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Music is a loss leader for Yahoo. A loss leader is when you sell something at a loss in order to get customers into your store, hoping they will buy other things while they are there....
Yahoo composing music download plan
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5152860.html

not exactly the kernel, but gaim accepted patch from microsoft :)

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5829512-2.html? tag=st.num

and search for patch.

now, a single case, and how much publicity has it gained already...

No, not all media. CDs aren't subject to any such tax. How else can 100 blanks cost $10?

Actually there is a tax on blank cds according to The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 as per this. A 1992 law allows music listeners to make some personal digital copies of their music. In return, recording companies collect royalties on the blank media used for this purpose. For every digital audio tape (DAT), blank audio CD, or minidisc sold, a few cents go to record labels.

I use OO daily, and I agree that v.2.0 is pretty nice, but it is not even close to MS Office! I just can't escape Visio for my tech writing tasks (I know, it wasn't produced by MS, but it is definitely a part of office now), and both the PowerPoint and Excel clones in OO have a long way to go before they are Office's peers. It would actually be sort of scary if they were, office has been in development for quite a while longer than OO.

I don't think Microsoft's attempts at security are lackluster, they're taking security really seriously. Check out the hard stats: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/index.php?p=103

That's also the reason they haven't released a new OS in awhile. Check out this discussion of their new development process, which mentions that they had to scrap a lot of code that was going to end up in Vista to improve reliability: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112743680328349 448,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (sorry, requires subscription)

On the other hand, IE is falling WAY behind in the features department. They really need to do something to attract more advanced users.

I enjoy developing apps for Linux and Gnome, and I simply couldn't switch back to Windows now after getting so used to the Linux development environment and its broad capabilities. However, I think people need to be fair with Microsoft. If MS weren't around, I highly doubt that a PC (or 7) would be in every modern home, so we'd all be worse off.

Well, I guess Apple could have provided the same (or probably better) ease of use, but competition is always good. :-)

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-5780117.html

The U.S. Treasury Department has blacklisted more than 60 Cuba-centric sites, many maintained by a travel company called Tour & Marketing International. The last update to the list was published by the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control on June 30.

Stallman said developers may be encouraged to add a command to their GPL-licensed Web application that lets users download the source code. The inclusion of this command in modified versions of the program will then be enforced by an additional clause in GPL 3.

"We're looking at an approach where programs used (on a public server) will have to include a command for the user to download the source for the version that is running," Stallman said. "If you release a program that implements such a command, GPL 3 will require others to keep the command working in their modified versions of the program."

This change would have no effect on existing software but could be added by developers to future versions of a particular program, according to Stallman. He said this was only a "tentative plan" as it has not yet been studied fully to see whether it would work.

How about 100 GB of storage capacity for the cost of a memory card ? Magnetic microchips used in cell phones could make them fully functional video cameras. In addition, the chips are non-volatile, so startup lag will become a not-so-fond memory. They use much less power than electronic chips. They can be made much smaller, possibly as small as a few atoms. The examples they have already fabricated "use no silicon and require no multilayer processing and so can be manufactured at very low cost on flexible substrates, while offering non-volatility, radiation hardness and several hundreds of MHz of bandwidth" . They're talking about plastic chips. Pretty impressive.

The technology, which is still being developed, can be classified as "nanotech" and is called "magnetic domain-wall logic" and is based on spintronics. Lots of folks are working on this because many believe that spintronics will allow for great advances in areas from quantum computing to DNA based molecular electronic devices. This particular development is important because it represents the first actual construction of logic gates, which are the basis of computing. So far the group has produced a "NOT gate" and a "11-stage serial shift register / digital frequency divider" in a 200nm design rule. They have also demonstrated the transfer of magnetic information without the use of magnetic fields. This paves the way for hybrid chips with both electronic and spintronic components. Such "3D chips" could contain many times the amount of information possible with current electronic chips. They will run cooler, with short "nanowire" pathways, and have the potential to surpass the performance of silicon chips. Moore's Law marches on.

billy - wonder if the "$100 laptop" guys have their phone number?

Yeah, but how do you know that WebSideStory's numbers aren't taken from sites that attract mostly Windows-only users? For all we know, some of the sites that they monitor could exclude all non-IE browsers.

