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"'I wouldn't be surprised if Yahoo bought Google,' says Tomas Isakowitz, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia" in this Red Herring article. Can you see a merging of Yahoo! Groups (aka eGroups aka One List) and UseNet? /. needs to strap a borg headset onto a Yahoo! logo.

Sorry, I forgot to HTML-format my posting. Here's a clickable link: http://www.redherring.com/insider/2001/0116/tech-m ag-89-intel011601.html

The "Lerach" bill

Year 2000 suits

And on Red Herring

When they got sued and lost

This Red Herring article lays it out pretty nicely. P-2-P is not any new innovation, it is simple repackaging of existing ideas which look suspiciously like FTP or, in this case, IRC. The specific uses might seem interesting, but now that people are starting to see that there isn't really any great leap forward here, they can get back to just designing useful file transfer systems and leave the gee-whiz hype at the door.

"High-tech work takes on significance that transcends the rhetoric of efficiency, productivity and 'value added,' as it is used to make lives meaningful by aligning them with progressive forces."

Well, not for me.

I thought that was the case, too, but then I read this interview with Gore, and I have a newfound respect for his ability to understand technical issues. I don't think he was briefed for this interview ... too much stuff going on. I really do think he understands distributed computing.

RedHerring 's article, Excite's copy of Reuter's coverage, and Zdnet's article, not to mention CNN and the rest.

It's hard to say why the internet press is jumping all over this one: is it to appeal to their target audiences which include mp3 snarfers or is it just a big human-interest story, in the way Time and Newsweek and all the dead-tree rags have covered it. But at least Napster's demonstrated one thing: even people who aren't willing to pay for their music can still provide the eyeballs for banner revenue models. And ultimately, that's the only way any of these consortia will be economically viable.

Mode this up!

Here's a couple of links to Red Herring. The first one is a Bush interview. The second one is Gore.

If intellect counted for anything, this would be a no-brainer. But, then again, this is the USA we're talking about.

--

Mode this up!

Here's a couple of links to Red Herring. The first one is a Bush interview. The second one is Gore.

If intellect counted for anything, this would be a no-brainer. But, then again, this is the USA we're talking about.

--

De Beers managed to increase the preceived value of diamonds though a carefully planned campaign of giving them to female Hollywood stars in the 1940s. Before that they were (rightly, IMO) considered rather boring.

A chunk of a Diamondtalk.com Forum has some nice information on this. In particular, one poster cited an article in The Atlantic entitled "Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?" notably, it says the following:

The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa. As De Beers took control of all aspects of the world diamond trade, it assumed many forms. In London, it operated under the innocuous name of the Diamond Trading Company. In Israel, it was known as "The Syndicate." In Europe, it was called the "C.S.O." -- initials referring to the Central Selling Organization, which was an arm of the Diamond Trading Company. And in black Africa, it disguised its South African origins under subsidiaries with names like Diamond Development Corporation and Mining Services, Inc. At its height -- for most of this century -- it not only either directly owned or controlled all the diamond mines in southern Africa but also owned diamond trading companies in England, Portugal, Israel, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland.

Just like any other cartel, like the Cocaine People(tm).

Yeah, but diamond mining requires moving a huge amount of material to get a few diamonds. Titanium mining requires moving a large amount of material into a smelting facility. This process is not going to substantually change things other than making it cheaper. But it is going to change the lifestyle of titanium salesmen.

That's true now, but remember that previous article in The Atlantic? Well, it links to another article which has this next juicy tidbit:

Diamonds arrived in Namaqualand millions of years ago, tumbling down the rivers and into the sea. When the ocean receded, some of the diamonds remained on the beach.

Namaqualand is described slightly above that snippet of text as "...a sandy slab of South Africa along the Atlantic coast. Namaqualand's pan-hot desert and scraped little hills start north of Cape Town and run up to the Orange River..." which is striking, because what that means is that at one time, you could head off from Cape Town, go to the beach with a rake, and just dig up uncut diamonds.

Also, the American Museum of Natural History has a nice diamond web exhibit which contains, among other things, this page which points out that diamonds were discovered in South Africa by a boy finding one just lying around on his father's farm. Nice anectodal evidence.

And just to make you ill without sending you to goatse.cx, consider this article (in Red Herring) which talks about a company (now called Blue Nile) which got billions of dollars (literally) in two rounds of VC funding in one month.

So when you're forking over two months' salary for an engagement ring like a barmy git, keep in mind that once upon a memory you could walk on the beach in Cape Town and spontaneously find a diamond in your toes. How often do you think that happens nowadays?

