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SCO Announces Plan to Increase Revenue 248

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the time-to-close-the-doors-and-start-over dept.
Devistater writes "Yesterday, SCO announced a new MLM called "Me Inc." using the EdgeClick platform in an attempt to boost sales. One of the apps on the Edgeclick site does mass text messages to cell phones. From the article: 'Becoming a Me Inc. Sales Agent requires no technical skills or training and no investment other than a smart phone and a subscription to Me Inc. digital services. With these two simple things, a sales agent can earn up to hundreds or thousands of dollars per sale in commissions and subscription annuities generated by each account they sign up.' Watch out for an increase in spam, SCO style. In the same press release [PDF], SCO also trademarks 'Me.' Groklaw also has a few details on their site."
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SCO Announces Plan to Increase Revenue More

SCO Announces Plan to Increase Revenue

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  • Additional info on the story (Score:3, Informative)

    by Devistater ( 593822 ) * <devistaterNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Tuesday February 28, 2006 @07:36PM (#14822344)
    Are we going to start have to mention that SCO owns us when we talk about me, myself and I? I think that if anyone has a trademark claim on ME it would be microsoft lol. (you can see the TM symbol next to "Me" in the SCO press release).

    Some direct quotes from the SCO press release.

            "Becoming a Me Inc. Sales Agent requires no technical skills or training and no investment other than a smart phone and a subscription to Me Inc. digital services. With these two simple things, a sales agent can earn up to hundreds or thousands of dollars per sale in commissions and subscription annuities generated by each account they sign up."

            "One of my main goals as the mayor of Provo City is to use technology to bless the lives of Provo residents, and Me Inc. is simply and effectively allowing me to do that," said Lewis K. Billings, mayor of Provo, Utah. "Me Inc. is an incredible technology, one which I plan to use continually throughout my term as it dramatically enhances my ability to personally reach constituents."

    BTW, /. editors removed a link from my story. I'll put that and a few more here:
    MLM= Multi-Level Marketing:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing [wikipedia.org]
    Pyramid Scheme:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme [wikipedia.org]

    Thats basically what SCO is doing, a MLM/pyramid scheme.
    Whats funny is that SCO's is a Utah based company, and Utah is where a huge percentage of MLM stuff originates.
    I've even heard that one of the ppl who was on SCO's board was involved with starting a MLM a while back so this may be where Darl got the idea

    Most MLM/Pyramid schemes are outright scams and illigal. Some few are not, if they actually sell a legitimate product. They are also the cause of a huge amount of spam.

    BTW: In case there's any doubt, I'm NOT advocating this. I hate spam, scams and schemes. I just think its a stark example of how far SCO has fallen, and I want people to be aware of what shady things they are trying to do.
    • Obviously it would be much better to own You. than it would be to own Me.
    • Actually, it's 'Me Inc.' they are claiming copyright on. Still dumb, just felt like being clear.
    • MLMs and pyramid schemes are two different things. To start with, MLMs are legal why pyramids are not. MLMs provide a "payoff" immediately with every sale (otherwise known as a "net profit on sales"), pyramid schemes won't give you one (or only give you a token) until you've managed to gain a certain number of filled downstream levels. MLMs send only a fraction of profit upstream, pyramids send everything upstream. Oh! And while you might not like some of their pushy salesmen, MLMs actually have useful prod
      • While MLMs have a negative reputation because of their proselytizing ways, they are not in themselves illegal, unethical or immoral.

        They may not be illegal, but they are often involved in behavior that I would call "unethical". I know of one such MLM that offered one of my relatives a "Job", and had them show up for a series of "interviews" that were really sales presentations. They make the "interviewee" give all their personal information and many references in order to get this "job". Then they turn
      • I agree with both you and your other responder. I want to give my experience in the most recent MLM I've participated in, which I almost didn't since I had done one or two before and learned my lesson.

