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well, its on the fuckedcompany website and their link is to economic times times
seems like netscape has been losing the war for a long time. and i think it continues.
its a shame, i like netscape.

So, if you have a seperate window on top of your browser that covers an advert it's wrong? Gator doesn't replace anything, so you are just buying into the FUD.

From e-commerce times - August 2001:
"Last week, the advertising-supported service -- which has been installed by 8 million users -- launched an enhanced version that includes "Companion Pop-Up Banner" ad delivery software. According to Gator, the new vehicle "occasionally pops up to deliver a relevant advertisement" in a window that floats over existing banner ads on some Web pages. "

Because users have chosen to install Gator/GAIN on their systems.

Chosen? That is debatable. Mush as any EULA, what it actually does is shrouded in dense legalese, in a 20 char wide window. You know as well as I do that no one really reads those.

Users get targetted avertisements. Some of which overlay in a separate window on top of their web-browser.

'Separate window', directly and purposely in the space that the original website builder put his ad. I hate popups as much as the nextt guy. But personally, I think that is wrong. You don't. We shall just have to agree to disagree.

The concern with virii in PDF documents is valid, if a bit overblown.
The 'Peachy'
virus/trojan is one example.

Hmmm.....DOJ *does not* break up MSFT. They plan to build-in DRM and other measures in to the next iteration of the OS -- which makes *me* a bit paranoid due to their monopoly on desktop computing -- but I guess I'm not alone.

Since there are so many advantages to trusted computing (yes...the sarcasm is intended) that governments outside the U.S. (vs. the U.S. Government itself) are obviously extremely distrustful of any moves by MSFT and MSFT is extremely concerned about Linux since it so obviously provides an alternative that is growing increasingly viable.

So aligning with SCO makes perfect sense for MSFT...what a perfect way to spew FUD! When my buddies and I sit around talking about MSFT, the DOJ and the scary possibilities of such things as media consolidation, DRM, shrinkage of ISP's (which, BTW, makes government surveillance *much* easier)...this MSFT/SCO connection is just one more glaring example of the fact that our pals in Redmond asked us a long time ago to bend over...and are trying really hard to hand us that jar of Vaseline they're holding to make total insertion all that much easier.

Is it just me...or are MSFT's moves to kill Linux laughingly obvious to you too? Are you gonna grab *your* ankles and lube up?

I think that this is one of the articles.

I figure advertisers will try to embed thier messages in any way they can without causing enough of a backlash, legal or social, to still make a good profit.
We may very well see increased efforts at "target marketing, or profiling
We may also see attempts to incorporate subliminal messaging in the product placement, or product intrusion in our online experiences. Such messages could be placed to prove difficult to directly link to the advertising.
Since, as far as I can tell, subliminal messages are not in themselves illegal, this can be used in advertising. They were banned by the American networks and by the National Association of Broadcasters in June of 1958.
Finally, whether or not submlibinal messages work is still in controversy

Corporations are people and pay taxes just like we do.

Not if they give out enough stock options to employees.

A majority of IT managers say IT employee burnout is now a serious issue in their organizations, according to a recent study by research firm Meta Group. Among the many areas of high concern to IT departments this year, few are as evident as employee morale, the report states.

Before I lost my job to a layoff, (my job was outsourced oversees) I was doing the work of several, and constantly worried that layoffs and outsourcing were coming.

I'm now considering a whole new career in a completely unrelated field...

The Case For OpenOffice

Secretaries use Linux, taxpayers save millions (part 1 of 2)

Largo loves Linux more than ever (part 2 of 2)

How To Run a Microsoft-Free Shop

Reasons to Avoid Microsoft (summary and links)

Microsoft loses showdown in Houston

Making a Living Saving the Government Money

Those are just some of the articles I've saved. If you wade thru a /. search, you may find more. I found those particularly interesting because some of them give details of companies or goverment agencies who have moved to Linux (away from MS), and their difficulties and successes doing so.

