Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
> They are not using the technology to prevent anyone from
> manufacturing DRAM, how can they restrict trade?
its not like rambus is the only one who's had these problems. there was dell, and recently kingston vs sun (memory module technology), which was also an instance of someone (sun) not 'fessing up to patents before jedec. and from what i've read, it looks like the ftc will clarify this issue re open standards committees and patents, pending or otherwise ...
the legal questoins, well ... they're for lawyers. on the ethics of the whole thing: sure, rambus is entitled to compensation for use of its IP. but what's up in the air is, what is that IP worth? and how much of that value comes from the fact that its part of an industry standard? we're not talking qcom here, after all, which has something like 40% of the ip related to cdma, based on its long history and years of championing the technology. last time i looked into this, back before rdram was going the way of the dinosaurs, rambus wasn't offering much of a discount on its ip for sdram vs rdram; now that's a pretty heavy-handed move ...
"Rambus had one "master" application ... There was really nothing to disclose except the claiming strategy, which no one has ever disclosed at Jedec ..."
you're apparently agreeing here with the 2 judge majority in the recent decision, and that's cool. but that wasn't my point. i was pointing out that what happened or typically happens at jedec doesn't necessarily constrain the ftc in determining attempts to restrict fair trade.
in particular:
'The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit eliminated the fraud charge "because substantial evidence does not support the implicit jury finding that Rambus breached the relevant disclosure duty during its participation in the standards committee."'
okay, that's why it was overturned at this point.
but the previous decision, and the dissenting opinion in this case, are still noteworthy:
'In her dissenting opinion, Judge Prost found that Rambus had attended JEDEC meetings with the clear intention of incorporating JEDEC discussions into the company's own patent claims.
'"The record is replete with additional and specific instances of Rambus employees attending JEDEC meetings, taking notes of what was discussed, identifying instances where Rambus already had claims covering what was discussed, and then seeking claims to cover what they learned at the JEDEC meetings," Judge Prost wrote, citing testimony delivered by Richard Crisp, the Rambus representative to JEDEC.
'The company's actions meet the definition of fraud, Judge Prost found. Even after Rambus had pulled out of JEDEC, two anonymous sources, dubbed "Deep Throat" and "Secret Squirrel", continued to provide information, Judge Prost wrote. Rambus then tried to destroy or otherwise hide relevant evidence of its actions within JEDEC, providing false testimony, she wrote. '
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,851965,00.asp
> The FTC action and even its choice of words is lifted mostly
> from the Micron and IFX complaints.
much of the overlap was omitted long ago from the infineon case.
> It relies heavily on the fraud issue which has now gone bye bye
> courtesy of the CAFC.
now who is being disingenuous? the court did not find that rambus did not commit the acts of which it was accused - namely failing to disclose to jedec their patent applications which were relevant to the open standard that they participated in developing, or modifying those applications to incorporate what they knew would be going into the standard. the court found that jedec's bylaws did not clearly specify that it required disclosure of pending patents. hence, those acts were not fraud.
but that's a far cry from saying that the behavior was not anticompetitive. and that's what the ftc case is about.
Ahh, Barnum would be proud
or perhaps they've just learned the lessons that the bools on the street have taught so well over the last few years ...
"Frankly, I don't understand how anti trust was invoked by the FTC to start with ..."
if rmbs did fail to mention its relevant patents, and alterered patent applications to cover what they knew would be in the intended "open" standard, isn't that a clear attempt to monopolize? even if its not "clear", i'm sure its arguable (lawyers being what they are).
and of course, all of this is pretty much independent of whether they violated JEDEC bylaws or not ...
The FTC case will be dismissed because the antitrust claims require a predicate basis of fraud.
hunh?? this is a bit old, but ...
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4533
Rambus to pursue Dramurai until they're in "death spiral"
Attempt to stay FTC antitrust case blocked
By Mike Magee: Sunday 21 July 2002, 09:44
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY company Rambus has filed for a stay to prevent the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) allegations of antitrust activities based on its appeal in an Infineon trial last year.
But the FTC has hit back against the premise and delivered a lengthy rebuttal that its case against Rambus is anything to do with the Infineon case.
It appears Rambus may fail to get a stay on the FTC antitrust case against it, which alleges that the company will cause consumers harm because of the market power it may exercise on computer memory payments.
It is, however, likely to get a temporary stay of two weeks, the better to prepare its case, it appears.
In the rebuttal, FTC lawyers deny that factual and legal issues in the appeal relate to its complaint, which is that Rambus is allegedly abusing its market power.