That seems highly unlikely, given that many of WSS's customers are large global corporations that have big, professionally-created websites- Disney, Best Buy, Fox News, Bank of America, Freddie Mac- a wide range of clients in a variety of sectors. Surely some of their sites exclude non-IE browsers, but they are unlikely to make a significant difference in WSS's numbers.

But my point was not that WebSideStory's numbers are accurate, although by the fact that it is their business to know this kind of stuff and they seem to have been around a while I tend to believe them, but merely that the visitors to your site are not likely to be anywhere near a representative sample of the internet at large. There's lots of info out there that seems to corroborate WSS's numbers. Your little window on the world is nowhere near the big picture that WSS is seeing.

Google used to list this stuff in their zeitgeist, but they seem to have stopped that. Too bad...

Firefox was supposed to be serious IE rival But Microsoft was never worried. And it turns out they didn't have anything to worry about. According to TFA, most of Firefox's market share came not from IE, but from other Mozilla browsers and Opera.

Firefox was supposed to be more secure than IE. But exploits for both browsers are close in numbers

All we have now is a new Mozilla browser. Nothing else has changed. As soon as the next third-party "IE-killer" browser comes out, Firefox will lose it's market share to the newcomer too.

As much as I love these contests, I'm not sure they provide much beyond marketing. The skills and technologies needed to create a hand-built, one-off, contest-winner are totally different from those needed to create a factory that makes millions of mass-produced, affordable, everyday vehicles. Its not that hard to make "a" solar-powered car where student labor is free and the solar vehicle runs with a caravan of gas-powered support vehicles. But the real key is to create the manufacturing infrastructure to make millions of them at an affordable price. Other problems, such as a shortage of polysilicon and increasing solar cell prices highlight this problem of mass production and have a much bigger effect on the adoption of solar power.

I hope these contests continue, but I also hope people don't think that these contests are solving the real-world problems of applying solar power.

... because you shouldn't be buying DRM'ed content in the first place!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1905

Tristan.

Now this is boring, but I once read an interesting article regarding the issue of communism and open source (Is open source communist?)

I can see similar questions being raised about the "Community Internet" as well, and it makes sense why such things don't last too long in USA. The entire discussion of communism in Community Projects seems focussed around proving how evil they might be simply on the grounds of being remotely communist or hinting to be so. "Its communist so don't do it" is one of the many messages delivered in many forms.

Basically, if an ISP can make good money off providing broadband service, why will it let a community body run such projects for free or cheap? The student loan system in USA is a vaguely related, yet relevant example. Why do we have 500+ billion for war but not for education or medicare? And free Internet?

The U.S. Navy has a long history of tapping underwater communications cables on behalf of the NSA (and others). With the emergence of fiber optic cables this method of spying was put into jeopardy.

Apparently it isn't a problem any longer.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-529826.html

Pakistan might be one of the first examples of this technique.

Assuming that the NSA splice is going to have all or part of the cable down for a period of time, it would make sense to damage the cable far from where you intend to splice the cable, and then use that opportunity to make your splice.

http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/07/top6.htm

So now that we all know what this device is intended for, can we move along with the lawsuit?

There's also a good article about audio DRM here. It's nice to know that consumers (at least the savvy ones) are already starting to notice that DRM is encroaching on their freedoms.

Disclaimer: I am a Mac OS X OpenOffice.org developer and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

Yes, there are some folks rethinking the standard interfaces...such as Apple (with Keynote and Pages) and even Microsoft with Office 12 and earlier some of the UI design of Office:mac. On some platforms, it would even be possible to play around with alternative OOo interfaces by using OfficeBean (although I don't know of any off of the top of my head).

For office suites, however, I think the general interface paradigms are so commonplace now that any radical departure will be greeting by a nice resounding "WTF is this" from users. Case in point: OpenDoc. It was, in my opinion, a valiant attempt at shifting the focus for productivity suites off of individual applications and onto a free-form content-centric view. The idea never caught on with users, and ones I always saw trying to use it were just confused by the idea and were still asking questions like "what do I open to create a spreadsheet?".

