Article title: Dell investors allege secret kickbacks by Intel
Author: Ben Ames (computerworld.com)
For those of you who haven't heard, Mike Dell is back in control of his company! hoo-RAY for all -consumers and investors alike. I believe this man has what it takes to turn Dell around and take back the market share that has been lost to HP, IBM, and even Apple.
This article talks about investors forming a class action lawsuit against Dell for inflating their profits with under-the-table gifts from Intel. Execs at Dell and Intel apparently had a deal going to keep Dell exclusively with Intel. Well now that Dell has been selling AMD processors for over 6 months, I guess the cat is out of the bag. And the snake (former CEO Kevin Rollins) is out of Dell...but that's not enough for me. As an investor in both of these companies, I want to see them go after the people at Intel too. This was done dirty, and everyone involved should be held responsible. I know in the short run if this comes down I personally am going to lose more money than I already have...But...damnit, in the long run I want justice and I want the liars out. Really, this deal wouldn't have been that bad had it been done upfront. Dell and Intel should have drawn up a small contract stating Dell would exclusively deal with Intel processors if Intel paid a rebate at the end of each year. This money could have been exchanged legally and been figured properly into the accounting. No, instead it was tacked on to Dell's profits. WrONG!
What REALLY gets is that this means that Intel's profit has been artificially low as well. So while this could have been done honestly, i've been losing money in a bull market on two high profile companies...so let me shout out a big "F YOU!" to all those greedy, sneaky execs out there that don't care if they screw people over and cause the market to be artificially volitile...
When Dell gets turned around, so will the chipmaker sector. Intel is just waiting to return to high profitablilty. It's deals with Apple, IBM and Sun have the potential to grow. AMD has clearly taken a hit on profitability by dealing with Dell as they have been forced to produce cheaper. AMD needs to operate efficiently enough to offer a solid entry level processor to keep up with supplying Dell, this will come. More importantly though, they need to return to their old mantra that says offer something comprable (equal or better) to Intel but at a lower price point. It seems with its latest dual core server and desktop processors AMD has suffered because they completely lost the price and power consumption war on high-end processors by trying to win the performance war. This failed because in the end, Intel is bigger and operates more efficiently.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Friday, February 2, 2007
Sony Rootkit Case "Exposed"
Article Title: Sony Settles Secret Spyware Suit
Author: By Keith Regan (E-Commerce Times)
One may or may not have followed this story, so let me sum it up. Sony released a selection of CDs from about a dozen artists or so with some nasty rootkit software on it. This software was designed to control the content of the CD by restricting use of the content. Users could only rip the CD to their computer if it was encoded with special Sony DRM. Additionally, the software would report information back to Sony. While this is clearly anoying spyware and severly locked down DRM, this wasn't what Sony got in trouble for. They key issue was how the software installed itself. For those familiar with rootkits, they go in with the Windows operating system files. In some cases Sony's software would canibalize or damage critical Windows files. For this reason, Micro$oft actually declared that the rootkit was a virus anda threat to Windows. They even released a patch to fix the damage. Contributing to this nastiness, the user wasn't even given a choice. Once the CD went in the drive, this software would install automatically.
I can't say how happy I am that Sony got reamed for this. What the hell were they thinking? What corp exec actually let this stuff go to production? This is a great example of why we as consumers must be AWARE or what we are buying and who we are buying it from. Capitalism thrives best when consumers keep companies in line. We can't sit around and buy whatever is on the shelf these days. Consumer demands should drive what goes to market. Your wallet is your loudest voice, and you should use it responsibly for both positive and negative reinforcement.
A note to the author about his hyped-up headline title...Keith, I hope you don't think it actually took detective work to "uncover" this story. I have been following this story via the techie community since Sony's spyware was first discovered. There was actually a small scale ban on Sony and their record labels during the summer of 2006. This ended after Sony stopped producing CDs with the spyware, though some were still laced with tubby DRM. This law suite against Sony is just now ending, but as I recall it was a pretty big to do when it first started.
peace.
Author: By Keith Regan (E-Commerce Times)
One may or may not have followed this story, so let me sum it up. Sony released a selection of CDs from about a dozen artists or so with some nasty rootkit software on it. This software was designed to control the content of the CD by restricting use of the content. Users could only rip the CD to their computer if it was encoded with special Sony DRM. Additionally, the software would report information back to Sony. While this is clearly anoying spyware and severly locked down DRM, this wasn't what Sony got in trouble for. They key issue was how the software installed itself. For those familiar with rootkits, they go in with the Windows operating system files. In some cases Sony's software would canibalize or damage critical Windows files. For this reason, Micro$oft actually declared that the rootkit was a virus anda threat to Windows. They even released a patch to fix the damage. Contributing to this nastiness, the user wasn't even given a choice. Once the CD went in the drive, this software would install automatically.
I can't say how happy I am that Sony got reamed for this. What the hell were they thinking? What corp exec actually let this stuff go to production? This is a great example of why we as consumers must be AWARE or what we are buying and who we are buying it from. Capitalism thrives best when consumers keep companies in line. We can't sit around and buy whatever is on the shelf these days. Consumer demands should drive what goes to market. Your wallet is your loudest voice, and you should use it responsibly for both positive and negative reinforcement.
A note to the author about his hyped-up headline title...Keith, I hope you don't think it actually took detective work to "uncover" this story. I have been following this story via the techie community since Sony's spyware was first discovered. There was actually a small scale ban on Sony and their record labels during the summer of 2006. This ended after Sony stopped producing CDs with the spyware, though some were still laced with tubby DRM. This law suite against Sony is just now ending, but as I recall it was a pretty big to do when it first started.
peace.
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