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You're missing the point. The end result of capitalism is a single monopoly. We saw it at the beginning of the last century, and it is making a fashionable comeback at the beginning of this century. Corporations have no obligations to the consumer, their only legal obligation is to the shareholder. That's why there are decisions by companies like Firestone that figure 100 deaths is better than 1 million recalls: simple math. Our current system of government is toothless against these corporations. First, corporations make huge contributions to lawmakers. Even if you don't believe this is a "pay-to-play" system, one must admit that all that cash gives AOL/Time-Warner a rather loud megaphone to broadcast its views. Second, corporations have all the rights of humans (except for the Fourth Amendment, I believe), with none of the pesky drawbacks, like mortality.

"Big Media" is a problem because "Big Media" has an interest in what news it lets its consumers hear. Did anyone expect to hear criticism on the Time-Warner holdings about the AOL/Time-Warner merger? Recently, The Boston Globe refused to run an ad critical of Staples. (See FAIR for a summary) The Globe is owned by the same company that owns The LA Times -- both with strong ties to Staples.

This "Corporate Republic bullshit" is not getting old. It's terrifying to see that success is measured only in dollars. It's horrifying to see large corporations spreading their money around, strangling voices of dissent with cash. It's disgusting that people aren't pissed about the narrowing of social dialogue.

realestate.boston.com has a fairly comprehensive search engine, not only to find houses that had recently been listed for sale in the Boston Globe, but also to determine recent real estate sales in the same neighborhood, which may be useful to know when negotiating the price.

The question was asked if the net will replace real estate agents? IMO, probably about as much as it has replaced car salesmen (in other words, it won't). Even if, as a buyer, you don't want to deal with an agent, it's up to the seller of a property whether or not to go through an agent. At least in Boston, a prospective home buyer searching on the net will find that most of the bigger real estate firms (like Century 21, DeWolfe, etc.) have set up their own search engines.

... a cluster of thousands of well connected DeCSS/OT VII/<insert your favorite censored item> mirrors? Or will they firewall off HTML access to those virtual linux boxen? Wouldn't it be ironic if mirrors of this stuff turned up as well? IBM may have unwittingly set up a giant community blackboard here...

The only problem with the Free ISP model was that all the companies that offered it were based on the fantasies of crack-addled minds. That's the only possible explanation. I mean, just because people are accustomed to Free Stuff On The Internet, it does not mean that the Internet itself can be free. One reason that broadcast TV works as a free access model is that there is no need to build out infrastructure to connect each subscriber (unlike the ISP business). Cable TV, OTOH, charges a premium to access each home, because they need...

Infrastructure!

Just like the free ISP's did. What a coincidence! Something like a TV or radio benefits from the Network Effect (or Metcalfe's Law) because the broadcasting to the first TV costs millions of dollars (for the studios, transmitters, etc.), but it costs $0 per set after that. The more sets, the more money the broadcaster makes.

In the ISP business, though, it costs money to support each subscriber - in technical support, fixed wiring costs, phone/modem server costs (for dial-up networks), wholesale DSL costs (for folks like WinFire), and bandwidth. These costs don't magically get cheaper with size - they continue to grow. If you lose $5 per subscriber-month, then you lose $50,000 per month with 10K subscribers, and assuming (generously) that you can reduce your expenses by $3 per subsciber-month at 100,000 subscribers, you're still losing $200,000 per month at that level. It doesn't make sense now, and it didn't make sense then, either.

My local paper (the Boston Globe) has a consumer column that runs on Sundays. A few weeks ago it spotlighted the demise of free ISP's, and featured quotes from several customers of defunct free ISP's who "felt screwed". I tell you, I never laughed so hard reading anything other than comics in a newspaper.

After I recovered my breath, I then wrote a reasoned response to the consumer advocate and explained Economics 101 (which, unfortunately, I think most self-styled consumer advocates either skipped or flunked). Essentially, you can't sell a dollar for 90 cents and make it up in volume. Not surprisingly, I did not hear back directly from him, though he did cite my letter briefly in a follow-up column a few weeks later.

- -Josh Turiel

As an aduni student, it's pretty damn funny to have your prof in the news every other day... of course that means that your prof of the month is Philip...

The Boston Globe chimes in.

You missed a couple of biggies:

• CTO of O'Reilly and Associates
• Author of Perl 5 Interactive Course
• Co-Author of Programming Perl, 3
• QuizMaster of the Open Source gameshow.
• Internet sports polling security expert.
• A better picture from TPC2K

If there's one thing we have plenty of on the Internet, it's words. Most, like this posting, are ephemeral and banal. Some are ephemeral and profound. Almost none are worth paying for. There is simply too much competition from the millions of people who offer their words for free.

