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Right. And everyone should remember when a worm infected over a hundred thousand RedHat systems and in so doing single-handedly (do worms have hands?) demonstrated that applying security patches is very, very important.

Unfortunately, many people seem to have forgotten that lesson as well.

The only substantial content this affects is the stuff ten years old or so. From back when people hadn't even heard of electronic publishing, so it wasn't included in their contracts.

Ever since that time, most of the smart publishers have already included electronic media clauses in their contracts--with the writers being justly compensated, or else going into it knowing full well that e-rights are included in their payment.

As an aspiring writer myself, I'm very concerned about writers' rights. This case was an important one, because it helps put control back in the hands of the writers, where they belong--which is something everyone seems to be (or pretends to be) so gung-ho about in the Napster arena for musicians.

Another important case to watch would be this one, as Random House sues a small e-book publisher over rights not assigned to them in their contracts.

The company maintains that an author's grant of rights to publish "in book form" includes e-books, largely because they are the "functional equivalent" of the printed text.

As to whether articles get pulled from archives...I don't think it will happen as much as people fear. Most writers are reasonable people, and typically wouldn't insist on bank-breaking terms. As long as the publishers are willing to negotiate, and don't just want to cut off their noses to spite their faces, I think things will work out just fine.
--

If I were Compaq, I'd get the hell outta the PC business, too.

Bill Gurley has an interesting editorial on the subject in his Above the Crowd column at News.com.

cnet quoted you, chief.

Well, I posted the above question you replied to, so I guess I'll take a crack at your reply. First let me say that I think you're taking the story you're quoting (available here) out of context. The report states that Compaq may soon start shipping more iPaqs than Palm does Palm devices, not taking into account that Palm already has a lot of devices on the shelves, the closer-to-reality average device cost numbers of Palm, return rates of CE devices, etc. And that doesn't mean that Palm's install base of 10,000,000+ devices is going to evaporate if more iPaqs are sold, a la IE vs. Netscape.

Secondly, I don't think that she was right all along, although if Palm doesn't solve some short-term problems they will have made her right through no insight of her own. I do think that her predictions had some influence on the people that had buying power and very little technical knowledge.

When she first started posting pro-CE reports, anyone worth their salt would have laughed out loud. In 98 or 99, CE was absolutely horrible and Palm was nothing short of golden. Palm devices actually synced better with Windows than Pocket PC devices (back then they were called Palm-size PC's) did at the time. So we--some of the old school Palm developers--read her forecasts and had a good chuckle.

So to bring this post back around on-topic, now the situation is one where the IDC analyst may end up becoming right, even though for the wrong reasons. She'll probably proclaim, "I was right all along!" but there is no way she could have known that Palm would make several key missteps, more CE device makers would not jump ship (as they were when she was predicting) and that the corporate world would blindly buy inferior devices on the whim of an uninformed purchaser. Which brings this question around full-cirle: there doesn't seem to be a mechanism for analysts to be shown wrong, or say "oops, I screwed up--sorry" or be held accountable for poor predictions. And until there are, it's not prudent to make important decisions based on their reports.

For anyone annoyed enough by popups to go to the trouble, there are several free/shareware programs out there that will kill them for you. Just click here and pick yoself one.

.. irresponsibility.

VA Linux's losses grow fourfold May 22, 2001
VA Linux issues third earnings warning April 27, 2001
VA Linux: Caught by the IPO jinx? February 21, 2001
VA Linux cuts 25 percent of workers, delays profitability February 20, 2001
VA Linux tumbles on profit warning January 17, 2001
Suit accuses VA Linux of deceiving investors January 11, 2001
VA Linux seeks profits on programmer site December 5, 2000
and of course.. LNUX

Modding me down won't change a thing.

.. irresponsibility.