Maybe they should worry a little more about securing their online payment systems!

Ohhhhh, wait...
He's talking about getting their customers to provide credit card info for billing.
See above, it still applies.

The original question pegs SMTP traffic at 2-5% of total net traffic. The article you cite pegs spam 17-38% of e-mail traffic .

Being as generous as possible, 38% (spam) of 5% (total traffic) comes out to approximately 2% of total traffic being spam.

And besides your attention to detail sucking, you didn't really answer the question asked, which was how much spam is actually costing you, or rather how much would it be costing you if you just let it happen and didn't expend energy and resources trying to fight it.

OTOH, your ability to give an answer to a question other than the one asked makes me wonder if you've considered a career in politics.
"How much does spam cost you?"
"Spam filters are helpful but ultimately ineffective. Spam will destroy the internet."
"What do you think of the possibility of nuclear weapons in North Korea?"
"We must invade Iraq."

June 1999: CMGI buys AltaVista from Compaq for $2.3 billion in stocks.

"On Tuesday [the day after the sale], CMGI closed at $110.31, up $12.63, or 12.92 percent, with 13,921,400 shares traded.
'It's a great deal for them [CMGI],' says Ullas Naik, analyst with FAC Equities. 'AltaVista is an underappreciated and underused asset. CMGI can leverage that and cross-pollinate it with their existing companies and then they'll probably be able to spin it off as an IPO in six to nine months at a significant premium to what they paid.'"

December 1999, AltaVista files for IPO. (DEC had made plans to have AltaVista go public in 1996, but recanted the following year.)

April 2000: IPO delayed.

"CMGI was enjoying a midday bounce of nearly 6 percent to $55.13 [half of what it was not one year before, mind you]."

January 2001: IPO withdrawn.

"[During 2000, chief executive David] Wetherell's CMGI shares fell from a value of $2.1 billion at the beginning of the year to $100 million at year's end, a 95 percent decline."

I wouldn't worry about Google. It's made grown men cry. All over their worthless stocks.

Look at how far behind the curve they are:

"employing a massive network of trucks, computers, warehouses and neighborhood distributors to provide basic sustenance for every Iraqi."

Obviously they didn't learn that the whole 'webVan' business model is doomed to fail. If only Saddam could drop some of the arrogance and allow his economic advisors to learn from America's mistakes, then he could have saved the bank accounts of thousands of Iraqi Venture Capitalists.

• June 2, 2000 - E-Commerce Times - 'Top 10 List' Reveals Internet Security Flaws"
• October 21, 2001 - Tech TV - FBI Releases List of Top 20 Computer Risks
• Monday, September 30, 2002 - PCWorld/Yahoo - List of Top 20 Software Flaws Due
• October 17, 2002 - SANS/FBI - The Twenty Most Critical Internet Security Vulnerabilities

Where did you find these figures? I've looked in the most recent 10-Q and 10-K filed with the SEC but my reading doesn't agree with your figures.

I was going on various articles I've read along the lines of this one.

If your figures are correct, that would mean they're being taxed at an effective rate of ~56% (annual revenues of ~28 billion US$). I thought the US was the nation of *low* taxation compared with us savages over here in Europe! Even Microsoft's SEC filings only admit an effective taxation rate of ~33%...

--

secondly, your statement slightly contradicts itself. a company saving money would thus have more profit and thus more income tax revenue. sure the employee dollars aren't being taxed, but those people are going to have to make a living somehow (once their jobs are exported) and that earning will still be taxed. our government takes a cut of money whenever it changes hands, and sometimes when it doesnt.

except in this country corporations use tax shelters to avoid paying taxes.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/4526.html

I oppose Amazon.com's 1-Click Patent
As one of the founding programmers at Amazon.com, I was very dismayed to learn
of the company's legal attempts to enforce its 1-Click (TM) patent. ...
www.op.net/~pbd/amazon-1click.html - 4k - Cached - Similar pages