The Boston Globe website has a survey up on how many would be willing to pay $30 for Salon. So far, it's just over 5% of respondents.

Paper burns at 451 degrees F. E-books are destroyed at less than half that.

So, he wrote a fucking wish-list of things for other scientists to do. Any schmuck can do that. Goddard actually built something that mattered.

By that rationale, any theoretical work in any field is useless. And men like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein and Hawking were and are just schmucks too.

I didn't say that Goddard's contributions to rocketry and astronautics were useless, I simply pointed out that someone else was working in the field way before he started out and that individual should get due credit. Perhaps you should get your dictionary out and look up the word 'pioneer'.

The original article in the Boston Globe never mentions Tsiolkovsky, even in passing. In fact, the only other achievers that it mentions are Orville and Wilbur Wright and Charles Lindbergh. Coincidence that these men were Americans while Tsiolkovsky was Russian? I don't think so.

It's this kind of neo-revisionist crap that has most Americans believing that they invented everything from the wheel onwards.

http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/globe_tech/at_l arge/030501.html

If the music industry is losing sooooo much money to people pirating music, then why do all the big newspapers GIVE AWAY their news stories on their websites?

Ever heard of:
The Detroit News (My hometown rag)
The London Times
The New York Times
USA Today
The L.A. Times
The Boston Globe

The list goes on and on.

It's obvious to me that these newspapers are generating their own revenue by advertising themselves. Music artists have it easy because the LISTENERS do most of the promotions when they rip/encode to MP3!!!

IMHO, this whole napster thing looks like one ingenious publicity stunt to sell MORE records.

...until you've read this article from boston.com:

"E-Ink Corp. of Cambridge laid off 37 workers last week after shifting the emphasis of its operations from large signs to handheld electronic devices."

"E-Ink sent about three-quarters of the 50 workers who worked on its original product out the door as it moves into the next phase of its development, according to a company spokesman"

In case you haven't heard, the woman did not have Ebola. It looks to be a simple case of malaria combined with a hemorrhagic fever. You can read the story for yourself here.

Harvard scientists say they've stopped light

Where did you get that from? It sounds like (according to the link) he grabbed the source and some pics from the legit site to make a parody on his own site.

Sorta like W tried (and failed) to take down gwbush.com for calling him a crackhead. My guess is the salem police dep't is going to face a huge lawsuit from this guy if his only 'crime' was to make fun on the police.

psxndc

And in the article, they even take into account that the atmosphere and temperature for the crops will have to be controlled, even if the soil can be used as it.

But what about taking care of the atmosphere for the colonists, if they're all eating asparagus? I mean, asparagus is tasty and nutritious, but what about the `side effects'? If asparagus is a staple of Martian colonists, will they all get used to the smell, or will it require more heavy-duty filtering equipment to remove the odor?

I wonder if perhaps foods that don't have the kind of `side effects' asparagus has should be considered first? Beans/legumes may be inevitable, since the colonists will need protein and only vegetarian diets will be feasible, but the side effects of legumes can be kept under control with Beano. To the best of my knowledge, no similar remedy exists for the side effects of asparagus.

-

I think the only fair thing to do is for all of Florida to re-vote. Although I'm sure Bush won't like that because some of those 90,000 Nader voters are bound to switch to Gore in light of recent events.

-

...but it's not in the boston.com link mentioned above...

Unfortunately, like everything else, I am doing this better than Al Gore. According to an article on Boston.com my website is getting more hits, than his.

This proves that I am better than Gore in every way, including corrupting our population.

The spending figures were in the The Boston Globe, from an article about hazing in the Russian military (I can't post the link, slashcode always mangles globe links). The article was written from David Filipov.

Hmm. Perhaps you should read down to the bottom of this article. No wait, never mind, I'll paste it.

Asked about his Internet statement during a visit to California this week, Gore said, "I'm proud of the work that I did do in the Congress to help facilitate the development of the Internet as we know it." But when pressed on his claim of creating it, Gore tried to make a joke.

"The day I made that statement," Gore said, "I was tired because I had been up all night inventing the Camcorder."

Of course, the Boston Globe is managing to smear Gore even there, when they said he tried to make a joke. Now I ask you to look at the very first definition of the word joke: "Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line." This is exactly what Gore was doing - Making a joke. His intent was to evoke laughter or amusement; If you look at the second definition of the verb form from the American Heritage Dictionary (my favorite) you'll see the other thing he was doing, which was speaking in fun.