VA Linux's losses grow fourfold May 22, 2001
VA Linux issues third earnings warning April 27, 2001
VA Linux: Caught by the IPO jinx? February 21, 2001
VA Linux cuts 25 percent of workers, delays profitability February 20, 2001
VA Linux tumbles on profit warning January 17, 2001
Suit accuses VA Linux of deceiving investors January 11, 2001
VA Linux seeks profits on programmer site December 5, 2000
and of course.. LNUX

Modding me down won't change a thing.

.. irresponsibility.

VA Linux's losses grow fourfold May 22, 2001
VA Linux issues third earnings warning April 27, 2001
VA Linux: Caught by the IPO jinx? February 21, 2001
VA Linux cuts 25 percent of workers, delays profitability February 20, 2001
VA Linux tumbles on profit warning January 17, 2001
Suit accuses VA Linux of deceiving investors January 11, 2001
VA Linux seeks profits on programmer site December 5, 2000
and of course.. LNUX

Modding me down won't change a thing.

.. irresponsibility.

VA Linux's losses grow fourfold May 22, 2001
VA Linux issues third earnings warning April 27, 2001
VA Linux: Caught by the IPO jinx? February 21, 2001
VA Linux cuts 25 percent of workers, delays profitability February 20, 2001
VA Linux tumbles on profit warning January 17, 2001
Suit accuses VA Linux of deceiving investors January 11, 2001
VA Linux seeks profits on programmer site December 5, 2000
and of course.. LNUX

Modding me down won't change a thing.

.. irresponsibility.

VA Linux's losses grow fourfold May 22, 2001
VA Linux issues third earnings warning April 27, 2001
VA Linux: Caught by the IPO jinx? February 21, 2001
VA Linux cuts 25 percent of workers, delays profitability February 20, 2001
VA Linux tumbles on profit warning January 17, 2001
Suit accuses VA Linux of deceiving investors January 11, 2001
VA Linux seeks profits on programmer site December 5, 2000
and of course.. LNUX

Modding me down won't change a thing.

.. irresponsibility.

VA Linux's losses grow fourfold May 22, 2001
VA Linux issues third earnings warning April 27, 2001
VA Linux: Caught by the IPO jinx? February 21, 2001
VA Linux cuts 25 percent of workers, delays profitability February 20, 2001
VA Linux tumbles on profit warning January 17, 2001
Suit accuses VA Linux of deceiving investors January 11, 2001
VA Linux seeks profits on programmer site December 5, 2000
and of course.. LNUX

Modding me down won't change a thing.

.. irresponsibility.

VA Linux's losses grow fourfold May 22, 2001
VA Linux issues third earnings warning April 27, 2001
VA Linux: Caught by the IPO jinx? February 21, 2001
VA Linux cuts 25 percent of workers, delays profitability February 20, 2001
VA Linux tumbles on profit warning January 17, 2001
Suit accuses VA Linux of deceiving investors January 11, 2001
VA Linux seeks profits on programmer site December 5, 2000
and of course.. LNUX

Modding me down won't change a thing.

Microsoft = Communism!

That's right, the world's largest software company is little more than a Maoist personality cult bent on world domination! Just look at the facts:

• Microsoft's .NET architecture is moving power away from independent PCs and towards centralized servers. .NET is collectivization for the 21st century!
• Microsoft software controls 95% of the world's personal computers. Windows is the software equivalent of a single-party political system!
• Microsoft ruthlessly squashes all opposition by giving away for free services you would otherwise have to pay for - a classic Communist tactic!
• Chairman Bill wears little round glasses! See any resemblance?
• Chairman Bill donates millions to charity. That's the kind of 'redistribution of wealth' our great country was founded to oppose!

There's a similar article called Why Microsoft is Wary of Open Source by Joe Wilcox and Stephen Shankland on CNET.

There's a similar article called Why Microsoft is Wary of Open Source by Joe Wilcox and Stephen Shankland on CNET.

"We'll have a pretty aggressive rollout," Red Hat Chief Executive Matthew Szulik said during a conference call with financial analysts Tuesday, after Red Hat's announcement of break-even quarterly earnings. The software, likely called Red Hat Database, will be announced Monday, Chief Financial Officer Kevin Thompson said in an interview.