Amazon, Barnes&Noble settle patent suit - Tech News - CNET.com
... The story behind Amazon's 1-Click patent Mark Grant, author, Law
and the Internet Play clip. Amazon.com said Wednesday that it ...
news.com.com/2100-1017-854105.html - 27k - Cached - Similar pages

Apple - Media & Analyst Information - Press Releases
Apple Licenses Amazon.com 1-Click Patent and Trademark. New Apple Online
Store with 1-Click Shopping Premieres Today CUPERTINO, California ...
www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/sep/18amazon.html - 11k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

Salon Technology | Amazon to world: We control how many times you ...
... The 1-Click patent suits suggest that the company is forsaking this understanding
for a more conventional, bare-knuckles corporate strategy. ...
www.salon.com/tech/log/1999/12/21/bezos/ - 23k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

www.oreilly.com -- Ask Tim! -- Software Patents Issue
... At the same time, I completely agree with RMS that the Amazon 1-Click Patent
is one more example of an intellectual property milieu gone mad. ...
Description: The founder of O'Reilly & Associates (the top computer manual publisher) criticizes Amazon's attempt...
Category: Society>Issues>IntellectualProperty>Paten ts
www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/amazon_patent.html - 20k - Cached - Similar pages

Amazon's 1-Click Patent Survives Bounty Hunt
Amazon's 1-Click Patent Survives Bounty Hunt By Elizabeth Wasserman Issue Date: Mar
15 2001 No one wins the prize for invalidating the e-retailer's patent for ...
www.thestandard.com/article/display/ 0,1151,22862,00.html - 32k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

1 Click Results!
1-Click Patent: No Exact Match But Runners Up Will Split $10,000 Cash Prize. ... Read
Runners Up Profiles>>. History of the 1-Click Patent Conflict. ...
www.bountyquest.com/infocenter/1click.htm - 15k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

allNetDevices: - OpenTV Claims 1-Click Patent
... OpenTV Claims 1-Click Patent. Latest News. ...
www.allnetdevices.com/industry/news/ 2000/10/06/opentv_claims.html - 35k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

Amazon Loses Round in 1-Click Patent Case
Amazon Loses Round in 1-Click Patent Case ...
www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/7528.html - 10k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

Microsoft escapes ...

corporations pay a lot of taxes as well

Yeah right. Like Microsoft, for example.

Bzzzt. Not the amount Microsoft reported, but the amount Microsoft paid. Try again.

Zilch. As in nada.

Don't be such a stool pigeon.

Well, according to this article: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/19188.htm l The two corporate keys released have been specifically targeted. I am glad that my office has an MSDN subscription that I was able to use to install XP at home. All in all, this is just an annoyance, as an attempt to install SP1 on a 'hacked' copy will not break the computer/format C:, but will deny updates from this point on. The corporate keys that were leaked were replaced with legitimate keys, because at least one, was from an actual corporate license and not just some typical generic windows key like under 95 where the serial 111-1234567890 was a vaild key, and office was all 1's.

As for all these Frameworks; can any single one of you actually describe, in under 200 words, exactly what the .NET Framework is, what its comprised of, and why I should find it so exciting? ...

Will anyone take the challenge, I wonder?

Don't confuse this with advocacy, .Net is a a know they enemy technology. Below you will find my 188 word summary. Comments and corrections are welcomed. I think Passport.NET has been canned but I am not certain.

Microsoft.NET is a product, note not a standard, intended to develop enterprise class web services. Microsoft.NET is comprised of ASP.NET, .NET managed components, and Host Integration Server, with additional hooks for SQL Server, Passport.NET, Exchange, Commerce Server, Application Center, etc. ASP.NET can render interfaces in HTML, XHTML, XML or using Windows forms.

Microsoft.NET is mostly a rewrite of Windows DNA with enhanced language support and web services. The primary 'benefit' is language independence and inter-operability. The .NET framework includes the Common Language Runtime (CLR) which operating as an intermediary layer providing automatic garbage collection, cross-language inheritance, and concurrent execution of different versions of a .NET component. It also provides SOAP, WSDL, UDDI support for web services and will soon support ebXML.