It's frightening when a junior college dropout like myself seemingly knows more about the English language than the press. Perhaps I should write political commentary; At least I know what words mean. And when I don't, I have the cranial capacity to look them up.

Hmm. Perhaps you should read down to the bottom of this article. No wait, never mind, I'll paste it.

Asked about his Internet statement during a visit to California this week, Gore said, "I'm proud of the work that I did do in the Congress to help facilitate the development of the Internet as we know it." But when pressed on his claim of creating it, Gore tried to make a joke.

"The day I made that statement," Gore said, "I was tired because I had been up all night inventing the Camcorder."

Of course, the Boston Globe is managing to smear Gore even there, when they said he tried to make a joke. Now I ask you to look at the very first definition of the word joke: "Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line." This is exactly what Gore was doing - Making a joke. His intent was to evoke laughter or amusement; If you look at the second definition of the verb form from the American Heritage Dictionary (my favorite) you'll see the other thing he was doing, which was speaking in fun.

It's frightening when a junior college dropout like myself seemingly knows more about the English language than the press. Perhaps I should write political commentary; At least I know what words mean. And when I don't, I have the cranial capacity to look them up.

Did you even read the article? Or the one yesterday that contained this link? Al Gore is credited by many of the leading lights of the technical development of the Internet as the most influential and supportive legislator in its 30-or-so-year history. The "union label" song was a joke, and was received as such by his audience.

Have you done any investigation whatsoever? Or are you content to believe the lies about Al Gore because it's easier than actually thinking about issues (which would be exactly Philip Agre's point)?

An anchor inside and anchor, good one.
Who Invented the what?

http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/daily/10/17/who _invented_internet.html is the real link; hopefully SlashCode won't the "insert random spaces" game with this post.

It is $450 and have 65k colors, compared to the 3c's 256 colors.

First off, Never send a German to do an American's proofreading job.
Secondly, doesn't the IIIc have more than 256 colors? I cite this quote from this AP article from the Business section of the Boston Globe:

"Handspring executives said the 16-bit, $449 Visor Prism will be the best on the market, capable of producing more than 65,000 colors. That's more than sixteen times better than its closest competitor..."

First off, 16-bit color means 65,536 colors. Secondly, the Prism will be 16 times more colors than its competitor (the IIIc). This means that the closest competitor outputs 4096 colors, or 12-bit; not 256 colors, or 8-bit. Furthermore, the cover of the IIIc box and demonstrations of the unit indicate a higher-than-256-colors output.

I watched the launch on space.com. I thought I remembered them having thermal issues with APU number 2, so it was shut down before the other two APUs. Anybody else catch this? When was the last time they did a compete design audit on the shuttle? Granted it's a very complex system, but it seems that they have more problems than I would be comfortable with.

Karl

I'm a slacker? You're the one who waited until now to just sit arround.

• RealChange on NAder.
  
• Boston.com talks about campaign finance and mentions Ralph.
  
• And you can search at Salon, lots of Nader articles.
  

Now, Nat Friedman said in this interview that Helix will develop closed, for-cost convenience additions to Gnome, like a subscription service of a kind. They have a right to do this, and so have you and everybody else who wish to tempt luck.
--

The Boston Globe reports that fiction writer Harlan Ellison is suing Critical Path, owner of Remarq.com, for copyright infringement. Trial set to go to court next month.

Surely this has nothing to do with Remarq going off the air. But it does indicate the depths to which Usenet has fallen. I remember when Usenet used to be civil and productive, and it is a shame that it has become like CB radio.

According to the report, "in June, he [Ellison] won a judgment against Stephen Robertson of California, who admitted posting Ellison's stories online and agreed to pay Ellison's legal fees." Ellison, it says, uses a manual typewriter. Evidently he also has some strong ideas about art and technology.

Imagine your boss giving you the feedback: "Ooops, your poorly worded e-mail got the organization into trouble today..."

Your last jibe about corporate spying could shed more insight into the continued Echelon sabre rattling...

US spy relic has Europe talking quietly

(I doubt the referenced corporate example was from a *random* Echelon interception.)

Great. Just great... i would presume this to be the same US Supreme Court that recently decided that states couldn't decide how to spend their own money, huh?

Just great... we're f*cked...

It seems Halifax, NS has banned scents. See: The Smell Test in The Boston Globe 2000/5/26

No. His picture is on the Globe site
http://www.boston.com/globe/columns/bray/

Self-inflicted wounds

Last week, when the popular Slashdot Web site published the Microsoft document with the copyright warning removed, Microsoft e-mailed Slashdot and threatened to sue. So far, Slashdot has refused to change its ways.