Enough data mining for tonight. You're all on your own from here on out.

De Beers managed to increase the preceived value of diamonds though a carefully planned campaign of giving them to female Hollywood stars in the 1940s. Before that they were (rightly, IMO) considered rather boring.

A chunk of a Diamondtalk.com Forum has some nice information on this. In particular, one poster cited an article in The Atlantic entitled "Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?" notably, it says the following:

The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa. As De Beers took control of all aspects of the world diamond trade, it assumed many forms. In London, it operated under the innocuous name of the Diamond Trading Company. In Israel, it was known as "The Syndicate." In Europe, it was called the "C.S.O." -- initials referring to the Central Selling Organization, which was an arm of the Diamond Trading Company. And in black Africa, it disguised its South African origins under subsidiaries with names like Diamond Development Corporation and Mining Services, Inc. At its height -- for most of this century -- it not only either directly owned or controlled all the diamond mines in southern Africa but also owned diamond trading companies in England, Portugal, Israel, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland.

Just like any other cartel, like the Cocaine People(tm).

Yeah, but diamond mining requires moving a huge amount of material to get a few diamonds. Titanium mining requires moving a large amount of material into a smelting facility. This process is not going to substantually change things other than making it cheaper. But it is going to change the lifestyle of titanium salesmen.

That's true now, but remember that previous article in The Atlantic? Well, it links to another article which has this next juicy tidbit:

Diamonds arrived in Namaqualand millions of years ago, tumbling down the rivers and into the sea. When the ocean receded, some of the diamonds remained on the beach.

Namaqualand is described slightly above that snippet of text as "...a sandy slab of South Africa along the Atlantic coast. Namaqualand's pan-hot desert and scraped little hills start north of Cape Town and run up to the Orange River..." which is striking, because what that means is that at one time, you could head off from Cape Town, go to the beach with a rake, and just dig up uncut diamonds.

Also, the American Museum of Natural History has a nice diamond web exhibit which contains, among other things, this page which points out that diamonds were discovered in South Africa by a boy finding one just lying around on his father's farm. Nice anectodal evidence.

And just to make you ill without sending you to goatse.cx, consider this article (in Red Herring) which talks about a company (now called Blue Nile) which got billions of dollars (literally) in two rounds of VC funding in one month.

So when you're forking over two months' salary for an engagement ring like a barmy git, keep in mind that once upon a memory you could walk on the beach in Cape Town and spontaneously find a diamond in your toes. How often do you think that happens nowadays?

Enough data mining for tonight. You're all on your own from here on out.

In the article at Red Herring, on the second page, the interviewer asks:

And is Dot.net a platform-independent strategy?

Bill Gates replies:

No. No. Dot.net is a Microsoft platform. Just like the Windows platform. Windows was built on common standards, like standard character sets like TCP/IP. It was all built on standards. But it was a Microsoft platform, too. The Dot.net is a Microsoft platform. We haven't decided that Microsoft is a zero-revenue company.

No. No. Dot.net is a Microsoft platform. Just like the Windows platform... Don't anyone kid themselves into thinking that Microsoft is interested in playing nicely with others.

One way to lead is to walk in front of the marching crowd. When the crowd changes direction you can either run faster in the new direction and get in front again or you can stop claiming to be the leader.

The software industry "crowd" has changed direction. Watch Microsoft run to be in front again.

The article is here: http://www.redherri ng. com/mag/issue82/mag-gates-82-home.html

PS: When is this damn little textarea going to be tweaked to a reasonable size?

Funny, no links to directx

-Jon

Redherring has an interesting art icle saying that while Linuxworld is still a safe-haven for geeks, it has become a must-attend event for suits. My read of this is quite simple. They called us crazy, idealists, and starry-eyed optimists. They hoped we'd go away because we challenged the status quo. Now we can't be ignored. We've been right all along. Open source development works.

From http://www.isss.org/primer/whorf.htm:

• That the commonly held belief that the cognitive prosesses of all human beings possess a common logical structure which operates prior to and independently of comunication through language is erroneous. It is Whorf's view that the linguistic patterns themselves determine what the individual perceives in this world and how he thinks about it., Since these patterns vary widely, the modes of thinking and perceiving in groups utilizing different linguistic systems will result in basically different world views (Fearing, 1954)

In other words, a person's language restricts what one can think about.