Nintendo has been the leader in the handheld gaming industry for a long long time. (They've sold more than 100 million {removes pinky from lip} units since 1989).

I think they have a pretty good idea what they're doing.

--Yahiko

There's an article on news.com about it here

Whether or not this is going to mean lower prices remains to be seen.

"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"

Does Microsoft plan to make more of its source code available to customers? You already do that with Windows; do you plan to expand that in any way to the applications?

We keep making it easier and easier, and anything people want source code for, we'll figure out a way to get it to them. It's kind of a strange thing in a way because most commercial customers don't want to recompile kernels or things like that. But they want to be able to know that things can be supported.

We have some very cool tools now where we don't have to ship you the source. You can debug online, through the Internet. So it means you don't have to get a bunch of CDs. If you really want it for debugging and patching things, we can do that through the Internet. That's a real breakthrough in terms of simple source access. I don't know that anyone has ever asked for the source code for Word. If they did, we would give it to them. But it's not a typical request.

I can't believe CNet actually provided a link for defining kernels... dweebs :)

This interview does indeed provide a quite different perspective on his statements:

"There is this whole history that free software is developed often in the academic environment, where basically government money funded that work. And then commercial work is done. TCP/IP came out of the university environment. Now, 90 percent of the implementations you buy are commercially tuned and supported. And then the companies that do that commercial work pay taxes, create jobs, so the government keeps funding more research, primarily in universities. So that ecosystem where you have free software and commercial software, and customers always get to decide which they use, that's a very important and healthy ecosystem.

"There is a part of open source called GPL that breaks that cycle--that is, it makes it impossible for a commercial company to use any of that work or build on any of that work. So what you saw with TCP/IP or (e-mail technology) Sendmail or the browser could never happen. We believe there should be free software and commercial software; there should be a rich ecosystem that works around that" -Bill Gates

The statements in the original story are actually the worst of the worst of what he says.

-Erik

You can be sure that Microsoft isn't doing the business community a public service. They're not standing up to ring the klaxon to warn their peers of the dangers lurking hidden ahead. The GPL means little to them. Except that its a convenient pawn. A handle. A toe-hold. A way to attack the amorphous phenomenon that is Linux.

We've always said you can't attack Linux like the usual corporate entity. Microsoft knows this. And so they've changed their methods; they attack the concepts that are available with all the usual Microsoft tenacity.

If the GPL is just a pawn - what is the real game about? Cnet (all bashing aside) has an interesting writeup (http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6291224.html ?tag=rltdnws). Its all .NET.

To make Microsoft's biggest, most aggressive gamble in its history (or at least what industry analysts like to portray it as) pay off - its going to take Windows servers. Sure, Microsoft will play the "compatibility" card and offer some .NET services on competing platforms. There's even noise about Linux being included. But dollars to donuts, in true Microsoft fashion, the full feature set... all the bells and glossy-pamphlet-gushing whistles will only live within Win2K servers.

Increased popularity in Linux (and *BSD - go, team, go) does not help generate the homogeneous Windows environment that'll make .NET a winner. Open source OS' are also providing an escape route from Microsoft's recent pricing squeezes (also mentioned in the referenced article). Sure, Microsoft may have nobody else but themselves to blame for that. But if you look at their motives a bit closer, you'll see its not marketing dollars they're after but a forced upgrade to technology that closer ties to .NET. The fact that this same squeezing makes *BSD and Linux more attractive is just an ugly side effect. It is also a route that they plan to cut off with smoke and mirrors.

So as a community, the Open Source folk can pat themselves on the back. We've arrived - we're a gen-u-ine threat. A big one. And for all the right reasons (functionality, freedom, etc, etc). But that just means the game now involves higher stakes.

Individual community members can argue / jihad over the finer points of licensing (and whatever will be Microsoft's next move on the board). But eventually all that'll get you is a square and a pawn. If we don't look up from the board once in awhile, we're going to miss the fact that we've been maneuvered out of the game entirely.