        This one is called Pre-Paid Legal. It's basically "legal insurance", in that you pay $27 a month and get complete access to attorneys. Not everything is free, but if it's not covered you get a 25% discount on the hourly rate which means generally after less than the first hour (per month of course) you're

      • I disagree. There might be actual products for sale in a MLM means that a very large percentage of people will lose money. This is not because they are lazy or "quitters" but simply because of mathematical certainty. It is next to impossible to recruit hundreds in an already saturated market and sell them products which are no better or cheaper than those from a store. As the people at the bottom of the heap always outnumber the people above them it means the majority lose.

        Besides most profits in an MLM d

    • "One of my main goals as the mayor of Provo City is to use technology to bless the lives of Provo residents, and Me Inc. is simply and effectively allowing me to do that," said Lewis K. Billings, mayor of Provo, Utah. "Me Inc. is an incredible technology, one which I plan to use continually throughout my term as it dramatically enhances my ability to personally reach constituents."

      A reference here is in order... For the argument, let's take it at face value...

      The real story here isn't that SCO == ca
  • And started to dig. Now that profits through extended litigation seem to be a non-starter I guess a pyramid scheme is the next best thing. After this they can probably go ahead and drop all pretense and just start defrauding people directly.

  • What the fuck? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Tuesday February 28, 2006 @07:41PM (#14822398)
    A few years ago, someone described SCO as having gone "completely mad" and asked "what the fuck".

    I'll skip a bit - and basically cut and paste the core of my response, which was to say they'd gone far past "completely utterly loony" and "what the fucking fuck fuck", and that the proper question was...

    Is SCO completely, utterly, apeshit, goatshit and batshit, 649-megabytes-short-of-a-Debian-ISO, stark, slavering, buggo?!? Fuck! Are the fucking fuckers fucking well fucked? What the fuck? What the fucking fuck fuck? What the figgety fucking fuckity fuck fuck?

    In addition to receiving the award for The Most Gratuitous Use of the Word "Fuck" in a Slashdot Posting, I now hereby ask for the individual who described the Grand Canyon as a "ditch" to step aside and yield the Understatement of the Century award.

    I rule. Me, unincorporated.

  • SCO fills a badly needed void!

  • EdgeClick platform (Score:3, Interesting)

    by generic-man ( 33649 ) on Tuesday February 28, 2006 @07:45PM (#14822436) Homepage Journal
    It seems like they're also rolling out a new sort of platform:

    'At the core of the EdgeClick platform is an innovative service-oriented architecture (SOA) server called an "edge processor" that connects many types of end-point devices -- including mobile phones, PCs and others -- to robust digital network services for communications, collaboration, control, information access and transactional processing. Integrated with this technology are facilities for automated service branding, monetization and business federation. These facilities make seamless the development, marketing, provisioning and billing of high-value, high-impact digital services.'

    The blurb spun this as "mass text messages to cell phones." Are there any positive uses for this, like informing schoolchildren about snow days and such?
    • https://www.edgeclickpark.com/meinc/app [edgeclickpark.com]
      My bad, its not text message spam as my submitted article stats. Its pre-recorded phone call spam
      "Shout
      Use Shout for broadcasting any kind of voice message or pre-recorded audio message up to one minute long. Announcements, updates, alerts, instructions, motivational messages--whatever gets the job done. "

      Whats ironic, is that most types of automatic robotic advertising is illigal already.

      As for school closings, thats pretty well publicized right now on websites and on
      • My bad, its not text message spam as my submitted article stats. Its pre-recorded phone call spam

        Well thank goodness. Regular spam is bad enough, text message spam even worse, but text message spam from SCO? Icky.
      • My double bad. I re-read the press release:
        "The Shout digital service allows users to communicate personally with groups of various sizes via a text or audio message created quickly and simply from a smart phone."
        So mass text msgs OR mass audio msgs. So I was partially correct in the original story :)

    • My new company has been doing this for a while. I don't think they're going to get companies like Cingular, Alltel, Palm, BET, and a bunch of others to change platforms for the sake of a MLM gambit.

