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Media Monopoly: Thomas Edison to Hillary Rosen
An anonymous reader writes "George Ziemann has posted two excellent articles that explore the early days of the recording and music industry, how their attempts to monopolize their respective mediums in the past failed, and how their attempts to do so strangely mirror those presently being undertaken by contemporary media conglomerates to control digital distribution over the Net. Seems the two industries back at the turn of the century tried to pool their patents to block out competition like the RIAA and the big media companies today pool their copyrights. The first article "The Dawn of Recorded Music and the First Pirates" focuses on early collusion in the phonograph industry. The second "Music, Movies and Monopoly" on Thomas Edison's failed attempts to restrain fair trade in the two new media he gave commercial rise to."
whoa!
Study: IBM and EDS lead Web hosting market
Meta Group says rivals extended their leads over competition
By Stacy Cowley, IDG News Service May 29, 2003
In the $2.3 billion North American market for managed Web hosting and related services, IBM and EDS took advantage of market changes and turbulence during 2002 to extend their lead over rivals, research firm Meta Group concluded in a recent report.
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As the Web-hosting market evolves, large vendors will increasingly dominate, according to Meta, based in Stamford, Conn. Driving the market's widening gap between vendors is the commoditization of low-end services such as collocation infrastructure provisioning, and the relative immaturity but growing importance of high-end consulting and full-management services, the firm said.
"The key differentiator in the market is professional services," the report states. "Two Web hosting leaders emerged in the U.S. market during 2002: EDS and IBM. These organizations are distinguished not only by their size, but also by their ability to grow Web hosting as a viable business while evolving services, increasing leverage, and extending partnerships."
IBM and EDS have the staffing, infrastructure, technology and financial resources to adapt to changing customer demands and to weather rough market conditions, Meta said. They also have the advantage of bulk: With the economy shaky, customers are reluctant to sign on with smaller vendors that could be acquired or wiped out, according to the report.
Challengers AT&T, Verio, and Sprint have solid hosting offerings, but are struggling to expand into high-end services, Meta said. Meanwhile, Qwest Communications and Cable and Wireless suffer from overinvesting during the boom years, and are focused on regaining financial health.
Gartner, also in Stamford, gave IBM and EDS top marks as well in an analysis of the North American Web-hosting market issued last week. During a time filled with acquisitions, reorganizations and bankruptcies, the consistency the two firms offer is a strong selling point, Gartner said.
Both firms noted that Big Blue's sterling services carry a correspondingly elite price tag. While Meta argues that pricing is less important to most customers than reliability, Gartner's report concludes that budget pressures prompted a number of customers to begin in 2002 shifting internally hosting services they'd previously outsourced.
Vendors will need to respond with more flexible offerings and pricing to "slow the rush" toward internalization, Gartner cautioned.
Meta forecasts that while low-end services commoditize, high-end services won't become a fully developed market before 2005. A willingness to treat Web hosting as a loss-leader for winning larger services deals, along with prudent use of resources, will be key for vendors hoping to lead that sector, it said.
1. Let other do the music stuff
2. Open iTunes Music Store
3. Profit!!!
not only did you FAIL IT, you FAILED IT MISERABLY. go fist yourself
hehe, you are just jealous that i did get it, and you didn't, nor will you ever get it...nanny nanny boo boo! :P
1. USA
2. Great Britain
3. Heaven (the Muslim one with 72 virgins for everybody)
4. Heaven (the Christian one, which is supposed to be pretty good, just not as good as the suicide bombers are getting)
5. Landfill (law-abiding)
6. Landfill (illegal)
7. A dumpster fulled of used condoms and soiled panty liners
8. Iron maiden, in operation as designed
9. Being burned at the stake
10. Hell
11. Hillary Clinton as President
12. Winking out of existence
13. Even worse stuff
14. Still worse stuff
15. France
Except.. Ogg Vorbis is shit.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying