect, making them difficult to distinguish from an original. With this type of problem, effort has to be put into law enforcement, and I dont mean throwing those that hack the encryption in jail, I mean putting those that willfully distribute copyrighted material for a profit in jail.
I've recently upgraded my commercial site to a 192Kbps SDSL connection in Maryland. I wanted to used Bell Atlantic for this but found them less than friendly on two points. First, the were averse to giving me fixed IP addresses and second, when I told them I was running FreeBSD, they basically just said sorry and hung up the phone. I then went to Erols and they gave me exactly what I wanted, fixed IP addresses, DNS hosting, etc. all part of the installation. It seems to me I read something about a guy going through this with Bell Atlantic or another company on /. sometime ago. I'm wondering how much business Bell Atlantic is going to lose because of their Windows-centric approach? I think that most of the DSL activity in this area is in the business arena still and probably a lot of those people are going to want to connect the DSL modem to a Linux or FreeBSD box. If Bell Atlantic is trying to take market share from Comcast, it seems to me it would be in their best interest to be more accomodating to the needs of their customers.
I think that this is just the beginning of an inevitable homogenization of the operating system for use in the desktop world. One big reason that applications proliferate is the consistency that is imposed by a single point of control. While Red Hat has and will continue to have (I hope) only the best intentions, and they will release all their source code, you cannot deny that they have a leadership position. This position so granted will allow them to introduce consistency in user interface, installation, device support, etc. that user's (new users, corporate users) want. This will happen, however subliminally. Get ready for it, theres nothing that can be done about it. It has to happen.
Mir has been in orbit years longer than it was originally designed for. There have been fires, life support failures and collisions. Crews living there spend all their time just trying to keep the thing running. There hasnt been any useful science come out of the platform for quite awhile. While it provided invaluable experience in long-term habitation in space, which our space program is now taking advantage of, its time has long since past.
The main reason the Russians want to keep it going is that they built it by themselves and they, like everyone, want to keep their baby running as long as they can.
As the Int'l Space Station becomes permanently habitable over the next few years, it will more than make up for the capability lost on Mir.
An interesting point, I watch closely the Russians moves in the construction of the Int'l Space Station. They seem reluctant to put their money and expertise into this Int'l project. One might even call the Int'l Space station the Open-Source Space Station, everyone is going to contribute and see what everyone else is doing and use it. It will be very difficult for any one country to monopolize it since everyone has contributed. I think the Russians see this and are having, IMHO understandable, reservations about jumping in with both feet.
I hope over time tho, that everyone sees the benefits that will present themselves as we all progress together.
Later,
FM
This response will likely be very unpopular, but I've just plain had enough.
/. since he started. I find him to be oppurtunistic even beyond what I see in the mainstream media. I am particularly disgusted by his slanted view on the "tyranny" that our young people have to endure in their lives, in high school and such. While there are probably excesses in many instances, life is not fair and you just have to deal with it. Its more important for the administrations of these schools to provide a safe environment that it is for a few "oppressed" individuals to be given their "right" to wear a black trenchcoat.
I've been reading Katz on
I was a geek like many of those whose comments I've read here, member of the chess club, spent all my time on computers, etc. You should have seen my yearbook pictures, not pretty. The difference was, somehow I managed to realize that despite having to put up with a lot of harassment from just about everybody, it was going to end after four years. If you want to pursue your own way of looking at things, there is a price. Freedom is not free, you just have to deal with that.
Anyway, wrt to this most recent article, this is the end. I'm finally taking the step of cutting out Katz from those articles I want displayed.
Those 14 and 15 year olds shouldnt be watching South Park the movie, they shouldnt be watching the TV show and they shouldnt be downloading it from the net. The mother who brought them there to drop them to see it was negligent in my view for doing so. I applaud the theatre for finally enforcing a policy that should be enforced, since it is not by the parents who should be. Katz should not have been allowed to "escort" them in by the theatre but what really amazes me is that the mother would allow him to escort them for her! What was she thinking? Were I to allow my children in the same situation, I cant even imagine letting them go off into the theatre with some total stranger.
