Gary Robinson's Rants
Rants on spam, business, digital music, patents, and other assorted random stuff.
 

 

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 Thursday, May 23, 2002


Vivendi sells an unprotected mp3 song.

From the CNet article:

Phil Benyola, a digital media research associate for investment company Raymond James Financial, called the MP3 sale an "innovative" marketing maneuver. But he warned it might not be a successful one.

"It's very significant that they would endorse the MP3 format since MP3 has always been a dirty word to the labels. Up until now, everything they have offered has been a secure format," Benyola said.

But "I think you'll be able to count the number of sales on one hand," he added. "As soon as one person gets it, it's all over the (peer-to-peer) networks for free."

Of course the vast majority of CD's are unDRM'd and can be ripped and made available on P2P networks by anyone with the competence to make this mp3 single available on them. So why is this downloaded mp3 more vulnerable?

There are a lot of people who buy CD's and who can't get P2P music. They won't be getting this mp3 download by any means. So the percentage loss to sales, due to P2P sharing of this file, should be greater than the percentage loss if the music was released on CD.

It'll be interesting to see what happens.
8:00:45 PM    


Patent on pop-under ads, courtesy Michael. Actually it hasn't been granted yet but the government has published the application.

Publishing an application is something enabled by a new law. But I think it's being misinterpreted by a lot of writers. Just because the government has published an application doesn't give the inventor new rights to charge royalty fees in advance of the patent being granted. It has always been the case that an inventor could alert a potentially infringing company that he has a pending patent and try to work out a deal with it based on the fact that the patent may be granted. As far as I know, the publication law hasn't changed that. The only difference is that the published application is now available directly from the government, so the government is attesting that the application really exists and was filed when the inventor says it was.
11:48:10 AM    


We now have US$12M that we can only claim with the assistance of a foreign firm.

I get an email with this scam once a week or so. Everything you might want to know about it may be found here, courtesy the Bangor Daily News, my town paper. For instance:

"... the Nigerian scam is so widespread, in fact, that the U.S. Department of Justice got a court order to open every piece of Nigerian mail that arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. The investigation revealed that nearly 70 percent of the Nigerian mail took the form of scam offers. The postal letters, he said, are now being sent as e-mails."

Six West Africans caught (Courtesy The Register via Michael).
11:32:52 AM    


Where is the wisdom? Lost in the knowledge.
Where is the knowledge? Lost in the information.
--T.S. Eliot

Where is the information? Lost in the data.
Where is the data? Lost in the #@$$%?!& database.
--Joe Celko, database consultant/writer
10:44:18 AM    


Puzzle: Yesterday morning and this morning at around 5:00AM (which is why I am writing this at 5:40AM), my wife and I were awakened by the sound of a bird (a robin) flying repeatedly, every 7 seconds or so, against the glass of our bedroom window, over and over and over. Why is this?
5:49:15 AM    


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