There are several pluses for the Mircosoft.NET framework and a great deal of draws with J2EE. The programming model is simpler than J2EE. The .NET framework provides language neutrality rather than forcing you to treat other languages as separate applications. Both .NET and J2EE require training, can create enterprise web services today, offer scalable enterprise solutions, and are available on the low end.

At the risk of someone beating me to the punch, I'd like to point out that the "a lot" of taxes that Microsoft pays is precisely zero.

Nobody knew what a "Zshop" was.

Amazon hasn't promoted Zshops or Auctions in years -- they earn far more profit on Marketplace sales.

While I won't go as far as the other person who replied to this post, you are indeed somewhat misguided. Although not buying online is perhaps the only 100% solution, akin to abstinence for some people, the use of single-card credit card numbers has made me feel significantly safer about purchasing items online, which I do often.

Sites that I trust (big vendors with reputable histories) get my real credit card number, so that I can buy things instantly from them, but that's only a select few. All of the rest get single-use numbers that are no good for any transactions but that one. Both Visa and Discover support this technology - Visa's version is ShopSafe, while Discover's is Discover Deskshop, both of which are free tools.

Although I buy things frequently, my buying patterns have so far never resulted in my cc info being compromised, and I hope to keep it that way. The biggest scare I ever got was when Egghead admitted to having had cc's stolen, if anyone remembers that story. But mine must not have been one of the ones that they got.

There are some fairly severe secondary effects, the main one being that those countries tend not to have a "brain-oriented" economy, because they don't value creativity.

I see no reason to believe that the value on creativity is an effect of lack of copyright law. If anything, it is a cause.

It's simply not true that musicians make most of their money through concerts.

You may indeed be right, I was only going on what I've heard through the grapevine, but I have done a little research. "The vast majority of musicians make little or no money on CD sales." I'd like to see some quotes which back up your point.

I agree that small live acts would probably still stay, however, the recorded music industry would suffer greatly.

Recordings of concerts would almost certainly thrive. Studio recordings would almost certainly drop, but I think the mega pop-star would still survive. Either way music would survive. I don't think the U.S. would lose any culture from it. If anything I think it'd gain culture from increased variety.

The consumer software market would be hurt pretty badly.

What consumer software market? Games? Operating Systems? I don't know a single person who has bought a single consumer software item which wasn't a game, except from Microsoft.

You'd also see a lack of competition, because large bundling deals would become the primary means by which consumer software was marketted.

Again, what competition? Piracy has already destroyed the consumer software market. Short of throwing millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens in jail (probably after illegally searching their homes), you're not going to do anything to stop it.

No-one is forcing you to use the software.

No one is forcing me to type on my keyboard either, but that doesn't mean it's dishonest for me to type on my keyboard without paying royalties to the keyboard manufacturer. If congress made a law saying that anyone who buys a keyboard must pay $0.01 to the keyboard manufacturer every time s/he types a key, would you consider it dishonest and immoral to use the keyboard without paying? I wouldn't.

Copyright is a way for authors to get paid.

You're again begging the question as to whether or not authors should get paid.

It's a means by which authors can set up an exclusive club of people who are allowed to use their software.

The government does not have the right to allow authors to set up such a club.

Take a look at the countries that have weak IP laws, and ask yourself how they are doing in terms of technology.

Correlation does not imply causation.

Depends on how much you value creativity, doesn't it ? If you consider flipping burgers to be more useful to society than writing software, then perhaps you should indeed reward the burger flipper, but not the software author.

I don't believe it's up to me or you to decide. I believe it's up to the market to decide. Personally I'd probably tend to lean toward eating being more important than playing Doom, though. Actually, I certainly do, since I've spent much more money on flipped burgers than I have on software. I currently have exactly two pieces of payware on my system. One is Windows 2000, and the other is Borland Delphi.