Not to mention I can't get that stupid "I just did the Excel..." lady from the Video Professor commercial out of my head. With millions of users like that, I doubt things will really be able to change that much :)

ed

However some people prefer Opera because it's
1) more secure .... link 1 .... link 2 .... link 3 .... link 4 .... link 5 .... link 6, September 16th 2005
2) faster
3) Is actively worked on -from Mike Connor, an important Firefox developer
4) smaller (3.7mb vs 4.7mb)
5) less bloat/ram usage

take that, george ou..

Maybe it is
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/index.php?p=103

Why is an MS fanboy shop trying to force Novell into anything?

Statistics are great, but often abused especially by people who do not bother to look at the data behind a particular statistic. Your post mirrors the same erroneous ideas found in an article [1] I read earlier on zdnet this year, touting the supposed security advantage of IIS6 over Apache2. The article allowed comments, and one of the thread of comments [2] picked apart the fallacy behind this statistic quite well.

I've include the link to the article and the retort below.

[1] http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/index.php?p=44

[2] http://www.zdnet.com/5208-10533-0.html?forumID=1&t hreadID=9147&messageID=183193&start=-12

Statistics are great, but often abused especially by people who do not bother to look at the data behind a particular statistic. Your post mirrors the same erroneous ideas found in an article [1] I read earlier on zdnet this year, touting the supposed security advantage of IIS6 over Apache2. The article allowed comments, and one of the thread of comments [2] picked apart the fallacy behind this statistic quite well.

I've include the link to the article and the retort below.

[1] http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/index.php?p=44

[2] http://www.zdnet.com/5208-10533-0.html?forumID=1&t hreadID=9147&messageID=183193&start=-12

The patch has been issued on the Mozilla site, download it at the following address: http://www.mozilla.org/security/idn.html By the way, did anyone notice "Microsoft pulls 'critical' Windows update"? Check it out: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5857338.html. It seems the big browser wasn't able to address its security vulnerabilities over the last month and won't be delivering its "critical" updates on its regualarly scheduled Patch Tuesday. Hmm, interesting Mozilla responds in 72 hours to its critical vulnerabilites, whereas Microsoft takes more than 30 days?

Indeed. But certainly not to spitefully inflict hardship on customers. Arguably, an ideal world for MS would be one in which people spent none of their PC dollars on hardware, and all of them on MS software. And in fact, the business world is much like that--large customers usually buy licenses which are periodically renewed. But consumers need a reason to go buy new software, and MS's office suite has reached a point of maturity from where it's hard to increase the value, and thus the desirability, of the next version.

MS likely believes that the path to new consumer value is via multimedia. The better the GPU hardware, the greater the potential for MS to sell multimedia applications or services. So they create an OS requirement for top-of-the-line graphics hardware. PC makers comply, for they will not sell many machines if Windows isn't properly supported. And then MS can sell multimedia to properly equipped consumers. It's a theory anyway. (And of course they don't like being behind Apple in the eye candy dept.)

But let us concoct an even wilder theory. MS has called for a 100-dollar PC. Of course, they want the 100-dollar PC to go "down-market" in "some of these contries" where they see piracy. However, nobody _wants_ a down-market anything: if the price difference between a 100-dollar PC and a 250-dollar PC is due to the price difference between Windows and Windows--Starter Edition, the citizens of poor countries will continue to purchase black-market copies of Windows. But if the price difference is also due to hardware that cannot be cheaply obtained, and the cheap hardware does not support the flagship version of Windows, then the poor will have to be content with the "down-market" Windows product, which will be sold affordably.

/Dan

when a company like Apple places an order for 60,000,000 2GB and 4GB flash memory chips from samsung, im fairly sure they pay less than retail

How about...
Bloomberg, ZDnet, Financial Times, BBC, Reuters, USAToday, or Washington Post?

My ASUS PC with an AMD processor has Antivirus built into the hardware. There's even a BIOS setting to enable/disable antivirus. AMD uses DEP.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5137832.html

ASUS uses TREND CHIP.
http://www.trendmicro.com/en/about/news/pr/archive /1999/pr062199.htm

So I guess Intel is playing catch up? On the marketing, I mean.

"Excel is probably the best program (other than screensavers) ever written for a microcomputer..."

Actually, Quattro was much better for a long while. But as usual, Excel gaining marketshare over Quattro had nothing with the quality of the two products.

