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    

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    

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