Slashdot Mirror

If you have an online subscription to the WSJ, you can read it here. I'd cut and paste it, but I don't have an online subscription, and I've thrown away my copy of that day's WSJ.

NO, YOU ARE WRONG!!!

OK, you're right.
this article says that pro-forma profit was ~$35 million. Net profit was ~$5 mil. I sit corrected.

The Wall Street Journal recommends The True Story of 'Black Hawk Down' on The History Channel, first showing Monday night.

One way to get broadband deployed is to give out grants to Michigan counties through legislation. You may or may not be familiar with Michigan Gov. John Engler's plan, LinkMichigan. It was recently bashed in the Wall Street Journal, but it looks as though this legislation will soon become law. If and when it does, I will be working with people in six NorthEastern Michigan counties to develop a Request For Proposal (RFP) to get broadband available.

Some of the problems that this legislation will deal with is the problem of the LEC's and right's of way. This will lower the barrier to entry by establishing a single, statewide right-of-way authority with one uniform, statewide application process and fee. With help from government, broadband providers will be able to come in and provide the much needed service.

However, I do think that if this is to succeed, simply allowing more people to subscribe to DSL in rural areas is not the answer. I'm sorry, but DSL is NOT broadband. DSL is simply a faster version of a 56K modem. Broadband of the future will be receiving all of your telecommunication services over one medium... fiber optics. By laying fiber to the home, you will be able to get phone service, internet service, video on demand, and all the channels on tv that you could dream of. If all that this legislation produces is Ameritech offering DSL to a larger subscriber base, then this will simply be misguided ambition and a lot of poorly spent tax dollars.

One interesting sidenote.... In the last few years, enough money has been invested into failed CLEC's to lay fiber optics to every home in America. Just because its an open market, it doesn't mean that people invest wisely.

Not to mention the bumbling idiots over at the Interior Department. The Wallstreet Journal is reporting this morning that an independent company was hired by the Justice Department to investigate the security risk in the Indian Accounting System. The one that is used to pay the Indians rents, royalties, etc. for the use of their land.

They were able to hack the system undetected. No wonder Bruce Babbitt had to lie, we couldn't handle the truth that the Hundreds of Millions may have been stolen by hackers.

were it's own fault. The Wall Street Journal had an article last year about it. It said that in years past Apple used to sell to schools through resellers and other middlemen. But then they got greedy and tried to get it to themselves. Of course the middlemen had the relationships built with their customers and started selling them PC's with Windows. And now Apple is playing catch up.

This WSJ article says "You can also run the organizer functions with the phone functionality turned off..."

You just have to convince the flight attendant.

Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal had a review of the Handspring Treo 180 yesterday. (Picture here). Here's how the article begins:

FOR THE PAST week, I have been carrying around a new hand-held, wireless device that is simultaneously the best personal digital assistant I have ever used and the most capable cellphone.

It looks like a flip-phone and makes and receives calls with ease. It has a large screen, and can surf the Web and send and receive e-mail. It also has a full keyboard that makes composing e-mails or memos a breeze. It uses the Palm operating system and can synchronize dates and addresses with a PC.

Yet, despite all that power, this device is shorter and narrower than a Compaq iPAQ Pocket PC, or even a Palm V. About the size of a wallet and under 6 ounces in weight, it feels great in the hand and fits easily in a pocket.

This new product is the Treo 180 from Handspring. It costs $399 and will be available in early January. Designed by Jeff Hawkins, the man who invented the Palm Pilot and the Handspring Visor, the Treo is a true breakthrough. Unlike other combo devices, which were either phones with Palms jammed into them or Palms with phone features added, the Treo is a true hybrid. It was designed from the ground up to be a new kind of device, which the company calls a "communicator."

C|net Editor's Choice

New York Times Review

Business Week Sweet Music

Wall Street Journal Review

LA Times Review

PC Magazine 5/5 Rating

But more to the point, who has played the cell-phone style hidden game on the iPod? With new hacking sites popping up all over, has anyone found a firmware update that gives them any more games yet? Or playback of even more media formats or other abilities? Of couse it will soon have Windows compatibility and people have been booting off their iPods since the beginning, but lately I've seen someone modifying it for use as a simple address book, people trying to get it to work under *BSD and Linux, and development of a new graphic EQ for it. Anyone else made cool hacks?