An article on ZDNet gives the reasoning behind Sun's actions here.
Having too many licenses can result in islands of incompatible software that can't be intermixed and complicates legal reviews for those thinking of using or contributing to open-source projects.
The article quotes Simon Phipps, director of Sun's Open Source Office.

Disclaimer: I am a developer of the Mac OS X OpenOffice.org port as well as a founder of the NeoOffice project.

If anyone is affected by this, it will most drastically affect IBM. If you look at the original list of Sun Copyright Assignment signers, you'll notice that IBM is listed as one of the original signers. Curiously, this page is no longer accessible (the wayback machine lists it as blocked by robots.txt) and there are few IBM-OpenOffice.org references left. Has IBM made any source code contributions to the OpenOffice.org product? No. Why should they...

They develop IBM/Lotus Workplace. Workplace incorporates OpenOffice.org code directly and provides their Word/Excel style integration with the old Notes environment. Doubtless they have probably made enhancements to the code to support collaboration. Since SISSL allows for binary only distribution, however, IBM never had a need to join the OpenOffice.org project to develop Workplace. They could happily have their own team of engineers working on it and had no obligation to share that work with others under SISSL.

So is this a good thing? Who knows. IBM very well may just stick with the last version of source released under SISSL for Workplace. OOo 1.x/2.x is "good enough", so unless future LGPL only versions have some type of major advantage, there's no need for IBM to contribute back their Workplace enhancements.

This is really ironic, though, since LGPL was actually thrown into the original OOo license as an afterthought (I think by Joerg, but may be mistaken). The afterthought has won out!!

For me personally, this is a good thing since it legitimizes GPL-only forks like NeoOffice and hopefully can help them stop accusing us of stealing OpenOffice.org and engaging in illegal activities when all we do is exercise our rights under the LGPL license.

ed

everyone from Microsoft to IBM has a message on their frontpage.

You mean, "Everyone from (A) Apple to (Z) ZDNet has a message on their frontpage."

"You are aware of the difference between CDs sitting on a shelf unsold and an OS actually installed on a computer?"

Spare me the theoretical ponderings. Here's a link: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-979064.html

What theoretical ponderings? I have explained to you *twice* that the publisher of the report you cite later clarified things. It is the publisher who says the numbers you cite refers to CD's shipped:

"IDC's Al Gillen, research director for systems software, explained to The Mac Observer that the number quoted is not for PC market share, but actually Linux's market share of new, licensed operating systems shipments worldwide.
...
For competitive reasons, IDC does not release specific numbers of the installed base, but Mr. Gillen confirmed Apple's market share was "nearly double that of Linux," putting it in second place behind the dominate OS leader, Windows by Microsoft Corp."
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/02/20.6.sh tml

"My basis was that around 1990, give or take a couple of years, I was downloading compiler source code from BBS' I found indirectly though Dr Dobb's journal, the C User's Journal, or Byte Magazine."

It is, of course, hard to assess this without a copy. It could be anything. Most likely, it was a 16-bit version for DOS, if it existed. In any case, it clearly never went anywhere.

Never going anywhere is irrelevant. My point stands that gcc was convenient but not irreplacable with respect to x86 Linux. Other compilers existed. The BSD dev's mentioned a host of other compilers. I was able to download compiler source in those days. A friend working with a National Semi 32032 CPU at home had compiler source, he was under no obligation to redistribute so it was not gpl. It is a bit naive to dismiss everthing you are unaware of as 16-bit DOS.

"Actually around 1990 I was writing a 32-bit x86 multithreaded kernel for hosting telecommunications applications on custom designed hardware."

That's nice. Get a few comlete *nix ports done to a new CPU and we'll talk. Porting a full-fledged *nix distribution and getting it ready is a completely different matter.

Sorry, but you digress. You mentioned the difficulties with the C compiler, I mention experience in getting C Std Libs hosted in an embedded environment so that normal apps and utils can run. Getting such apps/utils running is the topic, not delivering a complete desktop. The fact remains that using one compiler or another is one small piece of a large project. Even *if* some other compiler had needed some additional work it would have affected the ultimate delivery of Linux very little. Gcc was merely a convenience.

I think you are getting a little confused as to my original point, a refresh: If gcc was not used something else would have been used for x86 Linux and the world would be little different. Gcc was convenient for x86 not essential, gcc only becomes more important in the context of non-x86 platforms, and frankly non-x86 was also merely convenient, not essential to Linux's growth.