      Motricity [motricity.com]

    • It sounds to me like they've reinvented the so-called "electrical connector" and/or "wireless adapter".
    • Amber alerts.
  • I can't seem to find the place on the SCO website where I enter my E-Gold payment to "invest" in their program... It IS is HYIP...right?
  • "Yesterday, SCO announced a new MLM called "Me Inc."

    Who also read this as "Multi level marketing"
    • Thats the idea, its a MLM. Originally that word was linked to multi level marketing wiki article in my submission. /. editors removed that.
    • What does it mean then? TFA offered no clues after my half-interested skimming.
      • Well it was a press release, what did you expect? :)
        Anyway, yes, MLM meant multi level marketing when I submitted and I had a wiki link from the word MLM to it in my submission. It got removed somewhere along the way. Here's the link:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing [wikipedia.org]
        It looks like SCO is announcing some sorta wireless thingy where you can use a smartphone (dunno how exact that differs from every cell phone I've seen that can send msgs) to send messages. Only problem is, they are setting it
      • here's how it works parent company sets up a sale plan'
        25% profit +
        if sales is over $300, 3% bonus
        if sales is over $900, 6% bonus
        if sales is over $1200, 9% bonus
        first guy sells $301, he makes $84.28; then he gets 3 other to do the same, they each get $84.28 from the first guy just like they would from the parent company, but first guy now gets $1204 in sales so he get $409.36 and pays out 253.84 leaving an extra $337.12.

        As long as the dealers follow the rules, nobody gets hurt, a few make a big chunk of cha
    • Who also read this as "Multi level marketing"

      Everyone.
    • I dont' know about you guys, but I was ready to believe SCO was about to lump itself in with Amway. I mean, they're at the bottom, why not just fornicate with whomever happens to be there too?

  • Hi, I need your help (Score:3, Funny)

    by Devistater ( 593822 ) * <devistaterNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Tuesday February 28, 2006 @07:47PM (#14822455)
    My name is Dalr McBrid and I've from Nigera. My company has $20,000,000 overseas that we wnt to brang to Ameracas to invest. We will give 10% to anyone who wills help we transfer it.
  • "Adoption rates of these devices is expected to continue..."
    "The Utah Jazz used the Shout service to record message from a player..."

    In other news Unga the caveman was said to have remarked "Unga no like me SCO no more!"

    Or something like that. I can hardly wait for the flushed, quivering press release announcing a partnership with Amway/Quixtar/Pampered Chef next.

  • Let me guess. Does it involve a hidden volcano island for a lair, hijacking nuclear warheads and sending a cryptic message to NATO?

    • This is fiction. I made it up. Honest.

      One day, the SCO execs were watching "Under Siege" as they waited to start one of their quarterly conference calls. As their quest for revenue reached a new level of desperation, they had an idea: Steal a battleship and then auction off the nuclear weapons on E-bay. But a number of problems emerged, the top 10 of which are shown here:

      10. There are no battleships left in US Navy service
      9. Even if they found a battleship, existance of nukes on board is not guaranteed
  • I guess the company is totaly dead now. Heh.

  • Obviously there's some serious glue-sniffing going on in Lindon.

    Darl: "Let's see. We're a UNIX company. We're taking on the world in litigation that will very likely fail. What we need is fresh, new, out of the box thinking!"