What will happen is that ISPs in that country will be forced to block access to the offending web site. This has already happened in some minor venues, such as Saudi Arabia. There have also been failed attempts in France.

eBay has crashed - and more than once. It's cost them a fair amount each time. Here's a couple of links

This is mostly about how to bring this topic to the attention of your supervisors, since if your users are already saying there's no official policy against using p2p apps, they'll likely to just tell you to get bent on further discussion.

Over the past year or so, there have been plenty of universities that have made decisions on P2P apps, going in both directions. You can use some of these instituions as examples of why you need to police this kind of traffic. Bring up the same reasons that these universities did, and that you brought up in your question (mainly legal protection and consumption of resources).

Here are a few examples:

• Bandwidth Demand at American Universities
  
• Working With The Bandwidth Problem?
  

There are also articles on other sites that list some of the universites that have banned Napster. Here's one article: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/4172.html . They mention the following universities: Kent State, Rice, Seton Hall and Villanova. I'm sure there are others.

You can argue that if these major universities with plenty of money can't handle this traffic, how is your small public school district supposed to handle it? Hopefully, the money argument will help you out.

One final thing you can do (and this is fighting dirty), is point out how much pr0n is out there on p2p apps. That should get someone's attention.

When an American governmental organization buys a software license, it's almost always money going to a tax-paying U.S. corporation

Yeah, unless that company is Microsoft, because MS doesn't pay taxes.

I see your point here, except that Microsoft probably wouldn't be paying for squat.

No, you idiot, he's implying that most free software companies go into software development with a business plan as an afterthought.

MS is insanely profitable. Partly because they paid no taxes the last 2 years.

On the other hand, it's nice to see that "suckered into paying good money for Daikatana" rose to 8% on the FBI's compaint list this year.

3) So what if they have $40 billion in the bank? What does that have to do with anything?

5) Despite your inflamed rhetoric the US government has never been for the people. Go read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and you'll quickly find that the government has been siding with business and industry over individuals for 200+ years. Yawn.

Maybe now that companies are offering hacker insurance some standards and guidelines will develop?

On the other hand...when has the computer industry ever mirror any real world industry? We still don't have the equivalent of the Consumer Product Safety Commission nor is there product liability, recalls, or defect-related lawsuits.

If there were, Microsoft would make the Ford/Firestone fiasco look like nothing.

- JoeShmoe

.

Agreed. And don't you think that things are never going to change?? It's going to be the same thing over and over, as they grind legitimate businesses into the ground. Recently, they were trying to pull the same stunt with imaging software, trying to hardwire their own photo services into XP. Only after Kodak started to get congress involved did Microsoft back down.

It's as if microsoft thinks that they are "better" than the law, and that they know best when it comes to computers. It really is their way or the highway. The arrogance is amazing. At what point are they going to admit that they were wrong?? That's what should determine the harshness of the measures.

It makes you wonder what kind of bitchslap that microsoft needs to bring it to it's knees. Unfortunately, I think unlikely that this current court action is going to provide what is needed. No matter what the court decides, it really will be "business as usual".

Oh my god, CmdrTaco. This is total flamebait. Free software developers not providing any tax revenue?

Neither does Microsoft.
Really, they don't pay a dime!

--CmdrTaco, I'm going to block the ads but I will mail you a $5 bill each year. Is that okay?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Microsoft hasn't paid taxes in a long time.

The Nevada Secretary of State Corporation Search gives us.