While the FTC says that its case against Rambus and the Infineon appeal have common factual grounds, it says Rambus "greatly exaggerates the extent of overlap between the two proceedings".
In strong language, the FTC says Rambus assertions "are seriously misleading, if not patently false". Presumably the FTC lawyers made the pun unintentionally.
The FTC says that Rambus claims that questions of market power will be addressed by the Federal Circuit appeal are not true.
The filing adds: "The Infineon appeal does not now involve, nor has it ever involved, the issue of market power. This is true for a reason that Rambus conveniently, and misleading glosses over: Infineon's two antitrust counterclaims against Rambus, one claiming monopolization and the other attempted monopolization, were both dismissed by Judge Payne long before the case was submitted to the jury". Payne was the presiding judge in the Infineon-Rambus case.
The FTC claims that the Rambus appeal are narrow and are based on the district course's construction of Rambus' patent claims, the country's ruling imposing fraud liability against Rambus, the court's refusal to give a patent related jury instruction, the award of lawyer fees and costs to Infineon, the scope of the court's Rambus injunction, and the court granting judgement for Rambus one of Infineon's two fraud claims.
The phrase "market power" appears in none of the documents relating to the appeal, claims the FTC.
The FTC is only interested in market power and not patents, the document continues.
The government body also says that granting a stay because of the Infineon case would "prolong and potentially exacerbate the serious consumer harm that has been caused by Rambus' anticompetitive conduct".
Rambus might extract royalties worth over one billion dollars from the DRAM industry and has already signed licence agreements with some manufacturers which will give it $50 million to $100 million a year.
The Infineon appeal might last many months and "there could be no end to the delays that Rambus might seek", the FTC claims.
Memory manufacturers that haven't signed up for its patents will be pursued through the courts, alleges the FTC, quoting Infineon's lawyer Kenneth Starr as saying:
"Rambus plays hardball. And there is evdeince... [that Rambus'] chairman of the board Mr Davidow, has essentially told everybody: We're going to keep coming after you and coming after you. If you don't sign up, you are in a – his word – 'death spiral'. That's they way they play... They will continue to sue us."
An attempt by Rambus to stay the FTC action because of litigation between it and Micron also are not connected with market power. µ
> If DRAM chips make a rebound to even half their old levels
> Rambus makes a lot more $$$.
well, if you think on that timeframe, you have to remember that standards are not fixed over time and, contrary to the legal opinion, the opinion of dram manufacturers generally was that rambus pulled a really dirty trick, which will likely make it a wallflower at future dram standards cotillions ...
I expect them to take the "Cisco " approach and buy anything that has a chance of dethroning them.
however, the most likely such anything is linux, which cannot be bought, sold or bartered.
OT wireless internet
sorry, but as a non-sub, i can't send privates. (shame on me)
as a gadget freak, i've tried the wireless internet stuff in various ways over the last couple years. and all i can say is, i eventually gave up on all of them. (this includes, nokia communicator, palm vii and a zaurus pda.) for me, the problems all come back to (1) battery life and (2) limited functionality/restrictive interfaces.
anyway, my own plans at this point are to get a nice portable computer (i.e. subnotebook, e.g. http://www.dynamism.com ) and just plug in a wireless modem (for me, timeframe for this is about 6 months, since i am waiting for the cdma 1x ev-do services to come online - i.e. "do" = "data only".) but anyway, there are both gsm and cdma plans, some with just a monthly charge for X meg of downloads ...
and stephen roach.
Concerning the hen, Biddy Doran, who pulled "the letter" out of a trash heap (FW I.5.111-2)
"Well, almost any photoist worth his chemicots will tip anyone asking him the teaser that if a negative of a horse happens to melt enough while drying, well, what you do get is, well, a positively grotesquely distorted macromass of all sorts of horsehappy values and masses of meltwhile horse. Tip. Well, this freely is what must have occurred to our missive (there's a sod of a turb for you! please wisp off the grass!) unfilthed from the boucher by the sagacity of a lookmelittle likemelong hen. Heated residence in the heart of the orangeflavoured mudmound had partly obliterated the negative to start with, causing some features palpably nearer your pecker to be swollen up most grossly while the farther back we manage to wiggle the more we need the loan of a lens to see as much as the hen saw. Tip.
"You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy? You says: It is a puling sample jungle of woods. You most shouts out: Bethicket me for a stump of a beech if I have the poultriest notions what the farest he all means. Gee up, girly! The quad gospellers may own the targum but any of the Zingari shoolerim may pick a peck of kindlings yet from the sack of auld hensyne.
