Tue. August 30, 2005
Up Your Ass
Saturday's New York Times detailed the rising battle between Apple Computer and the recording industry over pricing of digital music downloads. Apple, Digital Music's Angel, Earns Record Industry's Scorn [New York Times]. Apparently, the music industry dislikes the $0.99 fixed per-song price pioneered by Apple as part of its iTunes Music Store.
Now that's quite a metaphor. Seems that Lack is saying that his revenue stream is someplace where the sun doesn't shine. Perhaps the record labels need a proctologist? I represent these guys (at the FCC), but I still can't understand their business strategy. Before iTunes, they were nowehere in the digital domain. But I guess for content in today's information economy, it's acceptable behavior to look a gift horse in the mouth. Or even some other part of the anatomy.
Posted by glenn at Fri. August 26, 2005
GoogleTalk
Our friends at Google have decided to enter the instant messaging (IM) market with a product called "GoogleTalk." Google Talk Launch Sends Clear Message to Rivals [The Guardian]. That's an interesting move, but they still have to contend with the incompatibilities among the various different IM standards. And it raises the old dot.com bubble question of whether search sites provide services (which Google has done better than anyone) or want to leverage search into more "stickiness" and expand into "portals."
See, the issues never change, just the acronyms.
Thu. May 12, 2005
ET Phone Home
Microsoft's Bill Gates says the raging popularity of Apple's iPod player is "unsustainable." Gates Sees Mobile Phones Overtaking iPods [Reuters.com].
Yeah, right. Just like the "Tablet PC" was going to make laptops extinct and Microsoft's "Media PC" is going to take over the family room entertainment centers of the world. Can I have some of what he's smoking?
Tue. March 29, 2005
Technology at the Supreme Court
Today was a very big day for technology at the U.S. Supreme Court, with two hugely significant cases being argued. The first, Grockster v. MGM Studios, arises from the movie and recording industries' efforts to impose contributory copyright infringement liability on post-Napster providers of P2P file sharing software. Supreme Court Takes Hard Look at P2P [CNET News.com]. The second, BrandX v. FCC, arises from the FCC's efforts to clear the way for cable modem broadband service without requiring cable companies to share their facilities with ISPs. Supreme Court Asks Why Cable Broadband Lacks Regulation [ITWorld.com].
It's always hard to predict where the Court will come down from its oral argument questions. But these remarks from Justices Breyer, Scalia and Souter in Grockster are quite revealing.
Justice Antonin Scalia wondered whether innovators would be punished immediately after creating a new product if the entertainment industry had a legal veto. "If I started a business now, how do I know how to proceed?" he asked. "If I'm a new inventor, I'm going to get sued right away."
"There's never the intent to break the law when the guy is in the garage inventing the iPod," added Justice David Souter.
There's a sense to which both the cable and entertainment industries are overreaching. I've got friends and colleagues on both sides of each of these issues, but biting off more than one can legitimately chew is a very bad strategy, since courts (especialy the Supreme Court) are pretty good at sorting out litgants who overstate or overplay their hands.
Mon. March 7, 2005
Western Samurai
Last week's observations here that Sony has lost its way must have been heard in Tokyo, because the Japanese consumer electronics giant has picked an American as its new CEO. But I still think seppuku is probably the better answer.
Thu. March 3, 2005
Just a Dumb 'Ol Country Boy
Bernie Ebbers' defense to criminal charges of accounting fraud that brought down WorldCom -- the multi-billion dollar telecom conglomerate he built with a string of hundreds of complex financial mergers -- is that he didn't know anything about acounting. Prosecutor: Pressure "Corrupted" Ebbers [USAToday.com]. "I know what I don't know," Bernie testified, claiming he relied entirely on his CFO and chief accuser, Scott Sullivan, to manage financial matters.
That's like the late Senator Sam Ervin, who chaired the Watergate hearings, famously saying in his folksy way that he was just a "simple ol' country lawyer." You don't get to become CEO of a Fortune 50 company in America without understanding -- and playing a key role -- in corporate finance. Chief Executive Officers live and die (literally) by "hitting the numbers" Wall Street expects. I suspect the jury will see through Ebbers' charade and send him to the slammer for a long time. At least, I hope they will. And it's heartening that 74% of respondents to a CNBC poll agree with me.
Tue. March 1, 2005
Lost in Translation
Twenty years ago Sony was the king of consumer electronics. No more. Thus, it was rather surprising to find this headline in a UK online publication. Say Goodbye to Your iPod [ThisisLondon.com].
Seems that Sony will soon introduce a cellphone that can hold (wow!!) 12 whole CDs of music. Ah, folks, that's hardly 1GB, which the tiny iPod Shuffle does for $99. Maybe Japanese teenagers want their phones to hold a few songs, but any serious music fan knows that carrying one's whole music library in a small, white container is WAY better than some second-rate cellphone gadget. The company that invented the Walkman has lost its way. For the Londoners to say Sony has developed "the phone that could mean the end of the iPod" is just plain crazy.
Thu. February 24, 2005
The Anti-Social iPod?
Andrew Sullivan (from the Daily Dish) has an op-ed in the Sunday Times of London, titled Society is Dead, We Have Retreated Into the iWorld. It's a rant against what he views as the anti-socializing effects of the iPod MP3 music player. Sullivan thinks that iPod owners "walk around the world like hermit crabs with our isolation surgically attached."
That's hardly the case. I would wager that more spontaneous conversations, and flirtations, have begun about iPods and what their owners are listening to than about anything since blotter acid in Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s. More to the point, the world is a great place when it has a soundtrack. It makes people smile, and smiles make for pleasant social interactions. If you ask me -- and Andrew hasn't, but I will tell him anyway -- it's the folks who are tethered to their wireless headsets and talk on cell phones while walking down the street who are really anti-social. A decade ago that behavior (mumbling to one's self in public) would have been regarded as delusional or schizophrenic. Maybe it still should be!
Wed. February 16, 2005
Brain Dead and Starving
Last month the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush of a decision overturning his efforts to force the husband of a comatose woman -- who has been in a vegitative state for 15 years -- to continue intravenous feeding. The Christian right has taken up the case of Terry Schiavo as a cause celeb, arguing that medical miracles cannot be discounted and that removing the feeding tube would be euthanasia -- murder.
What a stupid and tragic case in which to decide the rights of individuals to die. There's no dispute that this woman expressed a clear desire not to be a vegetable. There is also no question that is what she is today, unable to move any limbs, speak, respond, acknowledge vistors, register emotions, etc. Her husband, for God's sake, is the one who after 15 years wants to end her suffering, but her evangelist parents -- backed by the state -- want to take that decision away from him.
You know, the United States has prosecuted Christian Scientists for felonies when they refused medical care, on religious grounds, for children who needed emergency treatment. That's a classic instance of the right to life and the right to freedom of religion clashing. But it's been settled for decades that the right to life includes the right to end one's life -- at least by refusing "extraordinary measures" and imposing a "do not resusicate" requirement on doctors -- if done knowingly. That's what living wills ("advance medical directives") are all about.
Too bad that Terry Schiavo was not up-to-speed on that concept on Feb. 25, 1990, when a chemical imbalance possibly triggered by an eating disorder caused her heart to stop beating and cut off oxygen to her brain. She's been brain-dead ever since and is now a pawn of religious zealots trying to impose their own view of miracles on a (rightly) reluctant husband and court system.
Mon. February 14, 2005
Long Time Coming
When one works in an industry, it's somewhat amazing how wrong the press -- including those frequently praised as erudite -- can be about the issues of the day. Take the current wave of mergers in the telecommunications industry, like SBC-AT&T and Verizon-MCI. Verizon to Acquire MCI for $6.75 Billion [Forbes.com].
The usually thoughtful Forbes opined that the MCI deal "is the latest example of how regulatory changes in Washington are continuing to transform the telephone industry." That's hardly the case. Despite the Telecommunications Act of 1996, there have been very FEW regulatory changes in Washington (i.e., the Federal Communications Commission) because the local telephone monopolists -- who years ago were granted permission to merge the "Baby Bells" down from seven to four -- used the courts to overturn almost every regulatory change commanded by the FCC. (Indeed, the basic telecom regulatory and policy issues are the same now as they were two decades ago.) Meanwhile, fundamental technological changes continued to make dramatic cuts in the cost of long-distance, which in turn meant that the source of AT&T's and MCI's earnings was being vaporized by low margins, cell phones and the like. Combine that with huge overcapacity in long-haul fiber optic networks, available post-bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar, and one has all the makings of a classic market glut followed by shakeout.
These deals are not happening because of regulatory changes, rather despite (or maybe even because of) the lack of regulatory change in Washington.
Sat. February 12, 2005
Accounting Fluff
So the trial of Bernie Ebbers, former WorldCom CEO, for fraud is beginnning, and the chief witness against him is the company's former CFO. Scott Sullivan testified this week that Ebbers was told quarterly that in order to "make the numbers" demanded by Wall Street, the green eyeshade accountants had to add "fluff" to WorldCom's revenues and understate expenses. Ebbers Told of 'Accounting Fluff' [USAToday.com].
This is very damning evidence and (as in Martha Stewart) more than enough to convict the slimebag Ebbers. WorldCom went down in an $11 billion accounting scandal because someone booked expenses as assets, thus artifically inflating revenues and understating costs in order to maintain false EPS reports. Bernie either knew about it or directed it -- matters not. He's going down, and it could not happen to a more rotten guy.
Fri. February 11, 2005
SCO's Follies
Most people other than the SlashDot and open source crowds haven't been following the case, but a small company called SCO Group has sued IBM, claiming that the latter violated copyright rules in developing the Unix (and hence Linux) operating systems. I have always regarded this as a simple strike suit, designed to terrorize the open source movement with threat of copyright judgments -- a legal strategy funded by Microsoft -- without much substantive merit. Well, the courts appear to agree. Judge Slams SCO's Lack of Evidence Against IBM [ZDNet.com]
That's judicial-speak for "you lying bastards, get out of my court"!!
Mon. December 20, 2004
Women and iPods
Betsy Shifman writes in Forbes, in an article titled Music Machine For iPod Resisters, that
Well, Betsy, if you can say that it proves you've never tried an iPod and know nothing about them. iPods work perfectly, never crash, synch instantly and stand head-and-shoulders above the pale imitations that Creative and Sony are peddling. Shit, those devices don't even have FireWire connections and still can't synchronize to your music collection. The Creative "Nomad" 5GB player in 2001 was so bad -- running on Linux -- that for me it lasted just 5 days before dying and never got more than three hours of battery life.
The lesson obviously is simple: never believe advice from a woman on high-tech gadget issues!
Wed. December 8, 2004
Death of the IBM PC
Tom Krazit notes in Computerworld that "perhaps it isn't quite as surprising as if Ford suddenly decided to sell its Mustang sports car brand to Hyundai." Well, it is. IBM has sold its personal computer business to a Chinese company. This is the same IBM that launched the PC revolution -- and cemented Bill Gates' monopoly -- by creating the "IBM-compatible" computer based on Intel microprocessors in the early 1980s. So the death of the IBM PC, which has been long in coming, is nothing to mourn about. But it marks the end of an era nonetheless.
Mon. November 29, 2004
Product Life Cycle
iPod Adoption Rate Faster than Sony Walkman. This isn't really news, considering that the iPod, one of my personal favorite devices, has become a social icon in itself. But they will be studying this in B-schools for years, as the accelerating rate of "early adopters" for Apple's iPods outpaces anything about the product life cycle witnessed in American marketing before now. Seems like the iPod is one of the very few successful examples of the viral growth phenomenon talked about so often during the days of the Internet bubble.
Sun. November 21, 2004
The Dead Kennedys
The folks at JFK Reloaded say their new PC game takes as a given that the Warren Commission's conclusion was right -- that the shots killing John F. Kennedy in November 1963 all came from the Texas School Book Depository building. Kennedy Assassination Re-Created in Video Game [CNN.com]. I don't think that's correct. When millions of players, like the CBS re-enactment in 1966, can't reproduce the supposed three shots, they'll have a little better appreciation for Oswad's repeated insistence that he was "just a patsy."
Fri. November 19, 2004
Whip It
This story reports on how technology is now being used, after several thousands of years, to develop sex toys for men, not just for women. Pushing the Male Envelope [Wired News]. Thank goodness for sexual equality. We've come a long way, baby!
Mon. November 8, 2004
Whimpering To a Close
The headline says it all. Microsoft Ends Decade of U.S. Antitrust Litigation [Reuters.com]. With the last deadline for an appeal to the Supreme Court now over, Microsoft has settled with its opponents and only the European Union case is left. The real question, though, is whether Redmond has changed its stripes? Otherwise the past will be mere prologue.
Wed. October 27, 2004
iPod Photo
I don't know precisely what this means, but Apple's annnouncement yesterday of a new iPod Photo, with 60GB and the ability to store, sync and display 25,000 photos, surely means yet another revolution in personal digital multimedia. If the iPod changed music listening from albums to playlists -- which it most definitely has -- what will this new device do to snapshots, photography and slide shows? Wait and see, but I believe it will be significant and perhaps unexpected.
Wed. October 20, 2004
Long Live the Digital Divide
This has been a long-standing pet peeve of mine about telecom regulation. Home Tech Study Reveals "Digital Divide," But Not Necessarily The One You'd Think It Is [MediaDailyNews].