• President:MAURICE O'BANNON
• 
  Address: PO BOX 27103
  LAS VEGAS NV 89126

• vx2 (VX52-DOM)
• 
  po box 27103
  Las Vegas, NV 89126
  US

  Domain Name: VX2.CC

  212 255 1008 fax: 123 123 1234

"Maurice O'Bannon" is mentioned in several legal documents related to the J.K. Publications scam. In that case, O'Bannon was on paper an officer or director of several dummy Nevada corporations which were fronting for a multimillion dollar phony credit card billing scam operated by Kenneth Taves of Malibu, CA. (Mr. Taves is currently Inmate #12289-112 at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center). O'Bannon, though, appears to be some guy in Nevada who just signed whatever was put in front of him. In the judge's words [large .PDF] "Maurice O'Bannon had an informal agreement with Nevada Corporate Headquarters, Inc., an incorporator, to act as a nominee for their client-corporations and sign whatever documents Nevada Corp wanted him to sign." The judge was bothered by O'Bannon's actions, but the FTC didn't have enough evidence that he had control of or profited from the scam to put him away.

The J.K. publications scam involved obtaining a database of 3.6 million valid credit card numbers and charging them small amounts each, supposedly for use of a porno site. The mess involved offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and Vanatu, but much of the money has been recovered. Company names involved were JK Publications, Inc., MJD Service Corp., Netfill, N-Bill, Webtel, Billing On Line, Fun On Line, and Discreet Bill.

We're not at the bottom of this yet, but it looks very suspicious.

Your question is similar to one that I have been researching for some time, in my role as an adjunct professor of E-Commerce. What is the impact of the Internet on governments?

There is a rich history of how governments have confronted new technologies in the past. It's the sort of history that I wish high schools would teach: some of the laws passed in response to new technologies are extremely funny. The introduction of steam engines, canals, railroads, the telegraph, repeating arms, the automobile--even the safety razor--emboldened legions of pompous politicians eager to satiate their constituents' desire to Put A Stop To This. And Put A Stop To This they did--until they realized that the next town over was benefiting from all the jobs building the railroad line, or manufacturers were locating plants across the state line to avoid their jurisdiction, or (the worst possible fate for a pol) people were just laughing at them and ignoring the law. (Through 1976, at least, it was illegal for a man in the State of Illinois to shave himself unless he was a licensed barber.)

There typically has been a pattern to how governments (the bureaucrats, the politicians, and the judiciary) come to grips with a new technology. The initial response typically is "Put A Stop To This". The next response is "Regulate It!"--generally meaning "slow it down," as the original cast of pompous pols is replaced by wannabe-graybeards urging "caution" and "restraint." As bureaucrats and politicians see wider acceptance of the technology the next step is natural: "How Can We Tax It?" The rules and requirements tend to get relaxed as the bureaucrats, etc., become comfortable with the technology, in a phase I call "Hey! This Could Be Useful." Ultimately, for extremely disruptive technologies, there is a phase we might call "We'd Better Get On The Bandwagon."

Railroads are a perfect example: in the 1830s and 1840s every politician was in the Put A Stop To This camp; by the later 1840s and early 1850s there was grudging acceptance, but still "restraint" and "caution". (There were, for instance, repeated debates about whether it was safe for the Post Office should use trains to move mail.) By the 1850s railroads were confronting a bevy of tax proposals: taxes on rights-of-way, taxes on locomotives, taxes on rail cars, and taxes on revenue. When the U.S. Army used railroads to bring fresh troops to Gettysburg--and won the battle--the utility of railroads was made manifest. Suddenly every politician was a closet railfan, and the pols fell over one another in their rush to champion, sponsor, or even subsidize the building of Yet Another Railway Line. By the late 1860s, up until the economic collapse of 1873, and then again in the later 1870s, the We'd Better Get On The Bandwagon phase was at its peak: rather than regulating or taxing railroads, politicians were working fiendishly to ensure that the railroad didn't pass them by. Towns with railroads lived, towns without railroads died.

The technology has changed--politicians have not. What has also changed--and what makes this process seem so much more contentious--is that the Internet has appeared in the public consciousness, and in your living room, at an extremely rapid pace. And the pace of change is only increasing. Meanwhile, the pace at which politicians (and bureaucrats and judges) move through the Put A Stop To This/Regulate It To Death/How Can We Tax It/Hey This Could Be Useful framework hasn't changed much.