$162,557.28 for full-page black & white in all three U.S. editions.

With real estate prices as they are in Cambridge, I bet Polaroid could cut a chunk of debt just by renting or selling off their land. They have properties in some very desirable locations.

Commercial space in Cambridgeport rents at around $60/sq foot, when it can be found. Even with the current "recession" prices haven't budged. Hop on over the the WSJ for some insight.

With their name, their engineering talent, their land (to provide some cash) and a reasonable restructuring, Polaroid could relaunch themselves as a player in the digital market in under two years.

The story was in the September 10 USA Today, and September 11 Wall Street Journal. I searched, but don't find a Slashdot story about it.

Well, I guess this old-fart of a programmer is scrathing his head saying clear who, censor what ? Desperately trying not to be a troll, I'm just wondering if this isn't more a move by some company that I've never heard of to remain profitable by makin and adjustment for the recent change in mood.

Let's go to the site and see.

Okay, there's a picture of Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Alan Keyes ... It's publically traded ... their ops got disrupted since they're in downtown NYC .... hmmm, Department of Justice to investigate whether Clear Channel's concert-promotion company is engaging in unfair business practices after some New Jersey constituents complained.

Hey guys, I think this looks like a company that's trying to keep a low profile. In other words, this may have less to do with civil liberties than it does with their bottom line. Either giving their demographics what they want (or don't want) ... and by not pissing off "The Man."

Structural steel starts to melt at 800 degrees
F. Fires from jet fuel raise temperatures to
around 1500 degrees F. It was in the Sept. 12
issue of The Wall Street Journal now currently
available without registration or subscription
at:

The Wall Street Journal

Is available without registration at: The Wall Street Journal>

• New York Times
• Washington Post
• Washington Times
• CNN and CNN Goggle Cache
• The Times of London
• Wall Street Journal

My review of news sources: CNN's site seems to have the latest info, if you can reach it. NYT has more info on WTC (duh), and WP has more news on the Pentagon (duh again). Times of London has an excellent synopsis.

If you have a subscription to the WSJ, you can read the full story here.

There are only two journalistic sites on the web that charge a fee and make money - The Wall Street Journal and Consumer Reports. Both are generally considered to have high journalistic standards. Both avoid publishing press releases. Both make money. This should tell you something.

The Wall Street Journal Contact Page (print edition) says nywireroom@dowjones.com is where to send press releases, and letter.editor@edit.wsj.com is where to send letters to the Editor.

The New York Times contact page says to go here for letters and here for op-ed pieces.

The Wall Street Journal Contact Page (print edition) says nywireroom@dowjones.com is where to send press releases, and letter.editor@edit.wsj.com is where to send letters to the Editor.

The New York Times contact page says to go here for letters and here for op-ed pieces.

The email I sent:

Dear family and friends,

Just in case any of you are considering upgrading your computers operating system to Microsoft Windows XP, I highly recommend you consider *not* doing it due to the underhanded tactics Microsoft has incorporated into its purchase.

Please read the following articles for more information:

OfficeXP:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20010517.html

XP Upgrade Cost:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/mailbox-20010628.html

MS Controlling the "activation" of XP
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20010705.html
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/mailbox-20010712.html

- tokengeekgrrl

The email I sent:

Dear family and friends,

Just in case any of you are considering upgrading your computers operating system to Microsoft Windows XP, I highly recommend you consider *not* doing it due to the underhanded tactics Microsoft has incorporated into its purchase.

Please read the following articles for more information:

OfficeXP:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20010517.html

XP Upgrade Cost:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/mailbox-20010628.html

MS Controlling the "activation" of XP
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20010705.html
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/mailbox-20010712.html

- tokengeekgrrl

The email I sent:

Dear family and friends,

Just in case any of you are considering upgrading your computers operating system to Microsoft Windows XP, I highly recommend you consider *not* doing it due to the underhanded tactics Microsoft has incorporated into its purchase.

Please read the following articles for more information:

OfficeXP:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20010517.html

XP Upgrade Cost:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/mailbox-20010628.html

MS Controlling the "activation" of XP
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20010705.html
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/mailbox-20010712.html

- tokengeekgrrl

The email I sent:

Dear family and friends,

Just in case any of you are considering upgrading your computers operating system to Microsoft Windows XP, I highly recommend you consider *not* doing it due to the underhanded tactics Microsoft has incorporated into its purchase.