The report, released by Knowledge Networks/SRI, does find a surprisingly wide gap in the penetration of seemingly ubiquitous digital media technologies such as personal computers and broadband access, but it also reveals that some newer media, including digital TV and cell phone services are accelerating more rapidly among lower or niche socio-economic groups.
So, we know that the government does not subsidize VCRs, yet in 20 years they have penetrated to 95% of the marketplace. Every welfare mom (and this I know from persoal experience representing formerly homeless families) has one. On the other hand, America has subsidized POTS (regular telephone service) to low-income and rural users for 70 years and we're still at 94% penetration -- and falling. Now we find that the poor are actually earlier adopters of some communications technologies, like cell phones, without any subsidies. So I say it's time to abandon the "universal service" shibboleth and let the market work. If it's good enough for VCRs, it's good enough for telephones and computers, too.
Fri. October 8, 2004
Microsoft and DRM
In a move to prevent Microsoft from using its dominance in PC operating systems to control the burgeoning field of digital rights management (DRM), European regulators are considering blocking the company's acquisition of an influential DRM patent holder. EU Wants Windows Cleaned of DRM [Wired News]. The European Commission has launched an in-depth investigation into Microsoft's and Time Warner's acquisition of the digital rights management company ContentGuard.
The issue here in reality is not DRM, but rather the anticompetitive use of patents. Proprietary technologies and standards are OK, indeed beneficial -- witness VHS v. Beta, etc. -- and even firms with market power are permitted to benefit from the protections accorded by patent law. On the other hand, where a monopolist uses patent acquisition to foreclose entry, especially in "innovation" markets, antitrusters are naturally and properly worried.
Having said that, this is no different from Microsoft's historic patterns. The company has never invented anything, rather buys up technologies (like DOS, Internet Explorer, PowerPoint, etc.) and excels -- no pun intended -- at commercializing new ideas and integrating them into its dominant Windows operating system. Microsoft's Windows Media Player and proprietary A/V format are still losing in the battle with Real, QuickTIme and the protected AAC format used by Apple's iTunes Music Store. So instead of building a better mousetrap, Redmond buys one. (Whether it's better or not of course remains to be seen.) Par for the course.
Wed. October 6, 2004
Politics is a Dirty Game
You know you're either getting old, or just have worked too long "inside the Beltway," when your friends are forced to resign in a political scandal. Phone Group Head Resigns After Uproar [washingtonpost.com]. This is a first for me. Maybe time to reconsider priorities.
Disclosure: I have represented ALTS, the trade group in question, in the past but had nothing to do with this fiasco.
Fri. October 1, 2004
Non-Area Area Codes
An interesting article in the "metro" section of the New York Times observes that "Cellular phones, changing governmental regulations and new Internet technology have torn area codes from geography, allowing people to have phone numbers with area codes distant from where they live. Though not new, the trend has kicked up a pitched debate among a colorful collection of technological pundits, telephone historians and Web preachers who specialize in the topic."
All of this started in a case I handled in 1995, in which New York and the FCC authorized the 917 area code -- known formally as a Numberiing Plan Area or "NPA" -- to be assigned on a non-geographic basis, so as to include cell phones and pay phones. That of course was before the days of ubiquitous wireless phones and unlimited roaming, which as the Times points out have made even geographic area codes non-geographic.
Now, get this. Some sociologists call this "a deeply confusing development." Come on! When the Bell System moved from geographic exchange or central office codes (the first three numerals of a 7-digit telephone numer), like "Murray Hill 5-0154," to direct dialing like "679-0154" in the early 1950s, many folks saw that as an unsettling change. Poignant and nostalgic, perhaps, but disturbing, no. Telephone numbers and geography have not been synonymous for years. Harkening back to the old days is nice in sepia-toned movies and memoirs, but not in today's fast-paced, interconnected world.
Thu. September 30, 2004
Free Falling
For those who thought the excesses of the dot.com boom all got washed away in the subsequent bust, the optical fiber telecommunications industry has some disappointing news. Prices for access along the vast expanses of long-haul fiber optic networks built in the late 1990s and 2000 haven't finished falling to earth. Wired News: Bandwidth Glut Lives On.
Tue. September 28, 2004
Email Standards
Standards are good (by promoting interoperabilty) and standards are bad (by deterring innnovation for component products). And there has been an ongoing controversy, lasting decades, about whether "open" industry standards may or should include patented inventions. For instance, ANSI and W3C each have patent policies calling for disclosure and nondiscriminatory or royalty free licensing of intellectual property (IP) included in standards.
Now that same debate has spilled over into IETF, the Internet's standards-setting body. Anti-Spam Effort Killed Amid Patent Row [washingtonpost.com]. This time the standards body killed a proposal by Microsoft for an email "Sender ID," designed to prevent spoofed emails, because the folks in Redmond had patented the scheme. Though the company promises to make the IP available for free, it wants to bar software developers from further licensing it, a restriction that several members of the open-source community find unacceptable.
The end result is that consumers get stuck holding the bag -- in this case, junk emails -- while the engineers and lawyers bicker, perhaps endlessly. So what else is new?
Mon. September 27, 2004
Wi-Fi Everywhere
You probably know already that the City of Philadelphia plans to build the largest, municipal-owned wireless Internet system -- a 135-square-mile "hot spot" to serve 1.5 million people -- so that residents and vistitors alike can surf the Web wirelessly. E-Commerce Report: Big Wi-Fi Project for Philadelphia [NYTimes.com]. What you may not know is that this move has sparked a raging debate about whether all of this should be left to private-sector ISPs.
In New York, the city government recently awarded contracts to six wireless contractors, who paid a total of $23 million for the right to use 3,000 city light poles as bases for cellular and, possibly, wireless Internet service for paying customers. In contrast, Phildelphia says that government cannot just "let the market do this because there are societal needs that aren't inherently part of the capitalist system. We need to be sure no communities n Philadelphia are excluded, whether there's an ROI [return on investment] or not."
This mirrors the debate over municipal ownership of telcos generally, something to which conservative think tanks and the local monopolies (like SBC and Comcast) object vehemently. Yet USA Today headlined recently that "Small Towns Tired of Slow Rollout Create Own High-Speed Networks." I tend generally to agree that government should stay out of competition with private firms and that the market will produce more and better products than a government-run cooperative. But where the market is not responding, why should economic theory or idealogy stand in the way of the people giving themselves what they want? If Philadelphia is wrong, about demand, or costs, or otherwise, it is entitled to make its own experiment and mistakes, since no one else will be footing the bill.
Besides, having ubiquitous Wi-Fi would be way cool and would solve the perplexing question of whether, and if so how, private-sector Wi-Fi providers -- like T-Mobile at Starbucks -- can create a sustainable business model. Since the market ain't happening, at least just yet, more power to Philly!!
