[lotuseclat79]

Pirate Party Coming To Canada.

The party's goals are fairly simple. People should have the right to share and copy music, movies and virtually any material, as long as it is for personal use, not for profit. It opposes government and corporate monitoring of Internet activities, unless as part of a criminal investigation. It also wants to phase out patents.

-- Tom

[Mr. Newton]

Originally Posted by lotuseclat79

Pirate Party Coming To Canada.

The party's goals are fairly simple. People should have the right to share and copy music, movies and virtually any material, as long as it is for personal use, not for profit. It opposes government and corporate monitoring of Internet activities, unless as part of a criminal investigation. It also wants to phase out patents.

-- Tom

Well they now have my attention,I agree with those goals,although it is still not illegal to download music for personal use in Canada.
That being said,I will still give them a look..

[namenotfound]

They should move that party in the states. It would make life a lot easier.

[Mr. Newton]

Well you know they will be getting a lot of free press,and that will scare some other special interest groups,but choice and competition are a good thing...

[deandude1196]

Originally Posted by namenotfound

They should move that party in the states. It would make life a lot easier.

I agree.

[perfume]

Dear lotuseclat79,
I have always revelled in downloading "music" alone with the full knowledge that the creators of these albums were not getting a cent! I had to do it because dad would,nt give me the dough to buy the original cds. There was remorse in a corner of my conscience! I was a young teenager at that time. Now i've put an end to such downloads!How would Roentgen have felt had somebody cheated him and claimed the innovation of X-Rays as their own?

[yulin99]

BOSTON (Reuters) - VMware Inc (VMW.N) could lose its rich share valuation as a new product from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and potentially more competition from Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) threaten its lead in the virtualization market.

VMware shares trade at about 26 times the average Wall Street forecast for next year's earnings, according to Reuters Estimates. That is roughly twice as expensive as Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, and Oracle, the third.

Analysts say VMware shares could be ready for a sell-off if its quarterly results later this month, or its outlook, miss expectations, with Microsoft preparing to ship in July a souped up rival to VMware's flagship product.

Some warn that VMware has yet to factor in the competitive threat and only two of 31 Wall Street analysts who follow VMware stock advise investors to buy it at current prices.

"For a company that's got a legitimate Microsoft threat, once you've got a multiple in the high 20s, that makes me feel a little bit queasy," said Goldman Sachs analyst Derek Bingham.

VMware, which is majority-owned by EMC Corp (EMC.N), has historically traded at a high valuation because investors expect it to leverage its lead in virtualization technology to quickly boost sales and profits when the economy recovers.

Virtualization improves the efficiency of computer hardware, allowing businesses to replace multiple pieces of equipment with one machine. That helps save money on hardware, maintenance and electricity.

But VMware's growth has stagnated in recent quarters and some analysts are concerned business may get worse before it improves, especially with competition stiffening.

Prior to its August 2007 initial public offering, VMware's sales were growing about 100 percent a year. They have slowed considerably since and analysts project revenue growth of 2 percent to $1.9 billion this year, with per-share profit excluding items falling to 91 cents from $1.05, according to Reuters Estimates.

"People want to own the virtualization trend, so they buy the stock," said Cowen & Co analyst Walter Pritchard. "But I challenge anybody to say that their financial profile justifies the company's valuation."

VMware declined comment for this article. The 11-year-old virtualization pioneer posted its first-ever drop in quarterly software sales during the quarter ended March 31. It has yet to release results for the quarter ended June 30, although in April it warned revenue would dramatically miss Wall Street expectations, blaming the economy and a new product launch.

MICROSOFT GETS GOOD REVIEWS

A year ago, Microsoft introduced virtualization software known as Hyper-V, bundling the program for free with its Windows operating system for servers. Hyper-V included some features for which VMware customers pay thousands of dollars per server, but lacked a critical feature that has kept it from taking off.

That feature -- which VMware calls VMotion -- allows companies to keep "virtual" servers running when the physical hardware fails. It immediately switches workload from one machine to the next.

Microsoft has added that feature to the new version of Hyper-V, a move that analysts say will boost the allure of its free alternative to VMware's product.

"It has been getting some very good reviews. If I were VMware, I would be looking to lower my prices," said Laura DiDio, an analyst with Boston-based market research firm ITIC.

Jefferies & Co analyst Katherine Egbert estimates Microsoft already has about 10 to 15 percent market share, compared with about 80 percent for VMware. She projects VMware's share will shrink after Microsoft releases its upgrade.

Palo Alto, California-based VMware may also soon go up against billionaire Larry Ellison's Oracle, which is looking to expand into new areas as growth slows in its core markets of database and business management software.

Oracle launched a product targeted at a small segment of the virtualization market in late 2007 and is about to buy two companies -- Sun Microsystems Inc (JAVA.O) and privately held Virtual Iron -- that could make it a far more serious threat.

"It is clear that Oracle has serious intentions," said Egbert of Jefferies & Co.

VMware shares, which have risen about 20 percent this year like Oracle and Microsoft shares, closed down 0.6 percent at $28.07 on Monday.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle, editing by Tiffany Wu and Andre Grenon)

http://www.51orders.com/

[yulin99]

An electrical fire near the Space Needle shut down the travel section of Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, for 36 hours over the Fourth of July weekend.

The fire started about 11 p.m. Thursday in the basement of Fisher Plaza, which houses the KOMO-TV studios and servers for a number of Web sites. It shut off power to Microsoft's servers until about 2 a.m. Saturday, said Bing spokeswoman Whitney Burk.

While the Bing Travel site was offline, Microsoft redirected users to Orbitz, which is one of Microsoft's partners, Burk said. The servers were back online a few hours after power was restored.

"Bing Travel is a complex system of servers, databases and networking hardware that runs at massive scale. It takes a bit of time after an interruption of power such as this one to bring it back online," a Microsoft statement says. "We feel we had the service back up as quickly as was possible."

Burk said no Microsoft hardware was damaged in the fire, which broke out where city power connects to transformers in Fisher Plaza. The building is owned by Fisher Communications, which owns a number of TV and radio stations throughout the Northwest.

Bing Travel apparently has no backup servers to handle such an incident.

Microsoft's servers at Fisher Plaza were originally owned by Farecast, a Microsoft acquisition whose travel-search technologies provide the foundation for Bing Travel. Microsoft has been working to move Bing Travel to Microsoft's own servers, but doesn't expect to finish the move until the early fall.

"Given the complexity of this service and our desire to do this in a way that is invisible to customers, this process takes time and must be done carefully," the statement reads.

The Bing Travel outage occurred at the beginning of one of the most popular weekends for travel. Burk did not know how many complaints Microsoft received.

"Most people would have booked their travel before the weekend itself," Burk said.

The fire affected only the travel section of Bing.

According to KOMO, one of the main clients at the Fisher Plaza data center is Internap Network Services, which manages data centers and routes Internet traffic.

The power outage also disrupted the late-night newscast, and using generators on Friday, KOMO broadcast its live TV and radio shows from a makeshift location on the building's roof.

There is a lot of discussion about the incident on TechFlash, whose Todd Bishop apparently was working Friday and Saturday. I was out of town.

http://www.51orders.com/