Spare me the theoretical ponderings. Here's a link:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-979064.html

And some quotes: "market rose from 1.5 percent in 2000 to 1.7 in 2001,"

"IDC expects that Linux will become the No. 2 desktop OS in the next year or two, surpassing the Mac OS, and will continue to hold this rank for the remainder of the company's five-year forecast."

So, that's where your 1% number comes from - 2001. If you've got other links, please post them.

"You are, deliberately ?, refering to a time frame over a decade earlier than what I was referring to. "

The discussion was about the effects of gcc on BSD and Linux, which occured in 1990/1991; but really didn't start becoming popular until 1995/1996.

If you're now referring to 1995-2005, then yes, I'd agree that lots of newcomers joined in. It's even worse today, when lots of unskilled people are calling themselves kernel hackers.

"My basis was that around 1990, give or take a couple of years, I was downloading compiler source code from BBS' I found indirectly though Dr Dobb's journal, the C User's Journal, or Byte Magazine."

It is, of course, hard to assess this without a copy. It could be anything. Most likely, it was a 16-bit version for DOS, if it existed. In any case, it clearly never went anywhere. Perhaps it was unusable for anything other than "Hello World"?

There's a large difference between a 16-bit compiler on DOS, and a native compiler for a 32-bit *nix O.S..

"Actually around 1990 I was writing a 32-bit x86 multithreaded kernel for hosting telecommunications applications on custom designed hardware."

That's nice. Get a few comlete *nix ports done to a new CPU and we'll talk. Porting a full-fledged *nix distribution and getting it ready is a completely different matter.

There's far more to getting a multiuser desktop or server O.S. out than just doing the kernel.

"You grossly exaggerate the effort required to have used one of those in the early days of Linux when it was leaving Minix."

Not at all. Engineers are horribly optimistic people, and you seem to be one of them. My assessment is spot-on. This is simply how things work.

I've only seen the exact same things happen with the schedules I've stated at a half a dozen different companies. And I've seen the same thing from friends at other companies doing similar work.

It basically boils down to the same sets of problems. The only question is how efficiently it's done, and to what level of quality you want to establish. Yes, you can ship what one company would call an alpha release as FCS. It still takes a couple years with a reasonably sized team of people to get everything in shape.

You may not have had Dell 1650s installed a while back, but there was a recall in 2003 because a voltage regulator on the MB overheated and could catch fire: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5145372.html?ta g=zdfd.newsfeed

You may not have had Dell 1650s installed a while back, but there was a recall in 2003 because a voltage regulator on the MB overheated and could catch fire: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5145372.html?ta g=zdfd.newsfeed

What does WinFS stand for? Windows File System or Windows Future Storage.

I've seen both in the media recently:
Future Storage - (example, example , example )
File System - (example, example).

But then when I looked a little more, I found this. Will this end up being something that is constantly being corrected on Slashdot? :)

The OP mentioned the main-stream press. The following blogs all give different angles on the same story, all worth viewing: ZDNet Russ Shaw Om at Gigaom Jeff Pulver Mark Evens and the Vonage Forum

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=8247

similar statistics...

• business week: google=52%
• clickz: google=59%
• zdnet: google=36.9%

Slate has a much more plausible explanation for Google's secondary offering.

Google Talk's Developers' Page both explicitly says that GTalk will move over to SIP for VoIP services, and makes a big deal out of "Client Choice" and "Service" choice, which apparently they plan to accomplish through inter-connecting to SIP providers.

Skype itself released an SDK for third parties to hook up to its own network. That doesn't sound like a good move from a company that's in talks to be acquired by an IM operator.

It's probably more likely that Skype will be acquired by a phone company (probably a mobile one that's not afraid to undercut PSTN, Vodafone would be a good choice), and that Google plans to use SIP to reach Skype-scale quickly, without paying Skype prices...

I'm surprised to not see references to Linus' comments on the issue from a while back.

See:
Linux founder opens door to DRM
Linus Torvalds blesses DRM, and nothing happens

Exactly. The number one blog on the internet is a powerful proponent of truth you don't find through mainstream sources.

