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He's just trying to get some good publicity after the last time he was in the papers. In a rare triumph of grass-roots activism across the political spectrum, his plan to deregulate media ownership rules was denied by Congress. To save his political career, he's trying to do consumer-friendly things now.

Then, in the summer of 2002, Apple dropped the price of the 5Gb model to $299, made the 10Gb model $399 and introduced a 20 Gb model for $499.

At this point, the iPod was selling like hotcakes even though its average price was $400.

Now they've introduced the smaller, lighter, COLORED (oooh!) 4Gb iPod mini for $50 less than the older 5Gb iPod.

These are going to sell great now, but just wait until Apple drops the price on the iPod mini. I predict that we'll see them at $199 by this summer, and then EVERYONE will have one, including me.

There was a Gartner article warning of an increase in "hacking" activity from programmers who layed off due to the dot com crash.

I can't find the original Gartner report. But this article carries the gist of the report:

...insider hacking, which accounts for 60% to 80% of corporate computer crimes, according to consultants such as Gartner Group.

As layoffs at technology and manufacturing companies continue to climb, more and more disgruntled former employees are attempting to damage or break into their former employers' networks.

Why no concern about an increase of "hacking" due to programmers losing their job's to off-shore out sourcing?

Business Week had a good article on this a while back. Problem solved. The water will seek its own level.

FedEx is mentioned in the original question. I thought it was interesting that they just bought Kinkos (the copy company, not the clown) for 2.4 gigabucks.

It would be easy for FedEx to sit on its laurels and continue to scrape more bucks out of the traditional shipping market. This purchase, while risky, shows that they've got management that can think outside the box. Granted, UPS is a step ahead with their UPS Store locations (formerly Mail Boxes Etc.). But as several articles have already pointed out (see Google News), FedEx may now be positioned to remain relevant even if the traditional "send a document for $10 bucks" business model goes away.

Back to the poster's original question, "which internet business models they believe are going to succeed?" If I knew, I would be rich, but it's clear that the winners will be those with the smarts to extend their "business models" like the FedEx example -- as opposed to either too-slow companies like Commodore (Atari, too), or all-you-can-eat monsters like Tyco.

I work at an overseas CMM Level 5 IT company in Korea that started offshoring recently and have been working with a team of guys that we brought from India. Though I just started with the company as a software developer, I almost immediately became a member of their team and a full-time interpreter -- though I was much closer to being a manager as many people at the company prefer not to deal with them.

I can't say much positive about their attitudes and work either, though I don't want to stereotype all ethnic Indians. Whenever I visit their cubicles, they are browsing the web or chatting with their buddies rather than completing their assigned work. I wasn't receiving any respect from certain members of the team, mainly because I had fewer years of experience in software development. However, it certainly did not appear that they had the four years of experience in Java cited on their resumes. I was reviewing their code and fixing major logic errors in code and the grammar mistakes and typos made in the comments. This was work they could have easily done themselves in the very lax 3 week deadline they had to fix their 3-5 test cases. Instead, I spent two weeks fixing their code and writing the documentation that they had "written". I asked one guy to fix a mistake in two of his test cases, pointing out the error and explaining how he could fix it, and he got really angry at me and sent me e-mails about me being the newbie. Since I was not the manager he refused to change his code.

My co-worker has been also working in India for a few months and he does not appreciate the attitudes of certain programmers either. Some of them decided to change some of the code our company had written causing several bugs to appear in the build. None of the developers would take blame for it, though it was probably obvious who had changed it from the PVCS logs.

These experiences have led me to decide to transfer departments and work with people that have experience that actually counts, even if they are not involved in software development (which I hoped to pursue by finding an overseas job and obtaining experience with the company).

There are two questions companies should consider when making the decision to offshore (outsource) to India which directly relate to cost efficiency:

1) Do we fully understand their culture and will conflicts in culture present a problem? In other words, how much additional money and resources will be spent on interpreting and managing their work, making sure that they maintain a certain level of quality?