According to the full interview, nobody's ever asked! It's great that you've figured out what we've all been missing for so long (according to Mr. Gates). And to think, all we had to do was ask Microsoft, and they'd just start giving back to the community just like that. We've really been too harsh on Microsoft - with friends like that, who needs the GPL?

(of course this was sarcasm, but not directed at you MeNeXT :)

Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

Erm... actually the quotes in the actual interview which is here.

Read it, the article in the /. post takes things out of context quite a bit.

RedHat actually lost a net $27.6 million this past quarter on revenues of only $25.6 million. Some fancy bookmaking allowed them to present this as a profit, but not everyone was fooled. c|net's lede read: "Red Hat, the top seller of the Linux operating system, became profitable by some measurements while meeting analyst expectations for the most recent quarter."

See, this so called "profit" was only due to all the adjustments they made, just like last quarter, when RedHat said that they broke even (or at least came within $600,000 of it), even though they really lost over $24 million. Be skeptical when a company tells you that they turned a $600,000 profit when they're taking a $20.8 million charge for "amortization of goodwill and tangibles." Yeah, okay....

And not to be too doom-and-gloomish, but the revenue for the quarter was 7% less than what RedHat told Wall Street to expect, revenue is 5% down from last quarter, revenue from their network consulting services are already dropping, and they're now refusing to give analysts any guidance for RHAT performance in future quarters. Maybe they've run out of book-keeping tricks? :) "None of the other companies I cover have refused to give guidance," Prakesh Patel, analyst with WR Hambrecht and Co. "It definitely is troubling. Regardless of the economic environment, the company has a sales pipeline and should have estimates of closing deals that's the job of management."

Cheers,

So although it's sad to see VA Linux get hit hard, it's also reassuring to know that WinTel powerhouses are seeing Linux as an important (but perhaps not yet significant) piece of the action.

The OBV reporter quoted a study which stated that CIOs who support Linux have very high faith in the established companies, but respect the service and reliability of VA Linux. (http://obvreport.com/ references a copy of the report - is the original off-line? Someone follow up if you can find the original!)

It's too bad that everyone can't survive. But given the strong market forces of both WinTel, Linux and MacOS, this should NOT be a surprise - even to the VCs!

I have reason to suspect that Microsoft is toning down a bit. They've gone from describing Free Software as a cancer to being "pac-man-like".


~^~~^~^^~~^

And Windows for Pocket PC defintely gives ground to Palm's OS in a few usability areas.

But Compaq really put some work into the Ipaq, even making up for some of Microsoft's omissions.

An example? The 'Q' button on the Ipaq. Push it, and up pops a menu with all of your running tasks, which you can switch to, or quit out of. This is both an extremely easy way to navigate the OS, and a way around one of the biggest problems with WinCE(or whatever they are calling it now): Microsoft assumes you never need to quit a program, so after you open a few, other PocketPCs run out of memory and slow to a crawl.

The main reason I bought the Ipaq over a palm, though, was the memory, not the color screen and fancy-pants multimedia capabilities, or the ability to play Quake (which it does fine, contrary to speculation here. To me, 64 megs is just enough to store large amounts of writing, my daily downloads of a dozen newspapers, magazines and news sites, my email and contacts, and a few ebooks.

And, of course, the numbers don't lie, and Compaq, with their greater committment to innovation, and basically superior product, is going to eat Palm's lunch.

There have been consumer satisfaction surveys that show that consumer satisfaction with fast-food restaurants goes down during low-unemployment periods, and goes up during high-unemployment periods.

I maintain that the reason for this is that during low unemployment, the better workers have all got jobs, and the job pool has fewer good workers left in it. Therefore the fast food places have to hire the best people they can get, but those aren't as good as the best people available at 5% unemployment.

Further, you can't fire them, because they'll not only be hard to replace, but the pool of replacements mostly consists of people who couldn't get a job.

I'm not the only person who has reached this conclusion:

Here's a link to an audio recording of a National Public Radio "All Things Considered" segment on the subject.