Please read the following articles for more information:

OfficeXP:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20010517.html

XP Upgrade Cost:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/mailbox-20010628.html

MS Controlling the "activation" of XP
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20010705.html
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/mailbox-20010712.html

- tokengeekgrrl

Quasi-interesting add-on expense item. See the Wall Street Journal article which pegs the cable companies' cost for using utility poles at $5 to $7 per pole per year, and how those costs could go up significantly in the future.

They are already running into too many setbacks. They are using Windows XP to run their systems. The test subject lifted his leg and had to call Microsoft for a new activation key...

is here

If you don't activate Windows within the specified period, it will cease functioning -- except to remind you to activate.

Therefore the XP reg. process doesnt "bring down your entire computer". Smoke doesnt start coming out of the back (maybe MS is planning this for XP2!) There is absolutley no reason whatsoever why you cant pop a linux boot disk in the floppy drive, and "re-activate" your licinse. If you miss cute little gui's, you clould even try a mandrake bootdisk...

In yesterday's WSJ article, they state that the latest XP beta cuts the number of clicks required to make Kodak's software the default down to one.
However, we all know that the average user won't do that one click or even notice when they are given the opportunity to do it. So, the MS version will be used by the majority of digital camera users until it becomes the "standard".

The WSJ article even states that on rotating a picture, the MS version tells you it must ruin the picture to rotate it. The Kodak engineers just laughed at this error message. The sad thing is that most users will never know that there is something better.

WSJ Article (Requires registration of sorts.)

The smart tags for IE 6.0, on the other hand, were considerably more insidious. Walt Mossberg's WSJ column today makes the argument that Microsoft has a responsibility as the creator of the most used browser to faithfully reproduce the original web page author's intent when their browser displays a page. Of course, he doesn't mention the fact that ignoring published standards has the same effect--not that Microsoft would ever do that.

~=Keelor

Saying that Microsoft somehow needs Apple to keep the DoJ off their back is out of date. Clearly, Microsoft is no longer worried about the DoJ: bundling MSN messenger, adding smart tags so they can control content on the web, changing their licensing agreements to force users to upgrade, and bundling VoIP clients into XP. Having Apple around to show they don't have a monopoly isn't enough to stem their recent activity. They probably figure they can entrench their position pretty well until dubya gets replaced in office. No, I think it's more likely that as long as the Macintosh BU is making Microsoft money but not cannibalizing Windows sales, and Apple keeps "preferring" Internet Explorer, they'll keep writing software for it. But if Apple gets into selling an OS for x86, the gloves will come off.

This perspective is based on multiple experiences in which serious bugs in MS products - like memory leaks in IIS/ASP - were never addressed. Being a highly competent developer, it is not acceptable to me to be at the mercy of a company that does not even do a good job of pretending to have my interests as a customer at heart.

Much the same feeling applies to the operating system and OS-level tools. I know experienced Microsoft systems integrators who have had endless problems with Microsoft's tools, Proxy Server being a prominent example. Problems with Exchange are legion and legendary; System Management Server is a spectacular failure; and their DNS server is little more than a joke. MS Service Packs and hotfixes are as likely to break major functionality as to fix bugs - the original Service Pack 6, and the more recent Exchange hotfix are cases in point.

From my perspective, Microsoft peaked at around the time NT 4.0 came out and has been wandering directionless since then, changing acronyms (DNA anyone?) on a regular basis to attempt to hide the lack of any significant innovation.

Two technologies originally led me to be pro-Microsoft: NT itself, and COM. NT was a good product, for its time, when the betas of NT 3.1 came out in 1992 or so. NT 4 made the catastrophic mistake of importing the Windows 95 user interface, and then turning the ever-buggy Internet Explorer into the GUI shell. Since then stability has only deteriorated, and almost no fundamental progress has been made in making NT/2000/XP support some of the more powerful capabilities and configurability long provided by Unix - proper remote administration capabilities not least amongst those.