Or, as Bjarne Stroustrup puts it:

• No one language is -- or could ever be -- the best at everything. The reason for that is fundamental: to be optimal for a given task, a given system, and a given group of programmers, a language must be specialized for each. This is achieved at the cost of generality or efficiency. Conversely, generality and efficiency carry a cost of complexity. Consequently, most corporations rely on a combination of special-purpose and general-purpose languages.

  ... Restrictive tools designed to prevent the worst programmers from failing often prevent the best programmers from succeeding. Conversely, unsupportive languages and tools can make average programmers unproductive.

So it's possible that a Japanese's mentalese is different from the American's, and it prohibits him from seeing the situation in the same way that an American would see it, and visa versa.

I think the Whorfian hypothesis is false, but it's an opinion held by many psychologists, so who am I to argue?

• óórem em ber
  ~me
  

Roblimo assumes unthinkingly that all organizations are as chaotic as Slashdot. However, successful large organizations share a characteristic which can be rather disturbing to us more individual-minded types: they have a culture, which dictates to a large degree how their members behave, even in the absence of orders from above. People behave in ways which they know their peers and superiors will approve of. It's ultimately this herd/peer pressure behavior that leads to, or at least fails to prevent, all human group atrocities - up to and including excessive accusations of conspiracy on Slashdot...

The interesting thing is that really successful organizations often take active steps to encourage this natural human trait, and consciously harness it in the interests of the organization. At Microsoft, for example, this was done to excellent effect by Charles Simonyi. There are descriptions of this in various places, like biographies of Gates, but to give the flavor, here's a quote from Red Herring magazine:

"Microsoft is not a cult of personality, but the company is peculiarly dependent on [Bill Gates]. When Charles Simonyi, Microsoft's chief architect, devised the organizational structure in the early '80s, he made Bill the "metaprogrammer" to whom every group product manager reported. No other software CEO is so intimately involved in his company's product development, because no other software CEO has Bill's combination of technical smarts and business savvy."

The point is, Microsoft's culture, like that of many other organizations, is not an accident - it was carefully created, by the hiring and deliberate indocrination of large numbers of impressionable young programmers, and by building an organizational structure designed to reinforce desired behaviors. One result of this is the attitude described in another message posted to this article: Microsoft programmers "believe they are always right", and are (in general) unlikely to give much weight to opinions outside the organization on which they depend for their livelihood and culture. This is what leads to "embrace and extend", even without specific instructions from above.

>This feature was impressive if only for its incredible lack of content.

The content of this piece was "I, Roblimo, am tired of being accused of being part of a Slashdot conspiracy. I know there's no Slashdot conspiracy, because Slashdot is too chaotic. Come to think of it, other places are chaotic too. Therefore, there are few real conspiracies."

I am afraid Roblimo has been hanging out (virtually or otherwise) with Jon Katz for too long, and has unknowingly assimilated Katzian anti-logic...

So microsoft is doing it, so let them!

I can only imagine using this kind of stuff once it gets completely themable in our wearable gnome (or equivalent) huds. The research and implementation will be done already, so it will be easier to spot mistakes that ms might have made and not repeat them.

All in all the article is very good at showing a new direction taken by microsoft, maybe hinting at the post-PC future envisioned by .NET. Here is a related story btw.

I get the idea that there's nothing there that couldn't be replicated by free software, and it would be simple to start a system that did it. Perhaps it's important to get started soon though: there is a dire lack of GPL'ed software for embedded systems and whatever else MS's .net future will use.

"Most Internet entrepreneurs treat the users' attention as a Third World country to be strip-mined"

Classic words on ui design, seen especially on websites with lots of javascript... I wish they could be symbiotic not parasitic!

Sharp has a product called Voquette that connects to a MiniDisc player and allows playback of various sound formats, including MP3. It also includes software for sending files to/from your MD player.

Here are the relevant links:

• Press release from Red Herring
• Info from Planet MiniDisc
• Buy it from Sharp

Right now, they don't.

Even their CEO has stated as much at Red Herring.

Personally, I think they can only make money by selling advertising in their browser, or by selling Napster-Wear.

Keiretsu is a business concept barrowed from Japan where a number of companies (who are not competitors) have a common interest and therefore form an association to leverage mutual business development and cross sales. These associations rarely have the formality of either a partnership or joint venture, and are often founded on bonds of family or traditional alliances from the past. Kiretsus can manifest themselves in a number of ways, including preferential rates, cross referrals, exchange of competitive and market intelligence.

I see this as the future (actually, the present if you look at their posessions and investments) of Microsoft, should it be forced to split.