Here's Cnet's Mike Yamamoto talking about it.

Here's ADT Mag's Charles Trepper on the subject.

You'll find that below 3%, it's hard to put ANY warm body into a job, much less find a good employee. Somewhere close to that percentage, you find the people who are pretending to look for a job, so they can collect unemployment assistance, but deliberately sabotaging their interviews or even outright defrauding the system so that they'll never be employed.

Personally, I think they should subtract another 3% from the figures and report 3% unemployment or less as 0% unemployment. They already don't count people who are unemployed and not filing unemployment claims or applying for jobs.

-

AirClic partners include Motorola, Symbol & Ericsson. A keyfob scanner, the $50 AirClicker will be available soon. Former Amex execs are chairman and CEO of AirClic. Their Scanlets are being "leased", a la domain names. High-level diagram of their tech architecture references a "switching core", probably from their acquisition of Stockholm-based Connect Things, a 1999 Ericsson spinoff.

Think DNS root server for barcode-to-URL mapping.

Rich

Get a grip, people.

Versizon is suing Covad over this, so it's no joke. From my own experience, Verizon is just like every other baby bell. They put the dsl circut on the wrong box about 100 yards from my building, instead of the box less than 10' from my office. It took them a month to get back out to fix it. The Covad technicians were 10x as helpful as the Verizon morons.

Now, really: You can't expect Digital Convergence to ignore experts like those, can you?

They (the ogg vorbis guys) only *say* they're not infringing. That does not mean that they're not. In fact, given the broadness of the mp3 patents, they most like *are* infringing. And Thompson thinks so too, as you can read in this article. Quoting Thompson's vice president of new business: "We doubt very much that they are not using Fraunhofer and Thomson intellectual property".

Real or Windows Media only.

Cookies definitely can exasperate the problem by providing additional information. But bugs are not reliant on cookies. You can block all cookies and block all images and you will not block all web bugs. The reason advertising companies like to use cookies is that you can track additional information easily, because the browser obligingly stores the data and spits it back on demand, even after you shut the browser down and start it back up, often hours, days or weeks later.

For reference, check the Web Bug Report quote in the CNET article and you'll notice that the report shows the types of bugs (imgs, iframes, etc.) that are present. A very large # of them are not images...

With the PS2 Linux Kit this could result in some interesting games.

This article also links to a "Flyweights" competition between Mac OS9 and Corel Linux! Whatever you may feel about Distros, most Linux users feel this is the most flawed mainstream Distro. C|Net Justifies the comparison between these two by saying they both have a 4% market share, so we should compare them. Winner:OS9. Why? Because MS doesn't support Linux.

So in this article C|Net pits OSX against an OS that arguably has a 66% potential market share. WTF? And the contest goes to OSX at the end. Why? Not for any reason consistent with the Linux vs. OS9. That article tells me MS has to support an OS to be worth my while. Here's a contest with an MS OS and they give it to the other guy because - Why? - It has a "unix core"!!!!

In my view the biggest loser in this contest is C|Net.

This article also links to a "Flyweights" competition between Mac OS9 and Corel Linux! Whatever you may feel about Distros, most Linux users feel this is the most flawed mainstream Distro. C|Net Justifies the comparison between these two by saying they both have a 4% market share, so we should compare them. Winner:OS9. Why? Because MS doesn't support Linux.

So in this article C|Net pits OSX against an OS that arguably has a 66% potential market share. WTF? And the contest goes to OSX at the end. Why? Not for any reason consistent with the Linux vs. OS9. That article tells me MS has to support an OS to be worth my while. Here's a contest with an MS OS and they give it to the other guy because - Why? - It has a "unix core"!!!!

In my view the biggest loser in this contest is C|Net.

Really, I found the article informative to say the least, but to put Linux in a desktop comparison (this link) and compare Win/Mac in the server space, where Linux is at its best, is a little, ahem, biased, isn't it?