"Lead, kindly fowl! They always did: ask the ages. What bird has done yesterday man may do next year, be it fly, be it moult, be it hatch, be it agreement in the nest. For her socioscientific sense is sound as a bell, sir, her volucrine automutativeness right on normalcy: she knows, she just feels she was kind of born to lay and love eggs (trust her to propagate the species and hoosh her fluffballs safe through din and danger!); lastly but mostly, in her genesic field it is all game and no gammon; she is ladylike in everything she does and plays the gentleman's part every time. Let us auspice it! Yes, before all this has time to end the golden age must return with its vengeance. Man will become dirigible, Ague will be rejuvenated, woman with her ridiculous white burden will reach by one step sublime incubation, the manewanting human lioness with her dishorned discipular manram will lie down together publicly flank upon fleece. No, assuredly, they are not justified, those gloompourers who grouse that letters have never been quite their old selves again since that weird weekday in bleak Janiveer (yet how palmy date in a waste's oasis!) when to the shock of both, Biddy Doran looked at literature."
laff. watchin' too much t.v., dood ...
URPIX for the SPX. there's something for the dow too. profunds.com ... under "bearish" ...
jdaasoc:
perhaps. but remember, this was a $10 stock just about 1 quarter ago (right before earnings) ....
> We have ecord earnings and profits on CREE
well, at least in the case of cree (which i'm still short): valuation, valuation, valuation. its not priced for the glass half full, but for a brimming mug of liquid sunshine ...
OT Newly
i agree, though i haven't read the most recent one ...
but not his best ....
hey, why is my yahoo id "richard_milhous_zhlubb"?
"They have the technology to combine the TV and the Internet, I think, but they don't want to because of the Intellectual Property issues."
this isn't entirely true. from the point of view of the network, voip and regular ip (internet) are 1-to-1 connections. with pretty moderate bandwidth required for everyone who's using them concurrently, they can manage. but the bandwidth required for video in the same manner would be unmanageble (not sure of the numbers, but at least a couple mbps per user), not to mention the load on the server. of course, that's why network broadcast technologies were developed (the old mbone - does that still exist? rsvp, etc.) real packet-based broadcast. much of its there. some of it probably needs some upgrades (not sure if this would require ip-v6 or not ...). but nevertheless, its just something that nobody's ever done on such a large scale.
but i'd think, if you're gonna go this way, why not go all the way. why reproduce broadcast technology digitally when you can do better, and without all the problems involved. namely: tivo-like all the way.
but then, nobody ever listens to me :(
note also the growing competition from taiwan ... the demand is there, but that's also pulling other players into the market.
disclosure: i'm currently short cree.
now that's just kinda silly. networking over power lines is never going to be as efficient as doing it over a network designed for the purpose, just because of all of the noise. and it only gets worse as you move out of the house and into the grid ...
in the home: this still won't be competitive with wireless.
a technical question:
(this is in reference to cof chart, specifically.) so suppose you have a symmetric triangle. it breaks out upwards, but only for a few days, and then reenters the triangle. does one consider the triangle still in play at that point, or is the pattern violated?
Re: CREE
but selling at 8.5 times sales, isn't all of this already priced into the stock, plus a lifetime of free sunshine?
let's use terminology correctly, please.
> 1. Allowing Open Source to Governments. Ie: Russia..BTW MSFT
> will allow 97% open source...the other 3% will share at the
> Redmond headquarters only.
there's no way that this can be construed as "open source", in the way the term is used by the "open source" movement. it means you can see some or all of the source code. it doesn't mean that you can recompile it all yourself, that you can make meaningful changes (i.e. ones that get incorporated into the source code, so you don't have to figure out how to redo it every time they make changes to the source), that you can discuss it with others or give feedback or combine it with other open source software. its not a whole lot different than if intel, for example, were to offer to send you jpeg's of the masks used to make the processor you're using. well, a little different, but not a whole lot. it gives you information, but it does not give you "power" in any real sense ...
Open Source is formally defined here (and this is the "official definition"):
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
> 3. Stock Split.
hmm. until 2000, wasn't this a yearly event?
jdaasoc: well i'm a newbie at gold, so someone else may have a better take on this, but it seems that the price of the miners anticipated the move in gold ...
