New SCO SEC Filing Reveals Accounting Irregularities

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According to the new
8K filed at the SEC


On February 28, 2005, on management’s recommendation, the
Audit Committee of the Board of Directors of The SCO Group,
Inc. (the “Company”) concluded, and KPMG LLP, the Company’s
independent auditors agreed, that, due to certain
accounting errors, the Company’s financial statements for
the quarters ending January 31, 2004, April 30, 2004 and
July 31, 2004 should no longer be relied upon and should be
restated.

Specifically


For the first, second and third quarters, the Company
expects to reclassify amounts related to certain shares of
common stock that the Company may have issued under its
equity compensation plans without complying with the
registration requirements of federal and applicable state
securities laws from permanent equity to temporary equity
in the amounts of approximately $272,000, $231,000, and
$557,000, respectively. The Company may make a rescission
offer to holders of certain shares and expects an amount to
be classified as temporary equity until the completion of a
rescission offer or until the Company no longer has an
obligation to the holders of such shares.


For the first quarter and the second quarter, the Company
expects to reclassify accrued dividends related to the
Company’s previously issued Series A and Series A-1
Convertible Preferred Stock from equity to current
liabilities in the amounts of approximately $879,000 and
$1,619,000, respectively. In October 2003, the Company
issued shares of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock in
connection with its $50,000,000 private placement, which
shares were subsequently exchanged for and replaced with
shares of Series A-1 Convertible Preferred Stock. When the
Company repurchased all outstanding shares of Series A-1
Convertible Preferred Stock in July 2004, the Company’s
obligation to pay dividends on such shares terminated. The
accrued dividends were never paid and ultimately were
recorded in equity upon the completion of the repurchase
transaction. In addition, the dividends were properly
captured in the calculation of earnings per share in the
periods above.


For the first and second quarter, the Company expects to
restate approximately $233,000 of stock-based compensation
expense which was recorded in the second quarter, but
incurred in the first quarter. There will be no change to
the total stock-based compensation expense for the fiscal
year ended October 31, 2004.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..

Political Paedophile Murder Mystery in South Australia

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It’s very disturbing. Apparently a small number of men have made allegations that someone who is possibly a serving South Australian politician is a paedophile to the Speaker of the South Australian Parliament, and now three of them have been murdered. The Speaker, Peter Lewis, was gathering evidence on the systematic abuse of wards of the state when he came across this information.

Read this ABC news story and then this story and then browse Google News’s related links.

Entire Lawyer Firm Ordered to Take Ethics Class

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Here’s a refreshing story, courtesy of Groklaw, a US Federal judge in California has ordered an 80 strong firm of lawyers to take 6 hours of ethics training for "repeated misstatements of the record, frivolous objections to plaintiff’s statement of facts, and repeated mischaracterizations of the law.". It would appear that Elaine M. Yama, the lead on the case (whom the judge singled out for 20 hours of training) is no longer with the firm, see the Google Cache for the old page about her.

The full court judgement is available here as PDF.

I wonder if we could get the same for politicians too ?

A Memory of Childhood – Cefn Onn Railway Halt

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When I was young, my parents used to take myself and my brother out to Cefn Onn Park to the north of Cardiff. Back then it was a drive over the old bailey bridge over the River Taff between Llandaff and Llandaff North, through Whitchurch, past the tax offices and the (now gone) Monico cinema and out into the countryside.

I remember playing in the snow there, walking around, playing hide and seek in the bushes and walking around the ponds and playing in the summer house.

But one of the most mysterious parts was the railway halt right in the middle of the park. I remember seeing trains stop there and people getting out and walking through the park, even though there wasn’t a house in sight. I guess at the weekend some of them were out to walk in the park, but some of them would have lived nearby and used it regularly to get to and from the city. There were also the tunnels that went through the mountain to Caerphilly/Caerfilli (with its wonderful castle), and very occasionally you’d hear this rumble before a train appeared from nowhere. I remember the footbridge that you could walk across to get to the other platform, high above the tracks, and the long, bramble bounded paths that ran down to the quiet platforms. There were white picket fences and gates, green tinged with moss, and a feeling of better times that had passed. I guess this is one of the things that stirred my (still passionate) interest in history.

Now all this has come flooding back through stumbling onto a tribute page by Mike Slocombe about Cefn Onn Halt with some lovely photos of the station at various times, including the two I’ll link to below; one showing it in its hayday and another as I remember it as a child. Mike also has a wonderful 360ยบ panorama shot of the station (Java required), including the footbridge as I remember it, before the walkway was removed.

Cefn Onn Halt in its hayday
Cefn Onn Halt in its hayday – Photo (c) S. Rickard

Cefn Onn Halt as I remember it from childhood
Cefn Onn Halt as I remember it from childhood – Photo (c) Mike Slocombe