First post insanity aside (trust me, it's only fun for about 5 minutes and bad for your karma because moderators despise it), there's this quote featured in the CNN article (yes, I do actually read the related articles before posting flamebait):

"Our goal with the software is to reveal how Web bugs are tracking all of us on the Internet and to get companies to 'fess up' about why they are using them," Richard Smith, the Privacy Foundation's chief technology officer, wrote in his privacy tip sheet.

"Any company that uses Web bugs on their site should say so clearly in their privacy policies and explain the following: why they are being used, what data is sent by a bug, who gets the data, and what they are doing with it," he added.

There are two things that I'd like to point out about those statements. First of all, companies with web sites are (in most countries) legally required to tell you about what kind of data they collect and what they do with it. The majority of such privacy statements either consist of the usual "we don't collect any information that can personally identify you" variety or they are hidden beneath so many links at the very bottom of the most obscure pages in the site that your average user never reads them.

Second of all, I agree with your point regarding the suggestion that companies should be required to thoroughly explain what kind of bugs they use (if any), what's sent and received and where the data goes. I personally think it's a great idea. And it's all well and good for sites that deploy their own web bugs. But what about the web sites who use web bugs belonging to other websites (e.g sites who use DoubleClick web bugs, or Slashdot using a web bug from OSDN)? The application should be the same, of course, but how is that handled from a legal perspective? Who is responsible for the "bug"? The company who wrote/owns it, or the company that deploys it? Answers to any of these questions are more than welcome (particularly by someone involved in the legal profession), as I'm sure that there's at least some of us Slashdot readers that would like to know.

Self Bias Resistor
"Imagination is more important that knowledge." - Albert Einstein

NetZero and Juno are old courtroom buddies, having both sued each other in the past. Now they are merging? I don't tend to be a conspiracy theorist but this sounds odd to me.

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4290897.html

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1993249.html

NetZero and Juno are old courtroom buddies, having both sued each other in the past. Now they are merging? I don't tend to be a conspiracy theorist but this sounds odd to me.

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4290897.html

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1993249.html

Office XP Developer Center -- Smart Tags

Office XP Developer Center -- Smart Tags (Russian)

'Smart Tags uitdaging voor ontwikkelaars'

All About Smart Tags

XML Cover Pages -- Microsoft Announces Smart Tag Software Development Kit with XML Support

CNET -- Smart Tags and Clever Features

CNET -- Smart Tag SDK (for Office XP)

Office XP Developer Center -- Smart Tags

Office XP Developer Center -- Smart Tags (Russian)

'Smart Tags uitdaging voor ontwikkelaars'

All About Smart Tags

XML Cover Pages -- Microsoft Announces Smart Tag Software Development Kit with XML Support

CNET -- Smart Tags and Clever Features

CNET -- Smart Tag SDK (for Office XP)

Anyway, where did you get your stats that M$'s stock price grew 60% last year from? Looking at a chart on news.com I see that M$ is about level for the year. Yes, they dipped to $40 around December but before the anti-trust suit they were up around $90, IIRC.

So if you're going to spit bile about M$, please make sure it's accurate, thanks!

I've been intrigued by KVM switches to isolate the noise-making parts of a PC, but I've always been under the impression that they're of limited responsiveness, that they are designed for sysadmin tasks more than heavy interaction with, say, a high performance 3D video card.

This article made me speculate about remotely putting a bunch of rack-mounted PC's down the hall (where, yes, Natalie, they could be a Bwlf cluster) and running KVM over 100Mb Ethernet to desks with nice sleek LCD flat panel displays.

But I gather this solution is not practical for some reason, like latency?

Am I missing something?

Not sure how that possibly got a +5, Insightful, but here goes.

MSN which isn't very popular anyway

Hmm, unless Juno has more subscribers (I don't have their numbers), MSN has the second largest base of U.S. subscribers. Guess it's not all that unpopular after all.