Which phase are we in?
I think we're definitely in the Put A Stop To This phase, and we're going to stay there for a long time--partly because the pace of change means that there is always something new to put a stop to, but also because the growing reach of the Internet means that there is always a fresh crop of less-than-clueful politicians just a router hop away. When the Internet finally got to Afghanistan, the Taliban...Put A Stop To It.

The Next Phases
As some officials begin to comprehend the impact of the Internet, we begin to see the phase of "caution" and "restraint." In the U.S., for instance, we have federal programs to wire every school and public library for Internet access--but politicians still fuss and fume about "Net Nanny" programs and how to write laws that meticulously prevent librarians from just using a little common sense. State tax officials are hard at work trying to harmonize state sales tax laws in order to implement sales taxes on e-commerce purchases. In some places--a very few places--politicians and bureaucrats are even talking (NB: talking, not acting) about using community development funds to wire downtowns with fiber optic. These few--these very few--understand that this is the railroad question all over again: if you have cheap bandwidth, you will prosper; if you have little or no bandwidth, your town will die.

That Said, Let's Make Some Distinctions
Several people posting on this topic have brought up the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as an example of draconian law similar to the examples you mentioned. There are certainly aspects of the DMCA that fall into the Put A Stop To This phase--particularly issues like rules on defeating encryption, whereby "decrypting" something protected by ROT13 becomes a federal crime. (The best response to that, as with safety razors in Illinois, is publicity and ridicule.) But one of the major challenges facing governments--the bureaus, the courts, and the representatives--is the development of intangible property. Note that I'm explicitly not using the term "intellectual property"--the issue is broader, and different, than intellectual property laws. The Internet enables the instantaneous transfer of valuable merchandise across borders--municipal borders, state borders, and national borders. If I buy a copy of Opera 6.0 for example, I am "importing" software from Norway. Except--I actually import nothing. If I go to a website and pay $16 for MP3 files of eight of my favorite songs, I get something valuable (Econ 1A--it's valuable because I'm willing to pay for it). But I do not have even one more molecule than I owned before I started that download. That presents all kinds of problems: a huge portion of tax receipts depend upon various forms of excise taxes, and excise taxes depending upon physical property crossing physical boundaries. (Quiz: if I buy $34,000 worth of map data from a provider in Europe and retrieve the data by FTP, does the transaction get included in balance of payment statistics reported by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce? Nope.) As more and more commerce consists of file transfers and other forms of distributing intangible property, oodles of legal, financial, and tax issues appear. The DMCA has some dumb aspects--but it is at least a first attempt to come to grips with some of this issues.

Moving forward
As the world and the Internet community forge ahead, there will be ample opportunities to learn from other people's mistakes. When a judge in, say, Ohio prepares to issue a decision banning "hate speech" there may be an assistant who will point out that the speech in question is a fatwa issued in Iran, and the ruling might make the judge look as silly as that bozo judge in France.

There is another dimension
Regardless of whether, when, or how politicians around the world finally come to grips with the Internet, there will always be someone, somewhere, who wants to prevent it. With good reason: there are lots of cultures around the world that feel threatened by American movies, American music, American literature, and American attitudes about all sorts of things. And they--rightly--see the Internet as a conduit for all things American, and fear the consequences for their cultures. And that's an entirely legitimate fear--even with millions of users from other countries, the Internet culture is a mirror image of the American "frontier experience" in its wildest and wooliest. I think that's a good thing--but I'm an American. The Saudis, the Chinese, the Taliban, and a fool of a judge in Paris all disagree. There's an irony in the fact that a tool developed by the U.S. Defense Department will become the ultimate weapon of American cultural hegemony. And eventually the bureaucrats, courts, and politicians will have to come to grips with that.

In sum...
When pundits or pols in Austria, Australia, or Austin are fussing and fulminating about this Internet-based Crisis! or that, remember: this is just a phase. Pat them on the head, and tell that someday they will grow out of it.

Actually, MS didn't pay any taxes. I did, but they didn't.