> ... or nothing?
or switch everyone over to linux ... :)
(the previous story posted here about msft releasing source code to govs is, of course, partly in response to several govs that have mandated the use of linux. which, i might add, makes sense. whereas having msft source code pretty much means nothing, since all you could really do with it is *maybe* verify that there are no backdoors. however, even that task would be enormous.)
lower. but with a 25% rally to 1150.
re schwab "discounts". i don't think you need any heavy negotiating here: my current rate is $15/trade, and i'm in the second tier of trading frequency. i.e. they used to have different price levels that kick in based upon your frequency of trading in the previous quarter. (and i say "used to" because some of this may have changed since i last looked at the details.) anyway, it was something along the lines of 30+ trades at ~$10.95/trade, 15 trades at ~$15.95/trade etc ... as a platinum member, you should have your own personal "team" assigned to you ... although, for some reason, mine never seems to be available when i call and they send me to some random guy ...
Maybe the Dems (smart Dems, is that not an "Oxymoron?")
as a data point: if you would check the iq's of the of the last 3 dem presidents vs the last 3 republican presidents, you'd find that the former average above 150 while the latter average below 100.
Best hope for tech is for government purchase to hold the tide in 2003. Homeland security is helping. Bush should cancel the dividend handout a use the deficit to pump up tech sector spending in the public domain. IMHO most government agencies with the exception of the military have cave man software and systems.
hmm. i'd think that this is exactly what not to do, or at least one of the places where you don't want to apply a stimulus. tech more than anything else suffered from overinvestment in the past which we all pretty much now recognize as an abberation. investing more in the sector at this point will pretty much just prolong the pain of undoing that past overinvestment. otherwise, its more like keeping the patient on life support until 1999 returns ...
re cof:
cool. that was my impression too, although you were apparently quicker and more sure of yourself than i (short @ 35.5). gm again seems like a good move ... though i'm lugging around too many techs at this point ....
mlsoft,
are you following/playing that apparent symmetric triangle on cof?
OT but in line with a thread here:
and then drives the price of oil to the US so low it sparks an economic recovery[\i]
now call me naive, but why would president boob and vp cheney, two oil men, want lower oil prices? hasn't the constant war talk in itself been a prime mover behind the recent rise in oil prices? even if saddam were to capitulate, wouldn't you expect him to pull a kuwait and seriously delay any benefit from all that oil?
and for the other side of this gold argument, here's the eminent economist, lawrence pollyanna kudlow:
http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow.asp
The Economy’s Striking Gold
Is there a stock boom in the making?
The average chattering head will naturally blame the impending war in Iraq, the national strike in Venezuela, and world oil prices for the recent jump in the price of gold. But those are temporary events. Don't buy into such short-sighted thinking.
The prices of gold and industrial metals are rising because the Federal Reserve is sending needed cash into the economy. Gold and metals, of course, are key monetary and economic indicators, and their current surge confirms that the long, dark night of deflation has come to an end.
[...]
agreed. to be fair to fleck, you do have to distinguish between "investment advice" and "short/intermediate term market timing". he pretty much comes out and says when he's in his short term prophecy mode ...
MSFT will still try to force their perferred software implimentation on 90% of customers and make selecting competitors offerings very difficult even if they are forced to distribute in on their media.
but surely you recognize that "trying to force" and "succeeding in forcing" are two very different things. in fact, the ruling itself prevents msft from continuing with some of the tactics that is has been using to do this very thing.
I am sure AOL will eventually get similar ruling on netscape browser.
which will be a blow to msft, since mozilla (which i currently use) and better yet, phoenix (based on the same code) are both far better than ie.
if your goal was small, portable and usable - not as a main computer but as an adjunct to one - maybe something like a subnotebook would suit you. i love the sony vaio subnotebook - which i haven't seen in stores in california for about 2 years - but its a beautiful machine with small but high resolution screen and reasonable usable keyboard.
http://www.transmetazone.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=857
and presumably other things along these lines in the works ... like web pads. (not to be confused with windows tablet edition, which seriously sucks rocks.)
http://www.transmetazone.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=479
http://www.transmetazone.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=958
http://www.transmetazone.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1056
Not very convincing, IMO, to just say "if the POG had folllowed the rate of inflation". No particular reason why it should...
well, not very convincing, perhaps, but to be fair, its not phrased as an argument for current price, just a statement of fact ...
as an argument, though, its probably more convincing than "this tech company is growing at a 50% yoy clip right now and, if it can sustain that growth rate for 5 years, it deserved a p/e over 100."
ORCL says "worst is behind" them. Geez, you could almost tell time by these guys...
eh? i think, only in the way you can tell time by a vcr clock that's always blinking 12:00 ...
although its interesting to note, i think, that stephen roach has become grudgingly modestly bullish for the short term.
get a sharp zaurus. :) my favorite, though i'm a linux user all the way. but full linux os, 96mb ram, 400mhz processor, plus tiny keyboard. ...