I am aware that there are single mothers in the world that need to find entertainment for their children while they work. Dropping them at the South Park movie and letting them be escorted in by a complete stranger is not it.
The bottom line is, Katz needs to learn that just because a child wants to do something doesnt mean they should be able to do it. I'm sick of listening to his drivel, he sounds like one of the 14 year olds he champions.
Later,
FM
The problem with disks is not transfer times but seek times, which are still in the millisecond range. This fact feeds the rather energetic use of intelligent prefetching in all applications to hide seek latency.
Actually, the NetBSD system is superior. The VM system for NetBSD was recently replaced with a new design that is superior to the Mach-based VM design present in the MacOS X implementation. I am under the impression that the new VM design is in this port, someone from NetBSD can verify this. Also, NetBSD traces its lineage to the 4.4BSD Lite release whereas MacOS X traces back to the Next implementation which uses the 4.4BSD server on top of the Mach ``microkernel''. These two implementations are significantly different. The main similarity is at the kernel API level.
Was just sitting here thinking. Kind of interesting that I'm reading yet another oppurtunistic rant from Katz about "censorship" and then scrolling down to read my level 3 and above comments.
/. censors know what they're doing...
Hope the
Later,
FM
There are two points I'd like to make.
First, if certification is valuable at all, it is almost certainly not equally valuable for all types of programming. I would really like to see real-time or embedded programming certification, in the same vein as PE's are certified for more traditional engineering. However, I can't see someone writing VB code for a database application really needing to be certified in any real sense.
Second, there are other mechanisms that can serve the same purpose. At my current employer, quality in employees is a top priority. We would rather not fill a position that fill it with a "body". We have a strict, rigorous interview process that weeds out many not having the required skills for the job we perform. Certification might make this a little easier, but my point is, if an employer wants to hire someone, its up to them what standards they want to apply.
Later,
FM
There are a number of reasons why UNIX vendors would not be unifying behind Linux as the "unified" UNIX.
1) These vendors have invested huge amounts of development effort in putting together their own implementations. They will not just walk away from their own design decisions because of Linux's rising market share.
2) Despite the increasing popularity of Linux, newer, high-performance commodity and custom hardware devices are driven by proprietary UNIX implementations first. This may be changing but it still has a ways to go before it changes (if it ever does IMHO).
3) Culturally, Linux is NIH (Not Invented Here). This may sound silly but its very pervasive and there are some convincing arguments why it will continue. The developers and customers for a given UNIX, even it they are closet Linux hackers, will take product to market with an in-house solution over Linux first because it has a critical mass within the organization that allows faster time to market.
4) Linux may incorporate many very modern OS features and implementation designs but other UNIX vendors will always believe, justified or not, they have a superior design. In such a case it may incumbent on Linux to adapt to their design rather than the other way around.
All of these factors may wane over time, but I doubt they will disappear completely. The short history of operating systems has never seen a single UNIX spec and I'm unconvinced it will happen now.
Later,
FM
The last year to eighteen months have seen a huge amount of energy spent on debating software licensing. This debate seems analagous in many ways to the pundits on the Sunday morning talk shows discussing what should be done about the President's indescretions, it smacks of proselytizing.
The license for a piece of software is decided by its author and noone else. If you don't like the license associated with a piece of software, you can either use a competing piece of software that has a more attractive license to you or you can write a competing piece of software and decide what license you want apply to it. Short of that, the rest of it is just so much hot air.
I was the primary subsystem engineer on the data systems network some years back at JSC. At that time, the network was spec'd as a Dual-redundant 100 Mbps FDDI ring with a 50-Mbps Ku-band uplink. The system was supposed to actually be linked directly to the internet. LynxOS was spec'd as the OS with X-Windows and a plethora of wonderful control and monitoring applications. I can't believe that after 10 years and how many billions of dollars, we end up with thinkpads that are going to have to be rebooted every hour.
All mine and others effort, flushed down the toilet with little to show in its place.
I guess going back to school was the right decision after all, I just wouldnt have been able to take this had I stayed.