Sun. September 26, 2004
Fantasy is Reality
I have been playing fantasy football for more than 20 years, since long before the days of computerization and the Internet. Well, today I caught up with technology, following the Hungry Homers -- the fantasy team my son and I operate in an NFL-sanctioned fantasy league -- with Web-based, real-time scoring while watching all the games on DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket.
Way cool. Oh, the Homers lost by 16 points when our opponent scored four TDs in the late games. "On any given Sunday" is as true in fantasy-land as it is in real life.
Mon. September 20, 2004
Windows and Open Source
It's hard to believe that anyone would be fooled by this miniscule Microsoft change, but many have. The press trumpeted that Microsoft was making a major policy shift towards open sourcing the code for its Office suite. Microsoft's Open Sesame Moment [washingtonpost.com]. In fact, all they are doing is allowing some federal government agencies one-time access to look at the code for security purposes. Open source and Microsoft are at the far ends of the economic spectrum; it's going to take far more than just a few lost government sales to get Redmond to change its stripes.
Thu. September 9, 2004
One Device Nirvana
I still don't think they've got the combined phone-PDA-camera "all in one" device right, but this one looks like it's getting closer.
Tue. September 7, 2004
Newton Anyone?
Newton Nuts Show How It's Done [wired.com]. I was once an Apple Newton fanatic, owning the original and every subsequent model Apple shipped from 1993 through 1997. This is a little much, though. Give it a rest!
Long Live Floppies
Like the penny, the floppy drive is hardly worth the trouble, computer makers say. Dell stopped including a floppy drive in new PCs in spring 2003, and Gateway has followed suit on some models. Floppies are available on request for $10 to $20 extra. Floppy Disk Becoming Relic of the Past [Yahoo.com].
Well, tell me something new. Apple stopped using floppy drives way back in in 1999 with the original iMac. Tiny USB drives have made floppies, Zip catridges and all sorts of external storage devices all but irrelevant. The march of technology goes on. Floppies are dead; long live floppies.
In many ways this is history repeating itself. Twenty years ago, PC users laughed at Mac users about those tiny, incompatible 3.5" floppy disks. "Still no 5.25" floppy drive." And they laughed about SCSI, which wasn't as "standard" as all those MFM and RLR drives and proprietary hard cards known in the DOS world. Eventually the Windows world embraced the 3.5" floppy. And many of the best performing PCs of only a few years ago used SCSI for best throughput, not the poky old IDE drives that had become dominant on less expensive clones.
I think they just don't like change -- especially if Apple invents it.
Tue. August 17, 2004
Old Wine in New Bottles
Today controversy erupted over the Homeland Security Department's new "virtual border" system that is supposed to use biometric technology to identify visitors to the United States and link disparate databases at INS and other agencies into a seamless whole. Calling the US-VISIT program "a striking failure," Rep. Jim Turner lambasted DHS for naming Accenture as the prime contractor for a project that could be worth as much as $10 billion in coming years. "It appears that in their rush to get something out there quickly, they've gone down a path that's basically a repeat of our old technology systems."
What this illustrates is a problem inherent in all technology-driven applications. If all that is done in re-architecting a system is to develop new interfaces for legacy databases, then the information-retreival problems of the old systems never go away. As Forrrester Research reports, "When discovered midproject, data defects and data structure anomalies in legacy databases lead to time and cost overruns." In technical terms, a "mismatch between instance information and schema information." Duh! It's not much unlike what happened to Microsoft when it tried to build Windows 95 on top of old DOS code. Not until Windows NT and later Windows XP, which started fresh, did things really get straightened out.
So the lesson for government, once again, is to learn from the private sector. Except this time, don't try to emulate them. Learn from their mistakes. Ten billion dollars is a lot to spend when you're just putting old wine into new bottles.
Mon. August 16, 2004
internet Goes Down
Starting today, Wired News will no longer capitalize the "I" in internet. At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net. It's Just the 'internet' Now [Wired.com].
Wired explains that "in the case of internet, web and net, a change in our house style was necessary to put into perspective what the internet is: another medium for delivering and receiving information. That it transformed human communication is beyond dispute. But no more so than moveable type did in its day. Or the radio. Or television."
I don't disagree, but changing conventions here is far more revealing than Wired lets on. While the Internet (before) was revolutionary, the internet (now) is just part of everyday life. Coupled with today's somewhat contradictory news that a majority of people still do not use internet search engines for information retrieval routinely, I think this development means that the first phase of the internet's development is well and truly over. Most pundits felt that phase ended in 2001 with the dot.com meltdown, but this small change in punctuation is actually far more significant. Or at least symbolic.
Mon. August 2, 2004
Music Going Wireless?
The technology has been around for awhile, but the clebration of convergence between cell phones and MP3 players is way overblown. The Cellphone's Next Makeover: Affordable Jukebox on the Move [NYTimes.com].
People said the same thing about cell phone cameras and games. Yes, they're cute and sometimes fun. But the inherent limitations of the cell phone form factor makes these multi-function devices either larger than useful (see Treo and BlackBerry PDA/phones) or far short on quality (see most Sprint phone cameras). That won't stop folks from trying them out, but I think the idea of a single, portable device that does everything is destined to failure because the devices don't do anything WELL.
Thu. July 29, 2004
Web Attacks Growing
Yesterday's news was about how the MyDoom virus took down many of Google's servers. Today it's that DoubleClick was crippled from a similar distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack launched against its ad-serving system. Denial of Service Attack Downs DoubleClick [PC World].
If ever there was solid evidence that the interconnectedness of the modern Internet is fostering increasing cybersecurity vulnerabilities, this is it. The government has called for a "public-private partnership," but otherwise done little to mandate security disclosures or jump-start private sector investment in cybersecurity. There's a big price we are all going to pay, in the long run, if this trend of avoiding major problems continues.
Wed. July 28, 2004
Apple and Interoperability
Well, here we go again. Two decades after losing out on the Macintosh due to proprietary technologies that Steve Jobs refused to license, Apple Computer now has a dominant share of the digital music market -- both for downloaded songs (iTunes Music Store) and players (iPod). Many are claiming that if it refuses again to license, Apple will lose this advantage to "open standards." Meanwhile, competitors like Real Networks are already trying to crack or hack the Apple code in order to sell protected music files that play on iPods.
But I prefer to think of this like Peter Burrows of BusinessWeek, who writes that "the market for legal digital music may be an exception" to conventional wisdom that open standards are better economically. To my mind, if a company wants to keep its technology proprietary because it thinks it has built a better mousetrap, it is entitled to a marketplace test of that proposition. Recall Beta v. VHS. No one says Sony will die just because it keeps the formats for its MediaStick proprietary, instead of using open-standard digital storage devices.