    Dude from the Mail Room: "Umm.. Mr. McBride... umm.. I have an idea. Why confine ourselves to pissing people off by suing them? I read an article about this guy in Florida who is like, mega-rich because he is a spammer. See, I think we could make stuff that would help people get ric

  • uhhh... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) * on Tuesday February 28, 2006 @07:55PM (#14822528)
    What is this, a Penny Arcade strip?
  • Please click here [sco.com] for more info (LOLZ, I aint a spam bot)
  • when I first read the article summary, I thought it said:

    "SCO announced a new MLM called "Me Inc." suing the EdgeClick platform"

    But now I see that instead they're going after cell-sms-spam, that's much more on the up-and-up
    • I hereby move that we place a moratorium of no less than 5 years on all "When I first read that I thought it said..." posts. All in favor?
  • Amazing how they seem to be doing everything possible to get people to hate them.
    • > Amazing how they seem to be doing everything possible to get people to hate them.
      It is the other way round: Once nobody likes you because you pissed off basically everybody in the target group, you don't care anymore about image and can do business nobody in their right mind would do otherwise.
  • "We will save thousands of dollars a month" - Joe Chiavetta, CFO, Musco Food Corp

    SCO loses millions ever quarter then creates a press release about a product able to save a company a few thousand dollars a month? And the product is a complete departure from everything else going on at SCO. wtf!
  • Do YOU want to have financial independance, to be your own boss?! Well SCO, the famous inventors of Linux, has a great new plan for you!

    Just text [sexy voice]Spam[/sv] to 44520!

    [steriotype-jock]I LOVE getting all the money I could ever want, and I get all the hot chicks now![/sj>]br>
    [fat black woman]Now I can finally pay off my $100000 in debts, all because of SCO's system! Thanks SCO![/fbw]

    Thats right folks text [sv]spaaam[/sv] to 44520!
    • gawt' damn I gotsta git me summadat SCO. It werked fer my brouther darrel an' his brother darrel too and now I seeins how it's werkin fer eferyone else two. They got this here real' purty ladylike voice tu'.. gawt' damn sco... git me some...yup.
  • Seriously... let them go away...
  • Slashdot nerd, Comatose51, announces plans to increase frequency of getting laid by hot women.

    In the press release, Comatose51, spoke about his new Laid Me technology, which all Slashdot nerds can use to get hot women to have sex with them. At the core of the Laid Me platform is an innovative service-needed architecture (SNA) server called a "fallus" that connects to many types of end-point devices. To enable and support the rapid development and growth of Laid Me digital services, Comatose51 has introd

  • I have a pre-paid cell phone plan that charges me 10 cents for each text message, both incoming and outgoing.
    So, can I send an invoice to SCO for all the unwanted incoming messages I'll be paying for out of my pre-paid minutes?

    Just who the hell are these people?
  • Are they making news announcements in the hopes that anyone with any sense at all is already shorting their stock and that there some suckers out there who believe that there is no such thing as bad publicity and who start buying up SCO stock just in the hopes that being unscrupulous will pay off for SCO?
  • 'nuff said.
  • up for an hour and a half, and nothing has been moderated above 2.
  • Let's see, a Microsoft funded front company is looking for "partners" to spam cell phones? I can't wait till Bill passes on his shit list to these losers and all sorts of text message spam starts showing up on my cell phone by "accident". It will be easy to ignore because no one I know ever sends text messages.

  • Buzzword o' meter pegged! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Devistater ( 593822 ) * <devistaterNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Tuesday February 28, 2006 @09:23PM (#14823126)
    Anyone else read some of the press release? Look at the kinds of buzz word/marketing speak they put in there:

    "Innovative Technology Platform"
    "a Transactional Portal to Support the Entire Digital Services 'Ecosystem'"
    "an innovative service-oriented architecture"
    "automated service branding"
    "business federation"
    "high-value, high-impact digital services"
    "service grid network architecture"
    "suite of rich mobility services"
    "web-enabled desktop" (lots of non web enabled ones out there I guess)
    "easy-to-use mobile polling service"
    "dramatically enhances my ability to personally reach constituents."
    "effective tool in increasing the communication and collaboration"
    "The edge processor creates a secure environment for information access and control by off-loading information from lightweight mobile devices and performing the computational heavy lifting in a secure and stable environment. This added layer of processing power and security enables smart phones and other mobile devices to be the high-powered productivity tools that everyone wants."
    "Distributed EdgeClick edge processors communicate automatically with each other, forming a service grid network for flexible, secure, robust, deployment and management of software, servers, and other infrastructure assets. "
    "The EdgeClick edge processor will also be available soon for on-premise deployment by enterprise and third-party solution partners, thus enabling them to securely extend existing business application functionality to mobile devices such as smart phones and PDAs."
    "SCO owns the core UNIX operating system, originally developed by AT&T/Bell Labs and is the exclusive licensor to Unix-based system software providers.
    Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide network of thousands of resellers and developers. SCO Global Services provides reliable localized support and services to partners and customers."