Given that it's Time Warner-AOL who have stopped the talks, not Microsoft

None of the linked articles say this. Where are you getting this from?

with ICQ/AIM they already own instant messaging

I wouldn't shed too many tears for Microsoft here. MSNM has now had more users than AIM for a couple of months now. AOL wouldn't be doing so much whining about instant messaging lately if they really owned the market.

have a HUGE base of AOL users whose switch from IE to Netscape would be a major defeat for Microsoft

Huge? The AOL browser client has less than 6 percent of the browser marketshare.

Sorry if it hurts the Mozilla fans' sense of self-esteem, but the browser that the AOL client uses is a very minor issue in this deal. AOL in fact worried about alienating their customers by downgrading them to Mozilla, and unfortunately for them, Microsoft knows this, which means that there is no browser bargaining chip. The disagreements have more to do with multimedia and the DoJ than any non-existant browser war.

Cheers,

Not sure how that possibly got a +5, Insightful, but here goes.

MSN which isn't very popular anyway

Hmm, unless Juno has more subscribers (I don't have their numbers), MSN has the second largest base of U.S. subscribers. Guess it's not all that unpopular after all.

Given that it's Time Warner-AOL who have stopped the talks, not Microsoft

None of the linked articles say this. Where are you getting this from?

with ICQ/AIM they already own instant messaging

I wouldn't shed too many tears for Microsoft here. MSNM has now had more users than AIM for a couple of months now. AOL wouldn't be doing so much whining about instant messaging lately if they really owned the market.

have a HUGE base of AOL users whose switch from IE to Netscape would be a major defeat for Microsoft

Huge? The AOL browser client has less than 6 percent of the browser marketshare.

Sorry if it hurts the Mozilla fans' sense of self-esteem, but the browser that the AOL client uses is a very minor issue in this deal. AOL in fact worried about alienating their customers by downgrading them to Mozilla, and unfortunately for them, Microsoft knows this, which means that there is no browser bargaining chip. The disagreements have more to do with multimedia and the DoJ than any non-existant browser war.

Cheers,

their case for public good is quite a strong one: protecting the livings of musicians. I know the musicians get a unfairly small slice of the pie but thats a different issue. The fact is that if everyone could get music for free the musicians dont get any money, so they dont make music. No music != public good.

Now if someone can show P2P operating with the orginators of the music getting money then this case goes away. Napster hasnt done that (saying 'oh.. err, well how about if we add subscriptions?' doesnt seem to have cut it) and thats why napster is dead.

The trouble is, the RIAA will never let such a system exist unless it's under their control. That, in a large part, is why we have yet to see a successful, profit-making online music system. Everything that has come along has been killed, crippled, or bought out by the record companies. Even Napster's subscription model could have been a success...sure, they would have lost a large portion of their user base, but they might have been able to retain enough users to make a profit and pay the artists. That's probably not the case any longer, with the droves of users who have already abandoned the almost worthless file sharing system for other P2P networks.

The only pay music networks that we're going to see will be the ones owned by the labels, and on those, the consumer is going to be paying absurd fees for music they can't burn to a CD, transfer to their Rio, or even move to another PC. And they won't even be buying this music...that would be far too unfair to the record companies. No, we only get to rent it for a short time. If we want to keep it longer, we pay more.


A point to make here is that CDRs werent banned when people started copying CDs with them. Why should it be easier to ban a non-physical medium which .could. be used for piracy?

There's a difference between CDRs and P2P systems...CDRs have a very obvious, proveable, legitimate use as a data storage medium. As much as the RIAA would probably like to use their legal clout to restrict CDRs, they haven't figured out a way around that legitimate use. P2P file sharing networks, on the other hand, are a new technology, and, unfortunatly, no one has really come up with a useful, widespread, 100%-legitimate use for them. There are probably many, many legitimate purposes for which P2P could be used, but we just haven't figured out what they are or how to apply P2P file sharing technology to them. Unfortunatly, with our legal system, that makes the entire P2P file sharing concept a target, because the precedent seems to be that you must prove something can be used for a "substantial legitimate purpose," or else it is automatically considered illegitimate if it could contribute in any way to something illegal.

DennyK