More importantly, open standards really only work in markets with "network effects," where the more people on a platform -- whether a telephone network or a computer operating system -- the more valuable it is for any individual user. (It's actually more complex than that, because network effects markets will only "tip" to a single standard or provider if there are scale economies, but leave that economic theory aside.) There's nothing in digital music that makes it seem like a network effects market -- and most digital files use the open MP3 format anyway -- so Apple may become the "Windows" of AAC, its DRM-encoded product that finally convinced the major record labels to make their libraries available for online sales.
Oh, and Microsoft has done pretty well with Windows, which for sure is not an open standard. And it's nowhere with the WMA format (also prorietary), like Real itself, which pioneered streaming Internet audio and still maintains a proprietary standard. We can and should ignore the hypocrisy of Apple's rivals. But perhaps the analysts are right that Apple is poised to become the "Microsoft of music."
Mon. July 26, 2004
Games for Girls
A New Player at The Video Screen [TechNews.com]. Another in a long series of pesudo-exposes about why there are so few video and computer games oriented towards girls. Well, since 61% of all gamers are boys and young men, like Willie Sutton, that's "where the money is." No different than network TV advertisers going after the 18-34 male demographic. They may not like it, but chicks don't count very much in the computer gaming market. That's capitlailsm. Get over it.
Tue. July 20, 2004
iPod Nation
I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, but this week's Newsweek cover story about Apple's iPod MP3 player has a simply wonderful title -- "iPod, Therefore iAm." Go Steve!
Thu. July 15, 2004
iPod Mastery
As an iPod owner since the first version came out three years ago -- and before then a denizen of Nomad Jukebox MP3 players -- I am thrilled to see that Apple's music devices and online iTunes music store have lifted the company's profitability. As Cythnia Webb writes, "Apple has been transforming itself into an entertainment company from a pure computer maker." Apple Thanks Its Lucky iPods [TechNews.com]. This is a shift that has been years in the making, and is a great development. The "digital hub" is becoming reality.
Tue. July 13, 2004
Phishing For Bandaids
Last year the U.S. Congress outlawed spam. Of course, the actual legislation was so weak, and covered only American firms, that it was doomed from the start and has done nothing to stop the torrent of unsolicited commercial email.
Now legislators want to make it a crime to engage in "phishing." This is the use of chameleon-like emails, typically made to look as if they originate from a bank, PayPal, eBay or some other financial-related institution, to entice folks to part with sensitive personally identifiable information, like passwords and account numbers. Senate Bill Targets "Phishers" [TechNews.com].
The new bill is a charade. Pfishing is fraud, which is already a civil tort and a crime under both federal and state law. Adding a specific statute ciminalizing this behavior will do nothing to stop it and will not protect consumers who are too stupid to protect themselves. It's grandstanding of the worst sort, because it won't stop the abuses one iota. And don't even get me started on the United Nations' recent declaration of a two-year "war against spam." Worse than empty words.
Wed. June 30, 2004
Can't Win 'Em All
Much as last week's judicial decision on media concentration was a great victory, today's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeal for the D.C. Circuit -- upholding the government's 2001 antitrust settlement with Microsoft -- was a terrible loss. Microsoft Prevails in Antitrust Appeal [InternetNews.com]. Not only because I was counsel to the appellants, as "third fiddle" behind former Judges Robert Bork and Ken Starr (renowned lawyers whether one agrees with their rather extreme politics), but more importantly because the court just failed to grasp the significance of the issues it was dealing with. For instance, even though Microsoft was found to have unlawfully monopolized the PC operating system market by bundling Internet Explorer into Windows, the court ruled that a decree (i.e., a remedy) that does NOT require unbundling is adequate and in the "public interest."
This is really bad news for antitrust enforcement and utilmately for consumers. The market has moved far beyond the "browser wars" between Netscape and Microsoft that gave rise to the case in 1995, but an end result that allows a convicted monopolist to do the same things to other upstarts -- and thus squelch competition -- that it did to drive Netscape from the market is inexplicable.
Wed. June 16, 2004
Technology and Terrorists
As if the USA PATRIOT Act and calls for a "Patriot Act II" are not bad enough, the Justice Department again demanded today that emerging Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services -- essentially telephone calling via the Internet -- be postponed until they are made compatible with digital wiretapping by the government.
This reminds me of the political debate over gun control, except backwards. Just as "guns don't kill people, criminals do," VoIP doesn't cause terrorism, terrorists do. The government should not take out its paranoia over over the inability of the CIA to get good intelligence on Al Qaeda by restricting the development of technology. Law enforcement has been trying to hamstring the Internet since the days of the "Clipper Chip" and encryption in the Clinton Administration. They were rebuffed then and these new calls to reign-in nascent techologies until law enforcement catches up adopt the same luddite approach. It should go into the dustbin of bad ideas.
Sat. April 24, 2004
JPEGs and Laches
Yesterday a small computer company said that it holds a patent on the JPEG compression format used widely for Web-based images. Forgent Networks, which acquired Compression Labs in 1997, sued 31 major computer manuacturers for patent infringement, claiming they all violate a 1987 patent issued to Compression.
This is absurd. Neither Forgent nor Compression invented the JPEG image compression format. The technology (short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the group which developed it) is in the public domain and is one of two standards for Web graphics. Having waited seven years -- and a full 17 years after the patent was issued -- before asserting any claim of infringement, it seems ludicrous that Forgent should be able to step in at the last moment to muck everything up.
Under U.S. law, the equitable doctrine of laches holds that rights can be waived if not asserted promptly. (Defined as "neglecting to do what should or could have been done to assert a claim or right for an unreasonable and unjustified time causing disadvantage to another.") Simply put, if you "sit on your rights," you lose them. It' also possible that the Federal Trade Commission may find that Compression misled the Intenet task force that originally standardized JPEG by not revealing its patent claims, which could force open licensing as a remedy for anticompeitive patent misuse in the standards process.
But of course, it will probably turn out to be less expensive for Apple, Adobe, Dell and the other defendants to settle than to take this case to its logical conclusion. Sony has already paid $16 million in licensing fees. So little Forgent will profit handsomely from an old patent they inadvertently discovered lying around, and everyone who uses the Web will pay a little more as a result.
Sun. April 4, 2004
The Slow Grind of the Law
Reacting to Sun's $1.6 billion settlement of its antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, some observers believe that Silicon Valley has given up trying to constraing pedatory conduct by Gates & Co. "After two decades of inflamed criticism, many here in the technology sector have come to accept the slowly acquired reality that the legal system can do little to resolve their quarrel with Microsoft," summarizes John Markoff in the New York Times. More on point is this commentary by Alan Saracevic in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Don't kid yourself. These compassionate overtures from Microsoft are signs of benevolent dictatorship. The boys up in Redmond have won the war. Now they're helping the Germans rebuild Berlin."