2) Are we just outsourcing to become trend-followers, blindly following the reocmmendations of McKinsey, Gartner, and Accenture to find cheap labor in India and China? Do we know exactly how much domestic labor will cost in current times (older BW article)?

It's my opinion on getting them to be efficient workers is that you need an Indian motivator/manager who understands their culture very well, is older than them and has a more impressive resume. Then, have someone from your company who is very knowledgeable about business processes and the related field, in this case software development, communicate the requirements to the Indian manager.

My manager has been assessing the quality of their work to present to our CTO whose initiative was to increase our offshoring in India. Does anyone have a good way to measure the the value of a software developer which includes factors such as cultural differences and communication problems?

I discovered long ago that Yahoo and other news consolidators have the habit of trimming articles, sometimes with severe consequences in apparent intent. I haven't compared the 2, but here's the original article.

Just in case you forgot to read the top of the page...

Thanks to an anonymous reader for suggesting abstruse information on Ultima creator Richard Garriott's mysterious new MMORPG, Tabula Rasa, as referenced in a recent Slashdot Games post dealing with Korean MMO behemoth NCSoft, who purchased the nascent game for "$33.4 million in stock and cash" back in 2001. An online chat transcript from early 2003 noted that "many people that worked on [cancelled MMO Ultima Online 2] are now with NCsoft working on Tabula Rasa", and more recently, a Richard Garriott lecture at the Austin Game Conference mentioned that the game "will most likely utilize a massively multiplayer metaworld for player matching and instantiated spaces for smaller groups of matched players", but almost nothing about the game has yet been revealed. The clearest indication yet comes from several recently-posted pieces of concept art, as noted earlier this week, showing an alien planet called Eera as the main setting, and mentioning such oddities as "Eeran Wastelanders [which] will
beguile you with psychic hallucinations."

FP

"India produces as many as 1,000 movies each year with revenues of more than $1 billion." -- The Globe and Mail
This indicates revenue of a million a movie; that's a paltry sum which no American movie house would bother with.

"Bollywood's global annual revenues, estimated at $1.3 billion this year, are small change compared with Hollywood's $51 billion." --Business Week
This shoots down the other misdirection in the article. Sell all the tickets you want, Bollywood. You're still pulling less than 1/39th the cash that Hollywood takes in.

A lot of people watch these movies. I have seen a few. To a film, they were insipid. Do yourselves a favor and avoid the musicals at all costs.
But don't worry. They're not going to take over the film industry.

Taiwan became big in semiconductor manufacturing because over the course of three decades of private and government research and experience they were able to become very good at it, producing high yields that made them competitive with US producers. It wasn't because of cheap labor. Taiwan's workers aren't that much cheaper than in the US, and Taiwan's per capita income is over 10X that of India.

Japan's car industry became big because of quality, not lower cost. The first incarnations of their vehicles decades ago were cheap crap, but they didn't get anywhere in the market. Their eventual success came from producing high-quality vehicles that were able to sell for MORE than US-made vehicles of equal size and engine power.

Steel workers in the US lost jobs not because of labor costs, which make up a very small portion of steel manufacturing, but because other countries were able to produce higher yields per ton of raw material.

However the current trend of outsourcing software development to India is a management fad in pursuit of cheap labor, for a type of work that does not lend itself to cheap labor en masse. The real savings really aren't that great -- you're lucky to save as much as 25%. The quality isn't very good, and there are many risks including budget overruns due to miscommunication, intellectual property and privacy infringement which are practically impossible to enforce in India (you're lucky if the courts will see your case in 10 years), and the costs of paying people to cleanup the junk that comes back.

If outsourcing brings real net savings, we'll see the benefits in other aspects of the economy, like cheaper goods and services and increased profits that boost the stock markets. However, there is a very real danger that it is likely to materialize as another "gold rush" like the dotcom boom, only that this time the corporations and investors are chasing after imaginary savings instead of imaginary profits. And when the reality hits and they can't deny it, there will be another economic meltdown.