Perhaps it's eager to see whether Microsoft, a company on the verge of being ripped apart for antitrust violations, would be stupid enough to pick a fight over Kerberos.

Self-inflicted wounds

Last week, when the popular Slashdot Web site published the Microsoft document with the copyright warning removed, Microsoft e-mailed Slashdot and threatened to sue. So far, Slashdot has refused to change its ways.

Perhaps it's eager to see whether Microsoft, a company on the verge of being ripped apart for antitrust violations, would be stupid enough to pick a fight over Kerberos.

Most citizens are unaware how the DMCA affects them, or will affect their lives even if "pay-per-use" becomes standard.

Furthermore, the hearings will probably be a love-feast of the media business types. So, if we mere users wish to get our point across and educate the public, we need to do it in a way that not only gets the public's attention but also informs them of the real issues. It's the DMCA that's bad, not necessarily all of copyright law, and whether or not you believe in free software.

Another thing, it's really sad reading this thread right after reading the thread of the development of BSD and how academics at that time were more interested in the truth, and software that worked, instead of just the money and power.

As an example of our failure in one instance of getting our point across, please see yesterday's triumphant "beacon of light" message from the attorney who won the CyberPatrol case--it was decided under the DMCA too.

How nice! The mayor finally did something good for internet access. Let's hope it actually happens.

I didn't see this mentioned anywhere, so I'll throw it out there. Simson Garfinkle writes weekly column for the Boston Globe called Plugged In. If you like his writings, you should probably check it out.

The "second story" the author provided is not the same as the one that was published

The author doctored out the outright dumb comment about resizing icons in the link he provided to the second story, and some other points were modified as well..

Here's the real article that was published and which drew the flames. I think it's unprofessional for a journalist to write an article critical of the Linux community's flaming and not provide a link to the real article which was published.

I certainly don't agree with the flaming, but there's trolls in all aspects of discussion, take a look at the talk.* heirarchy ;)

To classify the actions of a few idiots as the norm is ignorance at its finest.

The term "crackers" is the wrong term for the people that are perpetrating these attacks. The word "vandals" (used here) is much more appropriate. These attacks are more like someone going to the mall and boarding the whole place up so no one can get in, rather than a cracker who would go into the mall and break stuff.

Chris Hagar

The following is a letter I wrote several months ago to the editor of "Performing Songwriter" magazine about a column written by Bill Parsons" about the "Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act" and the "Fairness In Music Licencing Act". I make a number of points that I believe are valid and would like to share them with a larger number of people. The editor never responded.

We've been subscribers to Performing Songwriter for a number of years.

In general, we enjoy the content, especially Janis Ian's column. But one item has always bothered me. Your lack of a letters column. I realize that your publishing schedule and limited editorial space might make this a bit more difficult, but the fact is that you don't do so even on your web site, where space is for all practical purposes unlimited.

This lack has kept me from writing about something else that has annoyed me to no end for quite some time: Bill Parson's "Legislative Update". I realize Parsons is a performing songwriter, but I suspect that is not his primary source of income. He is singing from the RIAA/ASCAP/BMI songbook, and in the interest of full disclosure perhaps you should reveal who he has received a paycheck from this year. My point is, he sounds exactly like a lobbyist. His web page on songs.com states that he is "...a former aide to consumer advocate Ralph Nader". I have no problem with that...just with who is he *currently* aiding?*

Now, I have no problem with political debate, but you have provided no forum for anyone to respond to Parson's ill-considered attacks on the public domain, and passionate defense of the rights of huge publishing empires under the disingenuous guise of "protecting the rights of songwriters".

But this latest, an attack on Eric Eldred is the worst. As the editor, did you bother to visit the Eldred Press web site? Parsons paints Eldred as a commercial publisher, trying to weasel out of paying for work. This is so far from the truth that it verges on libelous.

Here's Eric Eldred's web site:

http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/

Does this look like the commercial entity that Parson's implies? I quote Parsons:

"Eldrich Press is run by Eric Eldred, who publishes old and lesser known books on the internet. To minimize his costs, Eldred focuses mainly on works whose copyrights have fallen into the public domain and are therefore available to the public to use free of charge."

The implication is that Eldred has a commercial interest (a reasonable assumption from someone I assume to be a lobbyist). The truth is, he does not, and never has. Also, the use of the loaded term "fallen into the public domain". Read the Constitution: the public domain is the intended repository of all creative works. Copyright is a limited right, granted for a limited period of time. For 28 years to be extended to 150 years is a mockery.