Much more information on Keiretus is available at http://www.corpwatch.org/ trac/feature/planet/japan_k.html

Also see http://www.businessforum.com/keiretsu.ht ml
http://www.redherring.com/mag/i ssue51/american.html
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com

You hate double standards? Why is it ok for you to deprive the poor helpless advertiser of the revenue they need to keep their cupboards stocked with Ramen noodles, but it is not ok to similarly deprive poor crybaby Lars of the revenue he might have had if you bought his crappy CD instead of downloading it?

You will say, the difference is legality - distributing illegal mp3s is illegal whereas junkbuster is not yet illegal. Frankly, if the advertisers had their way, they would make it illegal, just like the RIAA and other corporate captains of consciousness have had their way with the laws for years (trading cassette tapes is illegal, even though the RIAA has not gone after cassettes since the OTA answered their arguments in this study back in 1989). I mentioned this before - all the arguments are the same; the only change is the technology. Record companies (and, more importantly, artists) should embrace the implications of the new technologies and come up with a business model that allows them to profit off the new medium. This excellent article in Red Herring suggests just that, if anyone wants to read something more articulate than my own words. (heh - but if you want more of my own ranting, read more on nofuncharlie

You're right that Metallica is just telling Napster to enforce their own rules by handing them 300000 names. But it's notable that they only did that after they started the lawsuit. Which suggests the lawsuit was filed in bad faith and that their real goal was extortion of money from Napster, Inc. rather than "protecting intellectual property." (By the way, Lars claimed in the Metallica chat that their goal was to put Napster Inc. out of business). And I suspect that their real goal in "naming names" is intimidation of their fans rather than any desire to see "justice" done.

Someone else pointed out that trying to stop "piracy" by attacking Napster is like trying to soak up the ocean with a sponge. These millionaires are whining because they see that their unfettered monopoly over artists and consumers is soon coming to an end. The Commodore says, tough luck: evolve or die.

Commodore Sloat

Current implementations of flywheels in production for things like cars and buses have a spherical flywheel wound with wire, a wire wound high-impact polycarbon shell, and a balancing mechanism. It pitches, rolls and yaws with the car itself. the spin at 70,000 rpm, and can stay up for a week. yummy. A company called Rosen motors (article in redherring) has been working on a car containing this and a 2 moving part turbogenerator. It is pretty sweet, and may invalidate previous motors right off the line!

--Seen

The very INTENT of Intel's use of the product serial number, by their own admission, was that it would facilitate e-commerce. This means they intended for it to be trackable on the web. Here are some more-credible-than-you points of view on this: Bruce Schneier, author of Applied Cryptography, wrote: The software that queries the processor is not trusted. If a remote Web site queries a processor ID, it has no way of knowing whether the number it gets back is a real ID or a forged ID. Likewise, if a piece of software queries its processor's ID, it has no way of knowing whether the number it gets back is the real ID or whether a patch in the operating system trapped the call and responded with a fake ID. Because Intel didn't bother creating a secure way to query the ID, it will be easy to break the security. From Austin Hill, President, Zero-Knowledge Systems: I hear claims that it will wipe out computer theft. But if someone turns that identifier off because they want privacy, are all of our customers going to be assumed to be criminals? By the way, Thomas Pabst of Tom's Hardware also said the same thing: The idea behind this identification number, which will only be implemented into Pentium III and later Intel CPUs, is to ensure the "trusted connected computer". The identification number, coded with the random number, is supposed to improve Internet security, which is of highest importance for any kind of e-commerce. With this new number, your CPU and thus your system can be clearly identified, which may be an easy way of fighting fraud over the Internet. The negative thing about this number is the fact that it endangers your privacy on the Internet, with the system identification you can possibly be tracked, whatever you do on the Internet. This is why the transfer of the CPU serial number can be turned off by you, and since security reasons kept Intel from implementing a command that can turn it back on again, you need to reboot your system to access e-commerce websites that require your identification number. BTW: netscape and MSIE, in windows, can be tricked into reporting the PSN. Especially MSIE. Now that you have all these facts arrayed against you, I'll be expecting your acknowledgement that you're wrong. I could deluge you in more proof, if you wish to argue your ignorant point.

Do you think he will ever get out entirely, or just hold various bogus jobs at MS? I wonder what would happen to Microsoft's stock price if Bill came out and said, "I retire." Obviously it has to happen someday, the question is will Microsoft still be a dominant player on the market when it does? As a Microsoft shareholder, I hope he does not back off too far. Obviously, his stepping back from the CEO position hasn't been noted as bad news by the Street. (microsoft shares up 2 points today, various articles indicate that volatile trading isn't a concern)

He can't buy off the government- he's tried. But he can buy a fall guy. That is Ballmer

I seriously doubt this. Steve and Bill go way back as friends and coworkers. Hell, the two were college buddies. True, Bill will screw over his competitors, but his close friends? I don't think Bill is that evil.