It's not like IBM has anything to gain from publishing a comparison of this kind.

Probably Reagan's air traffic controllers thought that they were indispensable, too.

that's funny, because microsoft owns a large portion of radio shack.

link

microsoft already has your info

It's sort of weird... data and electricity sharing the same line -- the phrase "information is power" rings errily true here!!

But, if information is power, and power corrupts, does this mean we're going to have unreliablt data connections over these lines :)

The real success of stock options, as I recall, began with Micro$oft. I'm sure other companies were doing it, but Micro$oft was certainly in the forefront of the tech companies doing it.

Everyone has heard the stories of millionaires made at Micro$oft, and these aren't fairy tales, they're true stories. Micro$oft created more millionaires than any other company in history (sorry, don't have the links on hand to back that up). And some came out during the .com boom, but not as many as advertised. Most of those were on paper and turned to nothing in the following "crash".

Today's smart tech worker should be more concerned with salary and benefits than stock options, especially with companies without an established history.

What you need to remember, as a tech worker, is that stock options are more of a benefit for the company, than for the workers. As mentioned by other posters, you need money to exercise your options. You also have to wait to be fully (or even partially) vested, and that usually takes a few years, at least. Finally, you have to hope and pray that your options are worth something when you exercise them.

For the company, on the other hand, they get to write off the options they provide. It's a huge tax boon for them. Go to Google and do a search on: "stock option taxes microsoft cisco"

As you'll see, they've avoided paying MASSIVE amounts of taxes by using stock option writeoffs. In fact, for 1999, Microsoft and Cisco didn't pay A DIME in federal taxes. Other sites agree with this story, this just happens to be one of the ones I found first.

So, that's my analysis, but hey, I'm only one guy.

That would be worth about $1.295 million U.S., at today's rate. At least somebody's getting some employment out of this. Kind of like Lawyers Find Profit in Dot-Com Disasters.

The single most dangerous thing you can do in politics is shut off information from people who don't agree with you. - Molly Ivins

Unfortunately, the washington law was overturned in court.

Read about it here among other places.

Damn shame too.

It's getting to the point where these megacorps are acting as if they're entitled to this kind of obscene profit, claiming legal protection for every cent they make. What ever happened to competition? What ever happened to earning your profits?

AOL and Microsoft are in businesses where the incremental cost of their products are practically nil compared to the cost of the first item. I know I don't have to tell you how obscene the pricing structures are for MS products. THAT should be the subject of uniform legislation...

In FY2000, MS Office accounted for $7 billion in sales for MSFT, just under a third of their total revenue, and the new release (Office 2000) was on the market only a fraction of the year. That's immense! And don't try to convince me it cost anywhere near $7 billion to write MS Office 2000. (And if it really, truly did, then Bill is hiring the wrong programmers.) For chrissake, if you're selling $23 billion worth of goods and services and making $2.2 billion in profit per quarter, you don't need a law to make it any easier to turn a profit. Hell, a lot of people are claiming that the rest of us need laws to protect us from you. But then, we don't have hundreds of millions of dollars to influence legislators with.

Go away, Bill, Steve, and Andrew. Go spend your money on some island nation somewhere where you can make your own laws. Leave ours alone.

The ethics counsel for the American Bar Association, George Kuhlman, said in Chicago that people should not be expressing views on Rehnquist's statement and that he himself would not.

You guys are so damned irresponsible! Let's just go over this again - "people should not be expressing views" .

Don't you get it! The freedom to express an opinion does not extend to issues such as this and if you computer-types don't stop abusing the First Amendment, the U.S. Goverment may be forced to introduce laws to restrict these rights which you are exercising so irresponsibly, c.f. DeCSS.

</sarcasm>

Right, well the UK is no good because of the RIP Bill. The US is heading the same way, so I guess I'm going to be moving back home to Ireland.

Gee, what a pity. I'll be forced to drink Guinness and date Irish girls. 8-)

D.
...is for "Digital Signatures become law in Ireland"...