It seems that any overall vision that had existed at the time NT or COM were conceived have since deteriorated into a mad rush to maintain control in a changing market, driven by the Internet, which is something Microsoft is still trying to control rather than "get". Factions within Microsoft with backgrounds in things like mainframe transaction server systems argue at cross-purposes with advocates of academically pure object-oriented systems. If there's someone with a global vision at Microsoft, I don't know who it is: Nathan Myrhvold left long ago, and Bill Gates has spent too much of his career making billions to be a competent software architect today.

Microsoft has also never quite gotten the hang of TCP/IP - with the possible exception of the core of IIS, its Internet-oriented tools uniformly suck. I've already mentioned Proxy Server and DNS. In Win2K, Microsoft finally gave up the battle in some areas and fell back on pure BSD tools, such as the telnet implementation. The Wall Street Journal's recent story on Microsoft's reliance on open source software gives more examples of this admission of defeat.

But even while they're resorting to open source code, Microsoft seems to completely miss the power of simplicity and interoperability evident in Unix/Internet tools; or this may be a deliberate strategic policy. If tools are too simple, extensible, interoperable, or open, customers will have too much ability to control their own destiny, and thus won't be as easy to suck into a recurring-revenue future in which Microsoft bills its customers annually and provides arbitrarily chosen upgrades in return ("this new dancing paperclip is better than the old one, honest!")

In addition, Microsoft's own insistence on reinventing everything works against it: sucky initial implementations of Winsock led to applications which didn't get the concept of asynchronous communication. You still see this in products like Outlook today: they can lock up for extended periods while doing network access, something that should be completely transparent and in the background. [I'll say one thing positive here though: I/O completion ports are pretty sweet, and I've used them to good effect in some server applications. They've also helped IIS be an excellent performer. But one good API feature isn't enough, especially when the application developers don't understand how to use it.]

It isn't as difficult as one might imagine to convince hard-nosed business-oriented customers of the perspective I'm outlining: Microsoft's threatening lawyer's letters about license compliance, sent blunderbuss-style to all customers regardless of any evidence of lack of compliance, don't win friends amongst IT staff and CxOs. The threat of rental models, browsers which modify the web sites of other companies, and critical coverage of these things from quarters such as the Wall Street Journal, all combine to make you wonder: is Microsoft aware that it will ultimately need to rely on more than its current desktop monopoly, and instead convince customers to buy its products based on their merits, and the quality of service it provides?

There's no long-term strategy there, just an attempt to keep the excessive revenue flowing until the next set of CxOs can take over and inherit the mess. As a profit generator, Microsoft represents an incredible and possibly unprecedented feat, which I can respect from a certain perspective; but that doesn't mean I want to number myself amongst the cattle slaughtered to feed its unholy appetites.

Server software has become a commodity, and Microsoft is desperately trying to tie unrelated components together and avoid standards, so that customers have no option but to accept the entire package, and pay serious money for that which has become freely available elsewhere. This is done at every level of its software offerings, so that in the application area I'm talking about, for example, the operating system is tied to the web server is tied to the transaction server is tied to the template language is tied to the virtual machine is tied to... did I mention the operating system?

Yet you can go and download the source code to systems that do much the same thing - e.g. the Enhydra or Resin application servers - and, as alluded to above, these systems will run on almost any operating system and web server, with no secrets (you have the source), and no lifetime commitment to a development model espoused by exactly one company. And this applies double to commodity products such as file servers, proxy servers, web servers, DNS, email, and the like: the free products are actually significant improvements in terms of functionality and reliablity, over Microsoft's equivalent offerings.

Microsoft has grown too far, too fast, and become way too voracious and greedy. I rode with it to the peak of its wave; that wave has begun crashing, but instead of crashing onto a nice, wide open beach, it's crashing into an inescapable little Microsoft sandbox. I am jumping off to a different wave in which the currents don't work against me as much. I'm don't argue that .NET has no technical merits whatsoever; but the cost of chaining oneself to it is too high.

This perspective is based on multiple experiences in which serious bugs in MS products - like memory leaks in IIS/ASP - were never addressed. Being a highly competent developer, it is not acceptable to me to be at the mercy of a company that does not even do a good job of pretending to have my interests as a customer at heart.