There's really no way for MS to expand further

Posh. This is nonsense. There are many new mediums to expand into, and Microsoft can do it through various acquisitions and mergers. For example, Interactive TV, Handhelds and such. Hell, with AOL and Time Warner joining hands, whose to say that Microsoft and some other major media or cable provider don't hook up?

While the future may not look entirely bright for MS, I think it is shortsigthed to expect them on the way out. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if MS was still around ten years from now, bigger, richer, and bad-asserer. :)

Take it easy...

According to eToys' stock history, they've dropped from almost $80/share to ~$25.50/share.

Does anyone have a really credible analysis on this? I found some ideas over at the Red Herring. Toys R Us is down to $14.13, $10 off its yearly high. The entire online toy purchasing industry is suffering from a lack of confidence, resulting (reportedly) from their inability to fill toy orders on time.

While customers of other toy makers (Toys R Us) and KBKids professed (at a rate exceeding 40%) they wouldn't shop there again, the rate of terminal dissatisfaction with eToys is 12%.

My prediction is that eToys' stock will rebound. The eToys death watch will be an excruciatingly slow event and will suffer quite an ugly setback as eToys (in my non-investor prediction) gets out of the hospital bed around early Spring, the time by which eToys will most likely have gotten their butts in gear with regards to meeting customer orders. They will either have more efficient fulfillment techniques, or customers will buy earlier, but in either case this major depressant upon their stock value will be lifted away by April.

So is there cause for despair? Yes and no. Surely we cannot avoid eating a few crow feathers here and there when eToys' stock rebounds. But the way to keep the whole crow from being stuffed down, i.e. the way to keep their stock from rebounding too far, and perhaps even drag it down to sub-$20 levels, is rather clear.
1) If you know of any online artist groups, inform them about the eToy vs eToys issue. The artist community does not suffer this crap very easily.
2) If you know of any non-online artist groups of any sort - stores, galleries, you name it - let them know, also.

There is the more drastic and difficult theory, also:
3) Gather donations and fund an ad in USA Today, documenting the tragedy of eToys' attack on etoy.com. Express it as an attack on artistic free expression by means fraudulent legal tactics (false patent claims, etc.), under an atmosphere of judicial ignorance favoring the biggest-mouthed, deepest-pocketed lawyers. Call for a boycott on eToys.com.

You have to find ways to create massive tides of bad press for eToys - this and this alone will create a major dampener on their stock value. This should start right now, while their stock is down, so as to depress the upcoming rebound as eToys prepares a mission plan to prevent their previous customer fulfillment failures from happening again.

Now I've checked USA Today for their information on the costs of a full page ad, and the rates are almost $11,000 for a 1/16 page ad, up to $81K for a full pager. It ain't cheap. Of course the bigger the ad the more people are going to notice it, but I think even at 1/16th page it is still going to cause major press, and grab the attention of a lot of people.

What do y'all think?

Here is some info on Trnasmeta's fab arrangements, though this is a bit dated:

http://slashdot.org/articles/98 /09/26/1956233.shtml

http://www.redherring.com/mag/issu e60/intel.html

I agree. SGI looks confused more than anything. They should stop talking about what they're going to do and actually do something. If they keep announcing new plans and then changing course they will continue to look like idiots. Here's an interesting article on them.

Link to a no-bullshit article on SCO. BTW, the clima on slashdot made me wish that RedHat cooled down a bit. I didn't like RH before because I found it monopolistic, but with such a support from some slashdotters, I dislike it even more. Go SuSE, go Caldera, go Slackware, go Debian! Down with RedHat! :o) Had to vent

Caldera were suing Microsoft for allegedly trying to kill off DR-DOS. Windows 3.x ran perfectly fine over DR-DOS, as well as over MS-DOS, and this apparently annoyed Microsoft, so Windows 95 has some incompatibilities allegedly deliberately introduced to keep DR-DOS from working (no, despite what Microsoft says, win95 is not a completely independent OS, it's still built on top of DOS).

Links:
old news.com story.
Caldera's take on it (more recent)
A microsoft witness says the company destroyed documents relating to this case.

BTW, all these links are from old slashdot articles (some from September 1998, a few from 1999). Search for "caldera suit" on /. and you'll find some more.

I noticed the Red Herring also has a nice article on Google