...More important, the economic payoff of off-shoring business processes and a portion of R&D can be so enormous that even reluctant corporations will have little choice but to follow suit to stay competitive. If a major info-tech, insurance, telecom, or banking company doesn't disclose any back-office center in India, Wall Street will soon start asking, "Why not?"

Also don't forget the Gates is just as ruthless as ellison if not more so. I think Ellison understands exactly what Gates is capable of and wants to make sure he does not end up on the long list Gates victims.

Gates may be a ruthless businessman, but I don't get the impression that he's a ruthless person. Of course, I don't know him, so take this with grain of salt, but I can't imagine Bill Gates ever saying "Maybe I should fire a few Maverick missiles in his [Ellison's] living room" or frequently use Larry and Oracle interchangeably -- "Larry divides the world into two things -- the stuff he owns and everything else. And Oracle wants to own everything." That's just vindictive. I think it's telling that Larry is one of the least generous billionaires out there ($ 69 million as of 2002, or 0.4% of his wealth), while Gates is one of the most generous ($25.6 billion as of 2002, or 60% of his wealth).

I get the impression that Larry is a total narcissist and a bad person, concerned with beating everyone and looking good (to the last point, look at his materialism and the way he dresses and puts himself out). He's ruthless like a mobster is ruthless -- kill or be killed, and everyone's a potential killer. Whereas Bill is entirely socially-inept, and runs his business like a game without realizing its real-world effects, but is basically a good guy (nowhere near as materialistic, doesn't really care or even understand fully what people think of him). He's ruthless like a ruthless Monopoly game player -- bend the rules, maybe even cheat, be a poor loser, but it's still just a game.

Put it this way: if Larry were to lose Oracle and all of his money, I think Larry would be plotting someone's death. If Bill Gates were to lose Microsoft and all of his money, I think Bill would just start over and try to do something else.

Also don't forget the Gates is just as ruthless as ellison if not more so. I think Ellison understands exactly what Gates is capable of and wants to make sure he does not end up on the long list Gates victims.

Gates may be a ruthless businessman, but I don't get the impression that he's a ruthless person. Of course, I don't know him, so take this with grain of salt, but I can't imagine Bill Gates ever saying "Maybe I should fire a few Maverick missiles in his [Ellison's] living room" or frequently use Larry and Oracle interchangeably -- "Larry divides the world into two things -- the stuff he owns and everything else. And Oracle wants to own everything." That's just vindictive. I think it's telling that Larry is one of the least generous billionaires out there ($ 69 million as of 2002, or 0.4% of his wealth), while Gates is one of the most generous ($25.6 billion as of 2002, or 60% of his wealth).

I get the impression that Larry is a total narcissist and a bad person, concerned with beating everyone and looking good (to the last point, look at his materialism and the way he dresses and puts himself out). He's ruthless like a mobster is ruthless -- kill or be killed, and everyone's a potential killer. Whereas Bill is entirely socially-inept, and runs his business like a game without realizing its real-world effects, but is basically a good guy (nowhere near as materialistic, doesn't really care or even understand fully what people think of him). He's ruthless like a ruthless Monopoly game player -- bend the rules, maybe even cheat, be a poor loser, but it's still just a game.

Put it this way: if Larry were to lose Oracle and all of his money, I think Larry would be plotting someone's death. If Bill Gates were to lose Microsoft and all of his money, I think Bill would just start over and try to do something else.

So you can speak French (or pretend to), but somehow you can't read English. I am not claiming that copyright infringement, as it is defined ( as somebody getting "commerical advantage" or "financial gain" from copyrighted materials which they do not have the right to) should be legal. I AM claiming that somebody who downloads music -- and in no way gaining any financial gain from it -- is not a criminial.