Mark these words. We haven't seen the end of Microsoft's antitrust battles. It took the government 50 years and three antitrust lawsuits to constrain the power of -- and finally dismantle -- the Bell System. Yes, the law moves slowly. But like the Mounties, they always get their man in the end.
Hey Einstein!
I've been reading The Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene, an excellent overview of the advances made in modern theoretical physics over the past 50 years. All of which actually started earlier, when Einstein proved that gravity travels at the speed of light by warping the spacetime continuum, debunking Newton. (Both of whom had autism, interestingly.)
And thus my amazement at a story in today's BBC News about a long-delayed gravity probe to be deployed by NASA with the caption: "Einstein's theories about space have not been proved." Now, if that's not bad enough -- experiments decades ago proved Einstein right by measuring warping of light by the sun during solar eclipses -- but the story ran right next to a sidebar that listed other BBC articles about Einstein. And the most recent one, titled "Einstein Proved Right on Gravity," reports that "The speed of gravity has been measured for the first time, revealing that it does indeed travel at the speed of light. It means that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity has passed yet another test with flying colours."
This is far worse than an inability to master fact checking, it's plain idiotic. A writer at least has to have a basic understanding of the subject in order to write an intelligent story. The lesson must be never to accept scientific stories in the general media. But since we get political, international and business news from these same, highly respected but plainly disfunctional journalistic yo-yos, perish the thought how they are probably screwing that up blood well too.
Thu. April 1, 2004
P2P Lawful In Canada
According to Toronto's The Globe and Mail, a federal court up north has ruled that peer-to-peer file sharing is lawful. "The mere fact of placing a copy on a shared directory in a computer where that copy can be accessed via a P2P service does not amount to distribution," concluded Justice Konrad von Finckenstein. Hey, this is a better reason than the Vietnam War to move to Canada, eh?
Sun. March 28, 2004
Scramjets
As the world enters the second century of powered flight, the X-43A, a new experimental aircraft developed by NASA -- powered by a revolutionary "scramjet" (supersonic-combustion ramjet) engine that uses oxygen from the air instead of on-board liquid oxygen fuel -- screamed into history at Mach 7. That's 5,000 miles an hour, or about 83 miles per second. Never mind supersonic. The age of hypersonic jet travel is dawning.
Sat. March 27, 2004
Bush's Broadband Liberalism
Reacting to President Bush's speech Friday in New Mexico, in which Dubya proposed a federal plan for nationwide broadband access by 2007 (presumably complete with tax subsidies), Right Thinking From the Left Coast concludes that "I hate to say it, but I'm beginning to see Michael Moore's point -- there is virtually no difference these days between the Republicans and the Democrats."
Well, on telecom policy Lee is certainly right, because the twin shibboleths of "universal service" and that elusive "digital divide" have merged into a new third-rail of technology policy. Politicians are as afraid to speak out on this issue as they are on Social Security, because it means political death. At the same time, in the U.S. we've got a telecom policy structure that is based on antiquated, baseless deviations from competitive markets (we don't subsidize TVs or VCRs, yet they've got higher, 95%+, penetration rates than broadband) and that buries hidden taxes in a morass of administrative rules implemented by bureaucrats advancing social policy in the name of economic regulation.
If you want a principled approach to technology policy, don't look to either the "blue" or "red" states, they're all the same temporizing, opportunistic chameleons.
Thu. March 25, 2004
Hyperbole and Antitrust Politics
Readers of this blog know that I am an antitrust lawyer and that I've worked on the United States v. Microsoft antitrust case -- for the competitive side of the software industry -- for years. Well, now we have a situation in which the European Union has accomplished something that the U.S. government failed to do in its nearly decade-long prosecution of Microsoft: it issued a meaningful punishment to the Redmond monolith. Microsoft was found to have violated the U.S. antitrust laws by bundling Internet Explorer (IE) into Windows in order to prevent competition from then-insurgent Netscape. Yet American antitrust officials squandered that judgment in favor of a sell-out settlement that allows Microsoft to continue the same practice of integrating new functions into Windows -- backed by no technical or efficiency justifications, rather only to stifle competition -- that the government's landmark case had proven was intended only to maintain the Windows PC monopoly.
By forcing Microsoft to unbundle Media Player from Windows, the European Union is doing just what the United States tried (but then lost the balls to stay the course) when it fought to force divestiture. So, what is the reaction of the U.S. Justice Department to the EU's remedy? On an objective basis, they should applaud it, saying that the EU hung tough and persevered to a conclusion that achieves the very results the U.S. case sought. Instead, the Justice Department's antitrust czar releases a statement calling the EU decision a threat to innovation, because "[i]mposing antitrust liability on the basis of product enhancements and imposing 'code removal' remedies may produce unintended consequences." Yet as Paul La Monica cogently observed for CNN, "if Microsoft no longer can rely on bundling, isn't it reasonable to argue that Microsoft would need to work harder in order to build a product that's truly better than the competition? If anything, Microsoft would need to be more innovative, not less."
The Bush Justice Department, some might say like the White House itself, is riddled with double-speak and hyperbole. Well, repeating myths may work in electoral politics, but it doesn't suffice for antitrust. The EU is not a threat to innovation; monopoly surely is. Just as they like fat-cat lobbyists and haven't met a billionaire they didn't want to curry favor with, the Bushies now pretend that monopolies are good for innovation and benefit consumers. The worst part is that, just two months ago, the federal judge overseeing the U.S. Microsoft settlement found on-the-record that it wasn't working at all as the Bush DOJ had promised. Like Rick's bristo in Casablanca, I am shocked to learn there's gambling going on here!@!
Wed. March 24, 2004
Internet Gambling OK
Despite years of efforts by federal and state prosecutors in the U.S. to apply antiquated old laws against use of "wires" (i.e., telephone service) for betting to try and outlaw Internet casino and sports wagering -- and to adapt those old paradigms to offshore betting operations conducted over the Net from foreign countries -- the World Trade Organization is prepared to rule these efforts violate international trade laws and treaties. [Los Angeles Times]. This is just another example that the square peg of pre-Internet law and policy does not fit into the round hole of globally networked e-commerce. The system is broken, boys and girls, and no amount of tinkering can fix it. We've got to fundamentally rethink the application of legacy law to Internet-based activities in this brand new environment.
Societies that use the law to fight against technological change always lose. And those that do so, like here, in paternalistic efforts to protect citizens against the moralistically "harmful" effects of victimless conduct are figthing a rear-guard and quixotic action against human nature. Every other civilized Western nation except the U.S. permits casino and sports betting. If Americans want to do so via the Internet, what business does government have trying to stop them? The answer -- the Christian Right notwithstanding -- is NONE.
Mon. March 22, 2004
More Convergence
In another sign that packet-voice convergence is really here, leading ISP EarthLink announced today it will start offering wireless voice services to go together with its Blackberry-based mobile email service. [USAToday.com]. While convergence is not news anymore, some day we may actually end up with a useful device!!