Much the same feeling applies to the operating system and OS-level tools. I know experienced Microsoft systems integrators who have had endless problems with Microsoft's tools, Proxy Server being a prominent example. Problems with Exchange are legion and legendary; System Management Server is a spectacular failure; and their DNS server is little more than a joke. MS Service Packs and hotfixes are as likely to break major functionality as to fix bugs - the original Service Pack 6, and the more recent Exchange hotfix are cases in point.

From my perspective, Microsoft peaked at around the time NT 4.0 came out and has been wandering directionless since then, changing acronyms (DNA anyone?) on a regular basis to attempt to hide the lack of any significant innovation.

Two technologies originally led me to be pro-Microsoft: NT itself, and COM. NT was a good product, for its time, when the betas of NT 3.1 came out in 1992 or so. NT 4 made the catastrophic mistake of importing the Windows 95 user interface, and then turning the ever-buggy Internet Explorer into the GUI shell. Since then stability has only deteriorated, and almost no fundamental progress has been made in making NT/2000/XP support some of the more powerful capabilities and configurability long provided by Unix - proper remote administration capabilities not least amongst those.

It seems that any overall vision that had existed at the time NT or COM were conceived have since deteriorated into a mad rush to maintain control in a changing market, driven by the Internet, which is something Microsoft is still trying to control rather than "get". Factions within Microsoft with backgrounds in things like mainframe transaction server systems argue at cross-purposes with advocates of academically pure object-oriented systems. If there's someone with a global vision at Microsoft, I don't know who it is: Nathan Myrhvold left long ago, and Bill Gates has spent too much of his career making billions to be a competent software architect today.

Microsoft has also never quite gotten the hang of TCP/IP - with the possible exception of the core of IIS, its Internet-oriented tools uniformly suck. I've already mentioned Proxy Server and DNS. In Win2K, Microsoft finally gave up the battle in some areas and fell back on pure BSD tools, such as the telnet implementation. The Wall Street Journal's recent story on Microsoft's reliance on open source software gives more examples of this admission of defeat.

But even while they're resorting to open source code, Microsoft seems to completely miss the power of simplicity and interoperability evident in Unix/Internet tools; or this may be a deliberate strategic policy. If tools are too simple, extensible, interoperable, or open, customers will have too much ability to control their own destiny, and thus won't be as easy to suck into a recurring-revenue future in which Microsoft bills its customers annually and provides arbitrarily chosen upgrades in return ("this new dancing paperclip is better than the old one, honest!")

In addition, Microsoft's own insistence on reinventing everything works against it: sucky initial implementations of Winsock led to applications which didn't get the concept of asynchronous communication. You still see this in products like Outlook today: they can lock up for extended periods while doing network access, something that should be completely transparent and in the background. [I'll say one thing positive here though: I/O completion ports are pretty sweet, and I've used them to good effect in some server applications. They've also helped IIS be an excellent performer. But one good API feature isn't enough, especially when the application developers don't understand how to use it.]

It isn't as difficult as one might imagine to convince hard-nosed business-oriented customers of the perspective I'm outlining: Microsoft's threatening lawyer's letters about license compliance, sent blunderbuss-style to all customers regardless of any evidence of lack of compliance, don't win friends amongst IT staff and CxOs. The threat of rental models, browsers which modify the web sites of other companies, and critical coverage of these things from quarters such as the Wall Street Journal, all combine to make you wonder: is Microsoft aware that it will ultimately need to rely on more than its current desktop monopoly, and instead convince customers to buy its products based on their merits, and the quality of service it provides?

There's no long-term strategy there, just an attempt to keep the excessive revenue flowing until the next set of CxOs can take over and inherit the mess. As a profit generator, Microsoft represents an incredible and possibly unprecedented feat, which I can respect from a certain perspective; but that doesn't mean I want to number myself amongst the cattle slaughtered to feed its unholy appetites.

Server software has become a commodity, and Microsoft is desperately trying to tie unrelated components together and avoid standards, so that customers have no option but to accept the entire package, and pay serious money for that which has become freely available elsewhere. This is done at every level of its software offerings, so that in the application area I'm talking about, for example, the operating system is tied to the web server is tied to the transaction server is tied to the template language is tied to the virtual machine is tied to... did I mention the operating system?