As far as I know, in every Felony copyright prosecution (at least relating to music), the people invovled were directly getting financial gain. I sampled 8 of the cases listed (and would have done more, but the site is horribly slow) as "Film/Music" and in every case the people invovled were making money from the sale of pirated goods. Thus, your very nice link, while being useful, does not help your argument. Sure, copyright infringement is a crime. People are often prosecuted for everything from selling pirated music to counterfeit handbags, but the important point you are seeming to miss (which is KEY) is that music downloaders by and large are NOT getting financial gain from downloading music. Thus, I would argue that they do not fall under criminal copyright infringment laws, and explains why there have not been CRIMINAL cases being brought against music downloaders, because they aren't criminals.

In a civil case, one needs to show that the actions of another person/entity has in some way caused damages that need to be compensated. The RIAA has often tried to prove this, but generally by using misinformation to bolster its case against piracy, rather than looking at the many other factors which are responsible for hurting its sales/profit. Thus, one has to at least question the validlity of these civil cases until the RIAA can show defintive proof of how much each pirated song actually costs them (if anything).

Fairly typical FUD from Forbes.
Check out Business Week for more balanced business reporting.

There's a less cynical version why large organizations are not always the most innovative, what Clayton Christensen calls "the innovator's dilemma". Large, successful companies will tend to optimize towards the products that makes them the most money. The newer technologies are initially not as profitable as their older, more established counterparts, so it isn't economical for the larger companies to invest in them. However, the new technologies have a lot of room to improve, and will eventually supplant the old technology, and by the time the large company realizes this is happening, it's too late.

Christensen's book has a lot of examples of these types of disruptive technologies, from hard drives to hydraulics.

There is a thought provoking article here.
The game here really isn't about saving costs but to speed innovation and generate growth for the company
also
If India can turn into a fast-growth economy, it will be the first developing nation that used its brainpower, not natural resources or the raw muscle of factory labor, as the catalyst.

The key observation is that, in most things in life, the dynamic range between average quality and the best quality is, at most, two-to-one. For example, if you were in New York and compared the best taxi to an average taxi, you might get there 20 percent faster. In terms of computers, the best PC is perhaps 30 percent better than the average PC. There is not that much difference in magnitude. Rarely you find a difference of two-to-one. Pick anything.

But, in the field that I was interested in -- originally, hardware design -- I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1. Given that, you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream. That's what we've done. You can then build a team that pursues the A+ players. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. That's what I've tried to do.

...that we've seen over and over. More interesting is the mistaken impression that it's only coding jobs going to India. Look at Business Week for another take.

Not all of our students will see this cover story in Business Week on the migration of high-paying jobs to India. But most attended a lecture in 6.171 by the folks who run MIT's latest big IT effort: OpenCourseware ( http://ocw.mit.edu ), which distributes syllabi, problem sets, and other materials from MIT classes (at least one semester after the class is actually given). During the lecture the students learned that, although ocw.mit.edu is a purely static .html site, it is produced with a database-backed content management system. In fact, of the $11 million donated by foundations to support the service, about $2 million was spent on technology and the salaries of folks at MIT who oversee the technology.

The more sophisticated portion of ocw.mit.edu is a 100 percent Microsoft show. A student asks the speakers why they chose Microsoft Content Management Server, expecting to hear a story about careful in-house technical evaluation done by people sort of like them. The answer: "We read a Gartner Group report that said the Microsoft system was the simplest to use among the commercial vendors and that open-source toolkits weren't worth considering."

Students began to wake up.

A PowerPoint slide contained the magic word "Delhi". It turns out that most of the content editing and all of the programming work for OpenCourseware was done in India, either by Sapient, MIT's main contractor for the project, or by a handful of Microsoft India employees who helped set up the Content Management Server.

Thus did students who are within months of graduating with their $160,000 computer science degrees learn how modern information systems are actually built, even by institutions that earn much of their revenue from educating American software developers.

• Win3.0, Win31, Win95, Win98, WinME all built on the DOS kernel.
• Various versions of the WinNT kernel
• Various versions of the XP kernel

Businessweek reports that Bill Gates has already given away half of all that money he has to charity.