Perhaps this is hard to grasp, the intention of the framers that everything should naturally fall into the public domain. I find it useful to imagine that Benjamin Franklin had never invented the public lending library. Imagine that tomorrow, someone tried to do so. Imagine the uproar from copyright holders:

"What! You want to use tax dollars to buy our product and let people use it for free?!? You want to put copy machines in thebuilding?!"

This modern day Franklin would never get away with it...they'dcrucify him.

Also, I'd suggest exercising some editorial discretion and rein in Parson's annoying habit of referring to the "(Un)Fairness In Music Licensing Act". It might have been "cute" the first time, but lacking a balancing opposing viewpoint, it's just childish.

And frankly, childishness is the major issue here. It takes children some years to learn to share, and to realize the greater good for all accomplished by sharing. And that's what this is about - the desire of one man (Eldred) to share works that are no longer producing income for their original creators, as the very grown-up framers of the Constitution intended. Here's the passage fromArticle 1:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to theirrespective Writings and Discoveries"

You can find a lot more about this from the following page:

• http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/eldredvreno/
• http://www.boston.com/globe/magazine/8-29/features tory1.shtml

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension act was bought and paid for by a group that contributed more lobbying money than the tobacco companies combined. Parsons claims that it benefits performing songwriters. This is a damned lie. It extends the term of copyright from 50 years after any songwriter is dead and gone to 70 years after their heart has stopped beating. In what possible way does this benefit any songwriter? That, in the unlikely event one of your songs remains popular for 70 years after you're dead, your great-grandchildren rather than your grandchildren will be on the gravy train? And it is a nice train..."Rhapsody In Blue" sold to United Airlines for a cool half-million - providing a lot of money to use to ensure the train keep right on running.

Parsons is appealing to songwriters, none of whom will receive the any benefit from it, that this act is a good thing. Do you believe that there is some great social good accomplished by making a few "trust fund babies" that outweighs the vast social good accomplished by having a large and thriving public domain? Because, that's the ultimate goal of the copyright extensionists. The elimination of the public domain.

Try to imagine a world where Stephen Foster's songs had never entered the public domain. Public domain keeps songs alive, by making it easy for publishers to keep them in print, to provide a world of tunes that songwriters can use to embroider into their own work.

Because the truth is, songwriters do not create melodies. They discover them. In western music, there are a finite number of possible melodies, even fewer in the popular keys. Every songwriter "creates" a melody at some time, only to later find out that Mozart had used it while he was still in diapers. Try to imagine that the basic 4-bar blues riff was copyrighted; that's the world that Parsons wants for us.

A good example of how overly long copyright periods inhibit artists: Kate Bush wrote a song using Molly Bloom's speech from "Ulysses". The song fit the words beautifully and it was nearly ready from release when the Joyce estate refused permission. No amount of bargaining could get Joyce's grandson to relent, and Kate had to "re-write the speech" into her song "The Sensual World". James Joyce didn't refuse Kate permission, his grandson did. He's proven to be the bane of Joyce scholars his entire life, and now will for generations to come.

There's a lot more I could write about this, but the fact that you have no avenue for your readers to respond, to present the opposing side of a political lobbying effort, makes my effort seem pointless. I can only hope that you'll make an effort to see the entire picture, and not just the one that some people are paid to promote. When looking at political issuse, the phrase "follow the money" is apt: look to see which side has a large amount of money to promote it's effort; the side that has less money is the one more likely to have the public's best interest at heart.

According to this article in the Boston Globe, a Y2K-related failure happened yesterday when credit card swipe machines in the UK failed, because they tried to look ahead 4 days and when they "compared Dec. 28, 1999 with Jan 1, 2000, they failed to function because they read the date as Jan. 1, 1900". Oops.

Moral of the story? When do the problems actually start happening? They've started happening already. Hopefully most of them will be mostly minor problems, though? (Although if you were a merchant in the UK, what happened yesterday wasn't minor. Some of the merchants are screaming for blood, and are thinking about sueing the bank who made the terminals.)

I blasted(kindly) the Boston Globe through their feedback form about their biased and erroneous article.

I blasted(kindly) the Boston Globe through their feedback form about their biased and erroneous article.

The Boston Globe is currently running a six-part series about this. "Choosing Naia" follows a couple whose child has a bunch of health problems (hole in the heart, Down's Syndrome, etc.) from the day they find out about their disabilities. If anything, it puts a human face on some rather esoteric debate.

I am fighting this! There will be a hearing in Cambridge, Mass on January 10, 2000.

Injured geek wins against Mattel, Mattel still retaliates!