Yet you can go and download the source code to systems that do much the same thing - e.g. the Enhydra or Resin application servers - and, as alluded to above, these systems will run on almost any operating system and web server, with no secrets (you have the source), and no lifetime commitment to a development model espoused by exactly one company. And this applies double to commodity products such as file servers, proxy servers, web servers, DNS, email, and the like: the free products are actually significant improvements in terms of functionality and reliablity, over Microsoft's equivalent offerings.

Microsoft has grown too far, too fast, and become way too voracious and greedy. I rode with it to the peak of its wave; that wave has begun crashing, but instead of crashing onto a nice, wide open beach, it's crashing into an inescapable little Microsoft sandbox. I am jumping off to a different wave in which the currents don't work against me as much. I'm don't argue that .NET has no technical merits whatsoever; but the cost of chaining oneself to it is too high.

To wit:

ZDNet

WSJ

Linux Magazine, where he's a contributing writer.

Regardless of what you think about Linux and MS, this isn't the guy to be writing about it.

1. A corporation/organization's power to manipulate the masses (my solution is use an open database containing the collective opinions of what is good cross-reference material, and have several of these databases competing with each other).
2. The power taken away from the site's creator. The site may be making a profound statement ...and a viewer could click on a Smart Tag only to be directed to a site offering the opposite statement. For example, a site about the holocost could be linked to a neo-nazi site about preparing to create the next holocost. (Although sometimes conflicting views can be nice. Search engines aren't biased in this regard; a search for holocost would not favor one of these over the other.)

blenderking sent in this Wall Street Journal story about
Microsoft's new "Smart Tags" - auto linking to Microsoft
websites in any web page you visit.

...This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. If the problem persists, please contact the program vendor for resolution.
_____________________________________ _

• Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal
• hype from Apple
• A simple Google search

The Wall Street Journal just ran this something similar.. (haven't checked the zdnet doc lagging on dl's) [mirror]

Anyways I doubt its impossible for the NSA to splice it, however when companies take the corrective measures to ensure this won't happen what are they going to do...

Example, say a company takes the time, and money to protect their fiber say inside inexpensive pvc pipes or something similar, who does the government expect to blame when a company finds out that 100 miles away from any shoreline, their casing has been breached? Certainly its not Joe Fisherman doing this.

Anyways aside from that nothing is going to help them when that fiber line is carrying IPSec data all the way through the connections, along with messages that have been encrypted before even being sent. So many people have little to worry about.

For those interested in Crypto Equipment and such (especially those working in the ISP segments) you can check out the Crypto Equipment Guide. Hopefully many companies will start looking at their clients (whether their employees, subscribers, etc.) more serious. I know Earthlink is taking that approach.

Why did you think it was only the print edition? As a subscriber, you can also find it here.

Interestingly, today's Wall Street Journal has an article on this same topic. (Paid subscription required, unfortunately): Peer-to-Peer Party Comes to a Halt As Companies Morph or Disappear.

They were slapped with a consent decree. They ignored it. The only stopped their predation when the full weight of the Department of Justice came down on them, and not even completely then.

Microsoft's tactics throughout the trial were to look like total buffoons, to lie to the judge (remember the faked videotape?), and to make statements which flew in the face of truth. Their tactics worked. They managed to get a reaction from the judge (in the form of annoyed comments made outside the courtroom), and now they're using that to claim that the entire verdict should be thrown out.

In other recent news, Microsoft ran misleading advertisements about WebTV, and got zinged for it by the FTC... and then they ran misleading advertisements about Windows CE, and is being charged with it again.

Microsoft has learned how to break the law: (1) keep flagrantly ignoring the law until slapped with a court order to change its business practices; (2) pay lip service to the court order by making superficial attempts to show compliance; then (3) attack the validity of the court proceedings which resulted in the court order, and seek to have the whole thing overturned.

Hey, it's worked so far!

Paid Subscription has hardly been "skipped over". It's been tried and it seems to works in some places and not others.

Slate tried subscription when they launched. In fact there was a great deal of coverage specifically because they were trying a subscription model. Slate is no longer charging a subscription fee.
thestreet.com also had a paid subscrption model that failed.
The Wall Street Journal charges a yearly fee for online access to what is basically the content of the print paper. They've been doing this for years, and it seems to be successful for them (though I wouldn't really know).
There are probably too many other examples to list, but it's a model that's been tried and largely been failure.

