feed on feeds - 2012/02/02 - items 0 to 15

itwbennett writes "The debate over enforcement of the GPL flared up again this week when Red Hat kernel developer Matthew Garrett wrote in a blog post that Sony is looking to rewrite BusyBox to sidestep the GPL. Which is a perfectly legal undertaking. But it raises the question: 'Is there social pressure within the Linux kernel community to not undertake GPL compliance action?' writes blogger Brian Proffitt. 'This may not be nefarious: maybe people just would rather not bother with enforcing compliance. Better, they may argue, to just let the violation go and get on with developing better code.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I just read a piece on Reuters with advice for new Facebook millionaires, that is for the most part, totally right on.

I have some of my own advice, based on experience.

1. First and foremost, remember who you were before the money truck hit you. You're still that person. The money didn't change you -- even if it did change your circumstances.

2. The most important difference in your circumstances is that you now own yourself. It's the most important thing you can own, in fact it's the only luxury that's really worth it. You can only sleep in one bed every night, drive one car, eat one dinner, etc. There's a limit to how much happiness consumption can buy you. After a while your posessions start owning you. A cliche, yes -- but also true.

A picture named moneytruck.gif 3. Practically speaking, the lockup period probably won't prevent you from selling stock. A lot of reporters don't seem to understand the purpose of the lockup period is to enable the managers of the IPO to control the flow of stock to the market. That's important if there's limited demand for the stock, which often happens with smaller companies that aren't so famous. It almost certainly will not apply to Facebook. The underwriters can release you from the lockup if they have a buyer for the stock and they don't think it'll screw up the price for the other shareholders. They want to help you sell your stock because during the lockup they get all the commissions. After the lockup ends you can sell any way you want, and that can mean no commission for them.

4. Brokerage commissions are negotiable. That goes for buying and selling.

5. Have you ever seen The Graduate where the old guy tells Dustin Hoffman to go into plastics. I'm going to say something like that now, so listen up. Diversify. It makes no sense to have your entire net worth in Facebook stock. Look at it this way, if you had $10 million in cash, would you put it all into Facebook? Of course not, no matter how good the company is, it's too risky. The same goes if you got lucky and got all this Facebook stock just for coming into work for a few years. Sell that Facebook stock and get other stocks and bonds, and in this economy, keep quite a bit in US dollars.

6. A good approach to selling is to sell a certain percentage of your stock every quarter no matter whether the price is up or down. That takes the stress out of it, and gets you the average of the price over time. On the other hand, if the broker calls you up some day and says he can get you a hundred million for all of your stock, and you feel like taking it -- take it! There's nothing like trading a risky high tech stock for good old American dollars. They may have downgraded our debt but it's still the safest form of money out there. (And remember the importance of #2. If you can get transcendental about your money, it doesn't matter whether you have $100 million or $10 million. You'll still be able to buy anything you could want, as if being able to buy luxuries was what life was about, it's not.)

7. I remember learning that a friend, before I had my first windfall, was actually a rich guy who had sold a bunch of patents and was worth tens of millions. Yet he lived in a middle class home in a middle class neighborhood. He drove a modest car. He didn't act like a rich guy. That made a huge impression on me. Not enough to save me from the excesses of being a nouveau riche myself. I bought the 750IL and a mini-estate in Woodside. Later I learned to scale down my lifestyle, and I was happier! I was raised a middle-class guy and have middle-class values. Living like a rich guy is not so good, at least for me.

8. One of the things you don't anticipate when you choose to live rich is that you're going to end up spending a lot of your time with people who work for you. My friend from #7 had it right. Much better to spend time with friends. People who like you because of who you are not for what you have.

9. What is money good for? Distance. It buys you distance from everyone else. But normal human beings like to be near other human beings. We are a social species. So not only can't money buy you happiness, it can buy you a lot of isolation and that's not happy. You'll likely be happier living in the middle of the noisy messy world than all alone at the end of a long driveway in the middle of nowhere.

I agree with the theme of the Reuters piece. Don't expect the money to change you. To the extent that it does, you will probably have to unwind those changes later, so it's better overall not to make them in the first place.

En buss och en personbil krockade i området Bomhus i Gävle vid 21-tiden.

First time accepted submitter dcbrianw writes "A non-surgical procedure that treats joint pain involves removing stem cells from a patient's blood and reinserting them into the joint. The facility conducting these procedures resides in Colorado, but because it orders equipment to perform the procedure from outside of Colorado, the FDA claims it must regulate this process and it that it can classify stem cells as a drug. This issue opens the debate of what the FDA, or other regulatory bodies, may regulate within each of our own bodies." Quick: Name five activities with no possible plausible effect on interstate commerce.