Maybe Microsoft isn't that evil..

Bullshit. CD sales drop do appear to match the economy, the correlation isn't right to blame sharing, their own numbers suggest the drop in CD sales is better attributed to CD prices, reduced production (and here), organized crime, and a bunch of other reasons. All of these analyses suggest CD sales losses are not due to filesharing.

So, I'm not sure where you're coming from with your "apparently quite rare" statment. The evidence shows otherwise.

Well, despite you anecdotal evidence, better evidence suggest that downloaders do indeed increase sales. So in short, you're just wrong.

This is also a straw man for a couple of reasons: first, CD sales are hurting, so any "benefit" to the industry or artists is being swallowed up

Wrong. You are assuming loss of CD sales is due to filesharing. As the above linked evidence shows, that's not true. In fact, following this one (and there are others), CD sales might be even worse without the gain from the "try before you buy" effect of filesharing.

Additionally, almost any illegal act, civil or criminal, has a "well, it COULD have a beneficial side effect" argument.

Except that this illegal act is illegal for the reason that it is assumed to harm sales, which the evidence above doesn't support. If it's not harmful, there's no need for it to be illegal. (I'm not advocating making it legal, but a different model is at least necessary.) Whatever other acts you are referring to are illegal for the harm the do cause. (If they don't, then perhaps they shouldn't be illegal either.) Also, the point is that the industry seems to be missing the concept (and evidence), that filesharing can be (or perhaps is) >helpful to them.

... if the goal is to feel better about what you're doing

You are making yet another assumption, that I am illegally downloading songs. In fact, I have never illegally downloaded a single song. I have nothing personal to rationalize. I am simply someone cursed with a love for logic and reason, not blind reactionism.

Personally the paranoid part of me thinks they just wanted the excuse to key my license number into their database. Doesn't explain why I've gotten away with buying booze there and not being carded thou."

That doesn't surprise me. I got carded at Wal-Mart for buying paint (not industrial size, little jars so I could paint a plastic table) when I was 22. PAINT! I've also been carded there for buying white-out. That is why I'll never go back to Wal-Mart. Apparently, wal-mart shoppers have a problem with inhaling said products and killing brain cells. They'll card you for buying office supplies, or home improvement supplies, but here! Have a gun! Don't listen to music with nasty words though, it might make you want to use that gun in a bad way. Oh, and don't look at magazine covers while you're in line, that's immoral. The sooner that place goes away the better off this country is as far as our rights and freedoms go.

> What constitutes largst "post" company?
> Larger than FedEx or UPS, or do those not count?

It appears so, except for the US market. Can't find any figures right now (naturally, when you're looking for them), but I've read various articles similar to this that refer to Deutsche Post having the largest marketshare worldwide. In the US you see them as DHL, which is pretty low profile, but standing to gain some ground after the Airborne purchase.

The agency's move to allow encryption-like protection for digital shows takes away one more excuse from the broadcasters to delay the rollout of high-definition TV. When the next West Wing won't be ripped off Napster-style, producers will likely air more HDTV programs.

Q: Why have the over-the-air networks been so slow to buy in?
A: It's expensive, plus a lot of the vertically integrated companies such as ABC and NBC have content stored on a videotape medium specially made for television that can't be converted to high-definition formats. Also, Wall Street isn't rewarding people for moving into the new technology because it doesn't have immediate returns.

Go ahead, try to buy one! You can't. Offer them some investment money... they'll take it!

Did nobody notice that all images of the "phone" are virtual mockups?

How many promos/how much hype for this have I seen in the past three years?

Hmm, BusinessWeek mag was persuadade that they were available back in 1999 and claimed to have tested one.

It was later shown (by opening the case) that Hop-On's "disposable phones" were really Nokia phones with their own plastic casing put around them. ... and costing WAY more than $30 for the parts.