    That last I threw in there for laughs.

    My eyes are glazing over, I cant tell how many more there are in that single press release.

    BTW, is it bad if I can understand most of this market speek?

    Bonus for those who read this far, a market speak web economy phrase generator:
    http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html [dack.com]
    Some examples:
    productize frictionless deliverables
    incubate proactive action-items
    exploit best-of-breed convergence
    • BTW, is it bad if I can understand most of this market speek?

      Yes, it is bad. Very bad. Very, very, bad.

      Or to put it in market speek:

      The synergy of the end user's comprehension of the management communications could lead to negative consequences.
  • ...is it April 1 already? Man, I hate April Fool's Day on Slashdot...
  • To be fair, I think we must pause to appreciate the amount of techno crud in the press release. I think of myself as a person who can comprehend pretty well, and cut through the distracting text meant to hide the reality, but this document is a master work of saying nothing.

    I mean, it is hard to pin down exactly what they have as a shipping product and what they have as an idea. It this as simple as a stadard shopping cart backend with the ability to handly multiple commisions? Is it truly a sales trac

  • Becoming a Me Inc. Sales Agent requires no technical skills or training

    So why would you be a Sales Agent when you could go for CEO with the same skill set?

  • Isn't this illegal? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday February 28, 2006 @09:49PM (#14823267) Homepage
    I thought it was illegal to send mass messages to cell phones since it's owner pay.

    For the same reason it's supposed to be illegal to spam a fax machine.

    SCO needs some serious beatings if they're starting to get into MLMs which mass-message cell phones.

    • Such messages violate the existing law, and the recepient is entitled to a mandatory minimum of $500 per message.

      Acacia Mortgage in Arizona tried this.. adn they are facing several million dollars in court under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act [tcpalaw.com] ("TCPA"). It states at 47 USC 227(b):
      • It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States or
        any person outside the United States if the recipient is within
        the United States--
        (A) to make any call (other than a call
      • If taking my original vague query and turning it into specific case law isn't deserving of a couple of +1 informative, I don't know what the hell is.

        Cheers to the respondant. =)
  • Nooobody excpexts the SCO Revenue Increase!
  • Most companies are past the "planning stage".

    But it's nice to see them entering the marketplace.
  • Except they should have called it "MeFirst!".

  • SCO is making much of their new Service oriented Arcitechture (SOA). Someone posted the following AC to the Groklaw page on this:

    SOA = STD in Dutch
    Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 27 2006 @ 10:31 AM EST
    SOA = Sexueel Overdraagbare Aandoening, translated: Sexually Transferable Disease..
    Something you definitively do not want, hehe..

  • Street Cents (a Canadian television show) has had the name "Me, Inc" for a while, here's a guide [www.cbc.ca] where they use it, it's basically people starting their own little business
  • ...be applied to Free Open Source Software.

    Thought its not quite MLM..

    http://threeseas.net/mind/CDM.html [threeseas.net]
    though I didn't include a date in the text, the file is dated OCT 14 1998 on teh server.

    and there is this too:

    http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/ms g/d46560fa21fbc352?hl=en& [google.com]
  • Next thing you know, you'll see SCO bumming for loose change in the subway. Ah, I'm going to miss these amusing SCO articles. But at least I'll have the <company name here> rootkit stories to look forward to.

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