It will be years and years before this gets enforced. The estimates I have heard are around 2 years for this to go through the appeals process. I just skimmed the ruling now, and it appears that Microsoft has a year after the final ruling to comply. I wonder if any lawyers here know if Microsoft still gets that year after the appeals are through, or is it 12 months or whenever the appeals are done, which ever comes last. Either way, expect 2 to 3 years for this break up to occur, if and only if Microsoft loses its appeals.
Since CNN reported that EBAY.com and Buy.com were hit, their site has been down. Weird coincidence? Been trying to get on CNN.com or CNNfn.com for about 25 minutes. Hopefully this is just an odd coincidence, but this unpunished could be big news. YAHOO estimated they lost about $500,000 in ad revenue for the time they were down yesterday.
What kills me is that a corporation has a 95 year copyright while an individual has 70. So that means that John Lennon's imagine is protected for 70 years, but the Old Spice theme song is secure for 95. What warped thinking! I am surprised, if most people in the creative community aren't incorporating themselves. Here's a scenario. You write a song in 2000,and incorporate yourself, protecting your song for 95 years. You die that year, as your first and only son is born. In 2018, your son, has a son, in 2036, he has a son, in 2054, he has a son, 2072, this son has a kid, who has a kid himself in 2090. There is an accident that kills the father. For the next 5 years until the copyright expires, the great great great great grandson has control over your work, making money off of it, and authorizing its public usage. Yes. This is so totally fair. NOT!
Chairman Bill has less power than AOL/Netscape/CNN/Time/Warner/Compuserve/ in the ability to affect our lives. Bill Gates would have his engineers sneak code into windows that would make other software not work. However, the public relations team at Windows are a joke, and Microsoft has been usually zapped for it. Enter AOL/Time Warner. AOL 5.0 and when it comes out 6.0 are going to more firmly entrench their proprietary software on the masses. Before the masses rebel, the "journalists" at CNN/Time can tell us to take the medicine because its good for us. Believe it or not, I think we may all begin to look back in fondness at the days when Bill Gates' follies was the most about which we had to worry.
I am not buying any movies by these two billionaires until all the star wars and indiana jones movies are available on DVD. What is the big hold up anyways? They know the fans want it, but they tell us to just eat cake(VHS) all the same. If they think so little of us, why do we keep going back to them waving our hard earned dollars?
I can see a presidential election, 20 years from now, where these ad companies, sell to candidates, the url's their opponents went to when they were in college. But in a way, big brother will be a playing field leveler. If 20 years from now, somebody was running for President, and the only web sites they looked at were/., weather.com, and yahoo, I might be a little weirded out by them. It will ruin the idea of anonymous dialogues, which help in fostering honesty, but also bring along flame wars, but perhaps big brother will be a beacon of freedom in a perverse way. If we all act normally, i.e., not holier than thou, the notion of being watched will be like being ourselves in front of our families. I suggest we all order beer on line, go to playboy.com,(or playgirl for that matter for those so inclined;) order sex toys, join an online cult, and engage in flame wars on a star trek newsgroup by posting doctored naked pictures of our love affair with Spock. Hell, if Bill Clinton has shown us anything, it's that we have at least grown up enough to allow a human being to be president. The internet can allow us to grow as a society. If we act like ourselves, the truth will be less shocking. Isn't that a good thing?
Scientists have also discovered a "black hole" 1600 light years from earth. This begs the question of what we really know about the universe. Ironically, I tend to think of 1,600 light years as kind of close to us. I am a layman, but I want to throw out a question to the astrophysics type people here... how fast can a black hole grow? Could the hole 1,600 light years away absorb us in say a billion years from now? Just wondering. I won't be around... but if we know it will, it would give long term planning a ridiculous new meaning.
Salon is running a story at http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2000/01/13/drugs /index.html that shows that the White House office of National Drug Policy, headed by Gen. Barry Mccaffrey is actually paying Hollywood to put anti-drug messages in tv shows. The networks have been payed to the tune of $25 million so far, and even go so far as to send scripts to the whitehouse to be edited for proper anti-drug messages in order to qualify for the payback from the government. Big business and big government can be equally frightening. I wonder if for example AOL-TW will use pressures on people who get linked from their combined sites to spout the company line. This Salon story is damned scary to me. Am I overreacting, or is this a portent of the future?
George W. Bush-Born with a silver spoon up his nose.
Bill Gates announced in a second press conference that he was spending $25 billion to take over Red Hat Software. "I always thought that Linux was kinda cool, but it needed some innovations" He went on to add, that the rumors were true, the old microsoft avitar "Bob" icon would be replacing the penguin in the near future, more changes to follow;) George W. Bush "Not a crackhead anymore"
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It will be years and years before this gets enforced. The estimates I have heard are around 2 years for this to go through the appeals process. I just skimmed the ruling now, and it appears that Microsoft has a year after the final ruling to comply. I wonder if any lawyers here know if Microsoft still gets that year after the appeals are through, or is it 12 months or whenever the appeals are done, which ever comes last. Either way, expect 2 to 3 years for this break up to occur, if and only if Microsoft loses its appeals.
Since CNN reported that EBAY.com and Buy.com were hit, their site has been down. Weird coincidence? Been trying to get on CNN.com or CNNfn.com for about 25 minutes. Hopefully this is just an odd coincidence, but this unpunished could be big news. YAHOO estimated they lost about $500,000 in ad revenue for the time they were down yesterday.
CNN is reporting that Buy.com was under a massive Denial of Service attack this morning, and at the moment, EBAY is being attacked and is down.
What kills me is that a corporation has a 95 year copyright while an individual has 70. So that means that John Lennon's imagine is protected for 70 years, but the Old Spice theme song is secure for 95. What warped thinking! I am surprised, if most people in the creative community aren't incorporating themselves. Here's a scenario. You write a song in 2000,and incorporate yourself, protecting your song for 95 years. You die that year, as your first and only son is born. In 2018, your son, has a son, in 2036, he has a son, in 2054, he has a son, 2072, this son has a kid, who has a kid himself in 2090. There is an accident that kills the father. For the next 5 years until the copyright expires, the great great great great grandson has control over your work, making money off of it, and authorizing its public usage. Yes. This is so totally fair. NOT!
Chairman Bill has less power than AOL/Netscape/CNN/Time/Warner/Compuserve/ in the ability to affect our lives. Bill Gates would have his engineers sneak code into windows that would make other software not work. However, the public relations team at Windows are a joke, and Microsoft has been usually zapped for it. Enter AOL/Time Warner. AOL 5.0 and when it comes out 6.0 are going to more firmly entrench their proprietary software on the masses. Before the masses rebel, the "journalists" at CNN/Time can tell us to take the medicine because its good for us. Believe it or not, I think we may all begin to look back in fondness at the days when Bill Gates' follies was the most about which we had to worry.
I am not buying any movies by these two billionaires until all the star wars and indiana jones movies are available on DVD. What is the big hold up anyways? They know the fans want it, but they tell us to just eat cake(VHS) all the same. If they think so little of us, why do we keep going back to them waving our hard earned dollars?
George W. Bush-- Not a crackhead since 1974!
George W. Bush- "Not a crackhead since 1974!"
George W. Bush-Born with a silver spoon up his nose.
Bill Gates announced in a second press conference that he was spending $25 billion to take over Red Hat Software. "I always thought that Linux was kinda cool, but it needed some innovations" He went on to add, that the rumors were true, the old microsoft avitar "Bob" icon would be replacing the penguin in the near future, more changes to follow ;) George W. Bush "Not a crackhead anymore"