Wed. March 17, 2004
A 10th Planet?
For years when I was young I was fascinated by the planets and the solar system. This has led to a deep interest in cosmology and relativity, but still is based on those majestic other worlds that, in space terms, lie right in Earth's own backyard.
This week's announcement of the discovery of a 10th "planetoid" -- dubbed Sedna for an Inuit goddess because it is so cold -- orbiting in an eliptical path many millions of miles outside Pluto throws everything into chaos. Pluto's Planet Status Could be Jeopardized by Sedna Discovery [Yahoo! News]. The mini-planet has an eccentric 10,500-year orbit that ranges between 8 billion and 84 billion miles (12.8 billion and 134 billion kilometers), which is much farther away than the existing nine planets and an outlying ring of frozen cosmic leftovers known as the Kuiper Belt.
For decades after Pluto's discovery, no other objects were discovered beyond Neptune. In recent years, however, other round objects about half Pluto's size have been detected in the Kuiper Belt, much closer than Sedna. And Sedna itself is so far from the Sun that if you were standing on the surface of Sedna today, and you held a pin at arm's length, you could cover up the entire Sun with the head of that pin.
So is this new discovery a planet or not? The International Astronomical Union is set to decide by establishing standards for what constitutes a planet (size, distance from the Sun, shape of orbit, etc.) I tend to agree with Michael Brown of CalTech, who first spotted Sedna. "Either Pluto is not a planet, or many other things are planets," Brown said today. "Which is a better choice? I want my planets to be more special, not less special, so I favor Pluto not being a planet. Emotionally, though, I have to admit that I have grown up thinking Pluto this special odd-ball planet at the edge of the solar system. While I now know scientifically that Pluto is less special, it's still hard to let go."
Mon. March 15, 2004
Europe Squares Off Against Gates
In less than two weeks, barring a last-minute settlement, the European Commission -- the EU's enforcement arm -- is expected to declare Microsoft an abusive monopolist, impose a fine of $100 million to $1 billion and order the company to make fundamental changes to the way it sells software in Europe. Europe Supports Antitrust Ruling Against Microsoft [NYTimes.com]. So once again -- read GE-Honeywell, etc. -- EU antitrusters are doing the job that American antitrust officials have declined or botched.
Wed. March 3, 2004
Nailing Slime
With yesterday's indictment of former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers on securities fraud charges, the final chapter in the long, sad story of MCI will be written. Now it is becoming clear that -- far from a "hands off" executive who knew little about accounting -- Ebbers was obsessed with small matters (like free coffee and whether employees were using too many pencils) and directed WorldCom's deception of investors from the start. WorldCom Prosecutors Say Ebbers Began Fraud Long Before Debacle [bloomberg.com]
That's the key. Bernie was a Wall Street darling if he "met his numbers." The only way to keep the stock moving up with demand and revenue falling during the telecom sector meltdown that started in 2000 was to cook the books. Nothing is too little punishment for this sort of corporate slime. I've got scores of former MCI friends and clients who lost fortunes, and now are scrambling just to make ends meet, because of this bastard.
Bernie, your days as a free man are numbered. Hallelujah!!
Thu. February 26, 2004
The Never-Ending Telecom Debate
Adam Thierer of the CATO Institute is a thoughtful guy, but on core telecom issues he is all wet. Take this, for instance --
That's been the same refrain for 15 years, with various failed technologies (cable telephony, IXCs, fiber-to-the-home, etc.) substituted when the last transparent rationale no longer has legs. Fact is that the local loop is the one real market -- beyond PC operating systems -- in which scale economies and network effects continue to support strong natural monopoly characteristics. The only real theory for local teleom deregulation is the whacked idea -- promulgated by Joe Baumol and Bobby Willig of Princeton in the early 1980s, paid by AT&T to coin new econonobabble theories in order to oppose a divestiture remedy in the government's antitrust lawsuit -- of "contestable markets." And the "investments" Adam talks about have been paid for by many times over by PUC-guaranteed rates of return and depreciation policies that allow the Bells to operate essentially with free infrastructure supported by massive subsidies, i.e., taxes.
I don't disagree that the Telecom Act is a regulatory vehicle at heart, that it was DOA by using a "silo" definitional structure based on old, outmoded regulatory classifications, and that the FCC is way over the top, but I think what is really beyond the pale is the use of telecom regulation to achieve social policy objectives ("digital divide," universal service, "free" broadcast television and the like) rather than structurally competitive markets. No one compains about the subversive use of regulation for social policy because universal service and broadcast television are sacred political cows like Social Security, and the poiticians are afraid to covert these massive subsidy flows into explicit taxes because they would then become visible, fail GAO scoring and let the people know how government is making us pay involuntary financial tribute to 1,000 small telcos.
More timely, however, is the pure joy of watching otherwise unified conservatives bitterly divided over telecom deregulation. Gotta love that fact that CATO and PFF are villifying Grover Norquist and Jim Glassman. The whole thing is so much about idealogy wrapped in pseudo-policy that it has become the epitome of boring to me. Same issues, different acronyms. But of course, I am a cynic at heart.
Sun. February 8, 2004
A Real Mickey Mouse
"[I]t's no secret that Apple is running circles around Microsoft when it comes to pushing the digital entertainment envelope." So the news that Disney -- after having been jilted by Steve Jobs' Pixar animation studios (of Finding Nemo fame) -- has now cut a deal with Microsoft to "improve the quality and security of digital content which can be delivered to homes over the Internet" rings a little hollow. Sort of like two wallflowers dancing with themselves at the prom. They're made for each other.
Tue. January 13, 2004
Digital Revolution Complete
This is a telltale sign that the digital revolution is over. The company that basically invented the camera for popular photography will no longer sell film cameras, limiting its product line to digital devices. Kodak to Stop Selling Traditional Cameras in U.S. [YahooNews.com]. That's a major sea-change in the digitization of America and, in all likelihood, the end of a brand that was once synonymous with photography itself. Polaroid went bankrupt when 1-hour photo shops made their instant prints obsolete, and now even Kodachrome itself is largely a thing of the past.
Fri. January 9, 2004
A Mission for NASA
President Bush is set to announce that he will challenge NASA -- in Kennedy-esque fashion -- to develop a permanent manned outpost on the Moon and land human beings on Mars within a decade. Conservatives are lauding this. Says Adam Keiper in the National Review Online, "the president is going to give NASA what it needs most: a vision worthy of America." Whether or not they are genuine, these sentiments may reflect an emerging consensus that America's space efforts need to be focused less on hauling stuff into orbit (read, "Space Shuttle") and more on exploring new worlds (read, "Mission to Mars"). Captain Kirk can't be that far behind after all.