There were some delays admitted-to long after the 1999 "demo", in June 2002

There was a bit of a problem with a Universal Studios tie-in back in 2001:
"In November 2001, Hop-On announced that it would partner with Universal Studios Home Video to give away a limited number of the disposable phone to purchasers of the "Jurassic Park III" DVD/ home video. The "winners" would get a free Hop-On phone if their copy of the video contained a special coupon. The promotion was cancelled when Hop-On failed to deliver the phones... Universal has advised Stock Patrol that it is sending all of those winners - about 1000 in all - $30 checks (the supposed cost of a Hop-On phone) and a free DVD. "

See also http://www.wirelessreview.com/ar/wireless_cutting_ room_floor_2/

and oh, oopsie!!!!
Disposable Cell Phone Company Hop-On Wireless CEO Indicted For Fraud (April 18, 2003 -- for ANOTHER venture of his, not Hop On, but it looks like a familiar tale)

Last year we had the story of how it looked like disposable cell phone company Hop-On Wireless was a scam. Since then, I've seen the company highly touted in many news stories, talking about how it was this great invention... but which no one seemed to be selling. Now, the CEO of Hop-On has been arrested for fraud, relating to work he did on an earlier company - but which brings up many parallels to Hop-On. The earlier company was an online gambling site, which he raised a lot of money for. However, they did so by showing software that was really someone else's software "cosmetically altered" to look like their own. Hop-On's "disposable phones" were really Nokia phones with their own plastic casing put around them.

From the hop-on website:
Q. When will I be able to buy the Hop-on phone?
A. The release date of our Hop-on phone is contingent on a variety of factors. We are doing everything we can to get our phones into the hands of all those who want and need them as soon as possible. If you like, you can e-mail us your contact information, and we'll let you know as soon as our phone is available in your area.

According to this article, they were supposted to hit the shelves in nov, 2001.

A Business Week article dating from this year's July says: "A Swiss firm, ID Quantique, introduced the first commercial quantum cryptography products last summer" So that would be mid-2002.

AAC is an industry standard not under the control of Apple. WMA is a proprietary invention of Microsoft who own and control it totally. So how, exactly, is AAC more proprietary?

A QUESTION OF JUDGMENT. In a study conducted earlier this year by MailFrontier, 40% of people who read a fraudulent Citibank e-mail were fooled into thinking it was real. "What we found is that the fraudsters have gotten smarter over time. It's very similar to spammers," says Budman.

NEW YORK - The month-long criminal trial against Frank Quattrone, Silicon Valley's once-high-flying financier of the technology boom, crumbled Friday when a judge declared a mistrial after jurors deadlocked on a verdict.

Inside Frank Quattrone's Money Machine

Nobody knew it at the time, but the apex of the Internet rocket ride came on the morning of Dec. 9, 1999. Executives of computer maker VA Linux Systems Inc. gathered at 6 a.m. in the trading offices of Credit Suisse First Boston (CSR ) on the 17th floor of a San Francisco skyscraper for the company's initial public offering. Among those assembled were Larry M. Augustin, the chief executive, and his friend Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux operating system, who was dressed in his customary T-shirt and sandals. Their three toddlers scampered around underfoot while the adults watched in stunned silence as the stock price jumped from 30 a share to more than 200 within minutes. Augustin nudged Torvalds and whispered: "Did you ever think we'd be here?" At the end of trading, the company's shares were worth 239.25 apiece, up 697.5%, making it the best-ever first-day IPO performance.

• It's one of very few platforms with strong growth in deployment.
• It's still missing some features that Sun is one of the few companies that knows how to provide.

The latter point is less about what's special about Linux (technically, Solaris and FreeBSD are fine OS, too, they just aren't growing in deployments as much), but about what's special about Sun.

As cheap Linux servers become more prevalent, customers will be more willing to upgrade into higher end x86 compatiable servers (4-way, 8-way, etc, racks with single system image) than to make a jump over to Solaris/SPARC (even though the jump is not the same yawnign chasm separating *NIX and Windows).