If you run a Windows shop and mess up on a few licences, even by accident, the BSA will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html

As a matter of fact, they can screw up your operations by merely conducting an audit during your busiest season:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-996210.html

Even if you don't use the big-buck CRM packages mentioned in the article, if you're running a business the logical choice is to avoid the risk of extortion and/or business disruption by choosing open source and telling the BSA to stick it where the moon don't shine.

call forwarding:

voicemail: here but there's a charge

Distinctive ring - some of the dual voip/pots handsets do it but it looks like only to distinguish between voip and pots

not defending skype but there is more to skype than some realise

Then I suggest you learn to look at what other federal offices do, in particular the Carnivore email monitoring (described at http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-522071.html?leg acy=zdnn). And despite public claims to the contrary, the system is still alive and in use.

Not sure anyone will notice, but it belongs here.

Look at this short note: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5833861.html

It is here where real money and effort is being spent on the perceived usage statistics of Firefox. That is, "... Though its market share slipped slightly last month, researchers estimate that between 8 and 9 percent of the Internet population use the open-source browser". Though they accept the supposed drop in Firefox usage, they quote the usage rate at the full percentage point level. Most likely that is the best we can do, however, I suspect the error level is more than a full percentage point (plus or minus).

But what do I know? Since I routinely throw away so much that is patently bogus, having spoofed or non-existent data, etc. before even attempting a simple count!

Each time some expert's saying that Moore's Law is about to hit a barrier,
there is something going on like those promising nanotubes.

Another one for Moore against those doomsday preacher like this one:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5112061.html

No, I dont think its in CVS yet. The ZDNet article has a few more details than the one the submitter gave. It says that IBM "will donate", not that they have donated.

The ZDNet article also states that IBM is giving 50,000 lines of code. Pretty cool stuff!

However, Google initially preferred Atom and started supporting RSS only reluctantly.

Microsoft as an ISP is taking the money.

U-CAN-SPAM permits AGs and ISPs to sue spammers for money. One of the things which sucks is most ISPs (in the way we think of ISPs) aren't going after them and AGs as well as the FTC serve in bulk mode: get billionz-n-billionz of examples, then ponder going after them.

It's the fault of the DMA, who essentially wrote U-CAN-SPAM. Take a gander at some of these from Jerry Cerasale, of the DMA, on June 16, 2004:

Washington Post...We agree that the consumer should have choice, that they can say 'no' to receiving further e-mail. (IOW, they demand the right for everyone to get one bite at the apple).

ZDNet.com, October 21, 2002..."We're finding that we need to give the consumers the choice to try and allow them to control their inbox, to try and say no, I don't want this, while leaving the medium open for commerce," Cerasale said.

But, Cerasale said, a federal requirement that consumers "opt in" instead of "opt out" of bulk e-mail is unacceptable. "We think the opt-in creates a true noneconomic model," Cerasale said. "We don't believe you get a viable economic model in opt-in."

Interpretation: any law which prevents businesses from making money via email is wrong. And anything which permits inbox owners to avoid getting business-oriented unless they give permission is wrong.

IOW, email serves one purpose and one purpose only: for businesses to make money. Anything impeding that is wrong and anything else is personal consumption and secondary.

But in a contradiction, here's what the DMA has to say about spyware legislation on May 25, 2005:

"The DMA strongly believes that consumers should be in control of their computers..."

Now, DMA, which is it? Do we have control or don't we?

This last quote is the newest. Does it mean they've changed their collective minds? I doubt it I don't think they realized they contradicted themselves. If confronted, they'd backpedal and perform some serious tap dancing in the process.

If you want to collect the loot yourself, set up a server, sell services to your neighbors, and you're in business as an ISP. When the spam rolls in, pay a visit to your local court and file the paperwork.

BTW, I'll say here what I said on SPAM-L: even though Richter was taken off of the ROKSO list, Richter has tasted the taste of money regardless of how it was obtained and he's sitting on millions of email addresses. He's not shutting down how he does business, despite anything he says. And he still stands to make a lot of money harvesting email addresses and selling them to others. There is nothing in U-CAN-SPAM which prohibits the harvesting and sale of email addresses, only the use of harvesting email addresses as the targets of unsolicited email.

This article - http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-5817482.html has better links, including one to the FCC page where it is explicitly spelled out why Continental is in the right.