Mon. January 5, 2004
Spirit Soars
With the successful landing of the "Spirit" spacecraft rover on Mars, we are once again, at long last, treated to the thrill of NASA getting it right. The rover beat dismal odds and landed inside an ancient Connecticut-sized crater on the planet late Saturday night. The touchdown sparks the most ambitious search yet for life on Mars and has the potential to reinvigorate NASA, which has come under stinging criticism for a string of failures.It's especially delightful since the British/EU probe "Beagle" still has not responded from the Martian surface, suggesting it was destroyed on entry.
Sun. January 4, 2004
The DVD Eats Hollywood
According to The Hollywood Reporter, in 2003 domestic theatrical revenue fell for the first time in 11 years. If this suggests that Americans are going to the movies less frequently, I certainly agree. Forget about the price, poor service and surly refreshment clerks, the simple fact is that there are only a handful of movies released every year that justify going out to see. Not when DVD and home theater technology have progessed to the point where most films are better viewed in the living room, rather than the movie theater. In short, 2003 was "the year when DVDs ate Hollywood."
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are worried about Internet file-sharing eroding the movie industry. I would think that Hollywood needs to be concerned more about the movie theater experience itself becoming a relic of history.
Fri. January 2, 2004
The Top 10
One of the more fun annual year-end lists is Google's report on its "top ten" searches. For 2003, they say that Brittney Spears and Harry Potter were 1-2, followed by The Matrix, Shakira, David Beckham and 50 Cent. Even if one digs deeper, looking only at new searches, the results -- Laci Peterson, Kobe Bryant, etc. -- suggest that the Internet reflects our celebrity and crime-obsessed culture. Technocrats used to say "The Internet changes everything." I don't think so!!
Mon. December 29, 2003
Mainstream Or Warning Sign?
The Internet Becomes Mainstream. So says a Pew Research Center report, released last week, which finds that 63% of the adult U.S. population regularly uses the Internet. While Pew found "increasing reliance on the Internet in everyday life and higher expectations about the way the Internet can be used in matters both mundane and mighty," the report also warns that "[d]espite this growth in activity, the growth of the online population itself has slowed. There was almost no growth over the course of 2002 and there has been only a small uptick in recent months." And it is even more problematic that "[a]bout a quarter of Americans live lives that are quite distant from the Internet –- they have never been online, and don’t know many others who use the Internet." So while the mainstream media, like the New York Times, headlined "The Growing Web," we may actually be seeing warning signs that the Internet is reaching its peak.
Sat. December 27, 2003
XM Rocks
I got XM Radio this week for my cars and have thoroughly enjoyed the service. It made me wonder why I hardly ever listen to music on the radio anymore, even though I am a devoted iTunes Music Store customer and have 20GB of digital music on my MP3 player.
Well, Stephen Holden, music critic for the New York Times, answers that in his article Critic's Notebook: High-Tech Quirkiness Restores Radio's Magic. Music beamed by satellite has resurrected "the thrill of musical discovery," he says, that has all but vanished on regular FM (terrestrial) radio.
Yes, XM rocks. But this helps explain why. Even the old stuff is new on XM. It's fun to listen without endless commercials and overly-loud DJ voice-overs, as well. At bottom, though, it offers a sense of variety and newness that one just cannot get on commercial FM radio these days. Blame Clear Channel or whatever, but that's a sad fact.
Wed. December 24, 2003
Down With Pop-Ups
Things are becoming very interesting on the legal front in the Internet realm. With the U.S. courts blocking RIAA from violating privacy on suspicion of P2P file sharing and the Norwegian courts doing the same thing for DeCSS, the tide is moving away from copyright holders. Of course, then you get decisions like yesterday's against WhenU -- a pop-over advertising firm -- that enjoined its use of pop-ups on copyright grounds in a lawsuit brought by an e-commerce site owner. Judge Downs Pop-Ups in Contrary Decision [InternetNews.com]
Pop-ups are annoying, but it is a dangerous sign when the law uses copyright principles to ban entire technologies. The same thing happened to Napster. The irony, of course, is that the law can't put technology back in the can. So pop-ups are, in the final analysis, going to stand or fall based on their responsiveness to what consumers want. If we don't click 'em, they won't build them!!
Tue. December 23, 2003
Space Images
The new Spitzer Space Telescope, successfully launched by NASA last August, is very cool. It photographs the infrared spectrum, getting behind the dust of space to capture images the naked eye never sees. Check out this sampling from the first release of Spitzer images.
Mon. December 22, 2003
RIAA Unplugged
Well, another arrow has been shot into the rotting corpse of the Recording Industry Association of America. Even though their lawsuits against P2P file-sharing consumers had looked like they were becoming very successful, RIAA could only sue by using private subpoenas to force ISPs to reveal the names and addresses of their customers. Now, a federal court has said it can't do so anymore, that the DMCA does not allow subpeonas against ISPs unless the ISP itself is serving up the allegedly infringing material. RIAA: Shot Through the Heart? [TechNews.com]
I am sure RIAA will be back with some new strategy, but the tide has turned. As the court said, their argument "borders on the silly." But that has never stopped them before!!
Mon. December 1, 2003
Downloadable Music Coming of Age
The New York Times ran a story this morning, titled "Music At Your Fingertips," discussing how online music distribution -- legitimized by Apple's iTunes Music Store -- is changing the business models of the record companies. Says the Times, "music labels and retailers [will] compete more aggressively online, offer[ing] more obscure titles and recordings of live performances that could find a paying audience through downloads but make no financial sense to distribute on CD's." As one who has been ripping CDs for five years now, this is a very welcome development, but it remains true that if "You've got a portable music player that can fit 10,000 songs on it . . . [n]o one will spend $1 a track filling it.'' Well, maybe if they chart this course the labels won't become extinct after all.
Fri. November 7, 2003
The End of the Solar System
After traveling for more than 20 years, the Voyager I spacecraft is now nearing the edge of our solar system and is about to pass into interstellar space. [usatoday.com]. It is 8.37 billion miles from the Sun, three times further away than the planet Pluto. Not a bad ride. There's only 44,000 years left to the next star, and after that we're into the realm of "V'Ger" from Star Trek. Very cool stuff.
Wed. November 5, 2003
Not A Bad Sound Bite
The press stories on yesterday's appellate arguments in the Microsoft antitrust case focused on snippets from the main actors -- Robert Bork for CCIA and SIIA and Brad Smith for Microsoft -- but I managed to land one sound bite of my own. I think it captures what the appeals court will be grappling with as it decides this landmark case. Microsoft Penalties: Tough Enough? [cbsnews.com]. Problem is, though, that most people, perhaps even judges included, have the impression that the case is dead and buried as a result of the government's 2001 settlement. Not true, but a hard public perception to overcome, nonetheless. As Dan Gilmore wrote,