It's really classic Innovator's Dilemma (the jump to new business growth requires a willingness to sacrifice the old established business line). There's nothing technically wrong or bad about Solaris/SPARC; it's just that you can see it is very unlikely to be a growth market, no matter how much current revenue it brings in.

Wal-Mart has already started to alter the content of CDs. There was a recent BusinessWeek feature on Wal-Mart about the power it has over the economy. See the Cultural Gatekeeper section. Music companies already provide sanitized versions of CDs with the explicit lyrics removed. Some magazines are not carried or have to be sleeved. Manufacturers of other things have had to make changes just for Wal-Mart.

According to BusinessWeek, "secure" P2P is offered by the following (some use encryption):

Direct Connect
http://www.neo-modus.com/
http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/

Waste
http://waste.sourceforge.net/

Freenet
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
http://jtcfrost.sourceforge.net/

invisibleNET (aka invisibleIRC)
http://www.invisiblenet.net/

BadBlue (commercial product)
http://www.badblue.com

Groove Networks (commercial product)
http://www.groove.net

Ok, you were right. Only 83% agree that the Pledge should not be changed. My bad.

This story was in Businessweek three days ago...

Want some business info ? Read business week or the Wall Street Journal. Forbes is infotainment for Republicans.

For a company thats worth $25 million $250 is kinda cheap... so how about $43,000? ;)

It's clear from two weeks of testing that Apple's new Power Mac G5 dual 2-GHz machine is the fastest thing the company has ever produced.

The new G5 from Apple is more than merely "fast". It is a workstation in its own right. In "Byte of the Apple", "Businessweek" notes that the new Macintoshes are, in fact, UNIX workstations. The notebooks based on G5s are, in fact, portable UNIX workstations.

Steve Jobs, if he had any sense, would be marketing these machines as workstations instead of mere personal computers. With 64-bit processors, these machines are fully capable of handling engineering workloads like Verilog, HSPICE, fluid-dynamics simulation, etc.

Right now, a tidal wave of Linux-on-x86 machines is drowning Sun Microsystems in the workstation market. It sure would be nice to see a G5 take some market share bled from Sun Microsystems. In fact, it would be ideal to see a Linux-driven G5 take market share.

... from the desk of the reporter

It's clear from two weeks of testing that Apple's new Power Mac G5 dual 2-GHz machine is the fastest thing the company has ever produced.

The new G5 from Apple is more than merely "fast". It is a workstation in its own right. In "Byte of the Apple", "Businessweek" notes that the new Macintoshes are, in fact, UNIX workstations. The notebooks based on G5s are, in fact, portable UNIX workstations.

Steve Jobs, if he had any sense, would be marketing these machines as workstations instead of mere personal computers. With 64-bit processors, these machines are fully capable of handling engineering workloads like Verilog, HSPICE, fluid-dynamics simulation, etc.

Right now, a tidal wave of Linux-on-x86 machines is drowning Sun Microsystems in the workstation market. It sure would be nice to see a G5 take some market share bled from Sun Microsystems. In fact, it would be ideal to see a Linux-driven G5 take market share.

... from the desk of the reporter

BusinessWeek

Japan's Dangerous Savings Drought (June 9, 2003)

During one of Kempin's stickier moments of cross-examination, Boies caught him contradicting an answer to a question he had asked the Microsoft exec 10 minutes earlier. Boise wanted to know if a huge manufacturer such as Acer or Gateway could feature a browser other than their own and that of Microsoft. Netscape's, for instance. "Yes," Kempin said. "If they want to list a third browser, that's O.K. They can do that."

Trouble was, moments before, Kempin had said the Microsoft license agreement "doesn't allow that."

Something is better than nothing. Is it possible to post the blacklists on google groups and then post the links on 10-15 mirror websites?

Those interested in updating their blacklists could copy and download the file from google groups.
Is that possible or am I missing something very important here?
Also, I submitted a article on slashdot 2 days back(got rejected) about network security, windows and government agencies.