The Wall Street Journal has been profitably charging for content since '95 or '96. They have a one-day (or is it one week?) subscription option on their site for a few dollars US. Also the yearly sub is about US$50. That's about what they get for the dead tree edition after overhead.

I don't think that slashdot could charge for content; maybe ads are the only way to go for Slash. But I'd be willing to pay to download, e.g. KDE2.1 on a fast line with no crowding. I'd even be willing to pay US$1 or US$2, which is about ten times what it would cost to provide the service. Likewise for RPM updates; the public servers are very slow and the downloads are big.

This will be a progessive and evolutionary process. There will be more and more minipayments, more subscription services (especialy as CNN or WashPost find that online content is a money loser with no reliable ad revenue), and more bandwidth guarantees out there as broadband, PayPal, and other technologies prosper or fail. And the system we get could be a combination of existing systems or something completely new.

I think that ad-blocking is great and will help promote some sort of realistic long term system for rewarding quality content. STop the ads and promote a sane net.

I wish I could stop the teevee ads, too. Why should I waste five miniutes on advertisments for unhealthful sugar water, expensive cheap shoes, and gigantic status motorcars every half hour on the teevee when I need only one minute to pee and get a glass of orange juice? It's insulting and a waste of my time.

How much would it cost to avoid the ads if everyone did it? Nothing, because I wouldn't have to pay he higher prices for things that pay for ad prices. Of course, it would cost more for me because the things on which general ad money is spent are all things I don't buy.

Targeted ads are another matter. Who can really be upset that Penguin is advertising hardware to the /.'ers? IT just makes sense. Those will be a part of any future, because targeted advertising is a very good idea that won't go away no matter how irritating.

But my disorganized thesis here is just that the future will look different and maybe we will have more options. I hope those options will support better content. And I am certainly willing to pay a little for quality.

-Brian

It's clear from the article that both projects finished sooner because of the presence of the other. So the question of "which is better" is really not the right question, because both of them together is better than either of them alone. Competition is good.

Still, if it takes nearly ten years longer for the public project to finish and a patent is only good for ten years, it seems like "public availability of the data" is really about the same. And the data is privately available in the interim. All other things being equal, that is, which they never are.

If you must make the public vs. private argument, don't ignore the fact that public projects invariably take longer and private patents invariably expire.

"It's a new way to derive revenue from a subscriber base of millions of users we already have," says the CEO. The story is here , but sub req'd. Natch.

So, if your dad uses Juno, don't give him a heart attack.

Seriously folks. The article is just saying use the right tool for the right job. It's a no-brainer. If you want news stories you search cnn.com or another newsite. If you are looking for financial information search The Wall Street Journal or another financial page. Search engines like google (get the toolbar, it is great) or AJ are for general searches to get you started out on a topic so you can refine your search from there. Duh.

The Wall Street Journal had an article (here - but you need to subscribe) on this, where Bertelsmann said: "its newly formed e-commerce group and Napster have developed a new business model that "preserves the Napster experience" while providing payments to copyright holders, including recording artists, songwriters, recording companies and music publishers."

Perserve the Napster experience? Yay - we get to keep our console! Our interface MIGHT remain unchanged! Wow! What a concession!

What else can they preserve if they take away the 'free' part? As I see it, that WAS the quintessential Napster experience.

It seems michael has forgotten to include the link to the original article on the Wall Street Journal - it's here - login 'slashdot123' passwd 'slashdot123'. Very long, comprehensive and insightful.
Richy C.
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• CBS MarketWatch
• C|Net
• The Register
• The BBC
• Wall Street Journal
• Basically
• Microsoft suspect the access was granted to St Petersburg (Russia) computer systems by use of the QAZ Trojan. The FBI is investigating.
  

• Large screen size
• Color screens
• Oval screens
• Touch screen
• Motion video
• Cameras the size of a phone button

Links to other concept phone galleries:

ZDNet - Road to 3G
FutureZone - Telecom 99 Photo Gallery
CeBIT 1999
Wireless Review - Future Phone
WSJ - Staying in Touch
BW - The Latest Web-Phone Wonders Are...Still Out of Reach "Clearly, somewhere between the trade fairs and the marketplace, Ericsson runs into troubles"

If you look hard enough, you can find references to all sorts of fantastic phones that won't exist for quite a while.
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