Microsoft is getting into the anti-virus business. Which means it will bundle its own anti-virus software with windows. Which means it will hurt symantec et al. Which means less jobs for IT workers...

Some day soon there will be a class action lawsuit against M$ regarless of their 'Hold Harmless Agreement' in the EULA.

Actually, Business Week had an article about that a couple days ago, which I submitted last night (it was rejected). The author closed with (paraphrasing) "Maybe it's time some big customers refused to buy software without some sort of guarantee."

These last few worms and e-mail viruses seem to have become the collective last straw. The unwashed masses are finally beginning to grouse about buggy software-- the tide is slowly beginning to turn against onerous "no liability" EULAs coupled to expensive software that is critical to business.

A few years ago, Microsoft was very quick to whine that any delay in the release of Windows 98 forced on them by the government would hurt the U.S. economy and/or bring about the end of the world as we know it. Well, what about all these businesses who have to eat the costs of cleanup and lost productivity every time there's another Windows worm? Nooooo, that doesn't hurt the economy at all, does it?

~Philly

Here is info on how to "comment" from businessweek.com.

"ICANN is the nonprofit organization that oversees Internet domain names. On Friday, the group asked VeriSign to pull the plug on its "wildcard" redirection service.

Since then, ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee has published a more-detailed critique of the technical problems caused by VeriSign's move. The committee--which includes a VeriSign representative--said it would hold a public meeting in the Washington, D.C., area on Oct. 7 and has asked for feedback to be sent to secsac-comments@icann.org."

So I'm guessing hes given around 0.1% of his wealth away.

Try about 60%. There was a Businessweek article in December 2002 that ranked the biggest philanthropists in the world (not sure if non-subscribers can read this article from the archives) -- he's ranked #1 in terms of amounts given. My eyeball estimate is that he's #6 in terms of percentage of wealth given (which is somewhat misleading, since Gordon Moore and James Stowers apparently committed more money than they were worth, and so would be ranked #1 and #2 in terms of percentage).

I'd be impressed if the man gave away a few billion dollars at a time and not in stupid ways. When he spends money on schools I'm impressed when he actually builds a school, but usually he does not build a school, usually he just donates Microsoft products (big deal) to schools.

Gates's main focus is eradicating diseases in developing countries. Yeah, that's really stupid. He has also given the largest single private grant in history -- for a global vaccine program. Again, very stupid. Whatever.

BTW, Larry Ellison (Oracle) is ranked #1 for biggest cheapskate -- he has given away 0.4% of his worth. Steve Ballmer is the 5th biggest cheapskate. And, to me, worst of all, given who he is and what he stands for for so many people, Warren Buffett is the 6th biggest cheapskate -- he's given away only $230 million of his $36 billion.

So I'm guessing hes given around 0.1% of his wealth away.

Try about 60%. There was a Businessweek article in December 2002 that ranked the biggest philanthropists in the world (not sure if non-subscribers can read this article from the archives) -- he's ranked #1 in terms of amounts given. My eyeball estimate is that he's #6 in terms of percentage of wealth given (which is somewhat misleading, since Gordon Moore and James Stowers apparently committed more money than they were worth, and so would be ranked #1 and #2 in terms of percentage).

I'd be impressed if the man gave away a few billion dollars at a time and not in stupid ways. When he spends money on schools I'm impressed when he actually builds a school, but usually he does not build a school, usually he just donates Microsoft products (big deal) to schools.

Gates's main focus is eradicating diseases in developing countries. Yeah, that's really stupid. He has also given the largest single private grant in history -- for a global vaccine program. Again, very stupid. Whatever.

BTW, Larry Ellison (Oracle) is ranked #1 for biggest cheapskate -- he has given away 0.4% of his worth. Steve Ballmer is the 5th biggest cheapskate. And, to me, worst of all, given who he is and what he stands for for so many people, Warren Buffett is the 6th biggest cheapskate -- he's given away only $230 million of his $36 billion.

Not unfair at all.