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Monday, July 29, 2002 |
The corporate corruption we experienced with the accounting scandals is making its way through Congress in the form of vote buying. The Berman bill is a good example of this. He got $186,891 he got last year from Entertainment is clearly a quid pro quo payment for his introduction of this bill. Hollings actions are similar in their nature -- he got massive funding from the entertainment lobby over the last five years. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
3:35:39 PM 
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Twilight of "open computing"? This little sentence was in John Markoff's Thursday N.Y. Times piece covering Microsoft's .NET summit:
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Microsoft also warned today that the era of "open computing," the free exchange of digital information that has defined the personal computer industry, is ending. | It had folks on Slashdot scratching their heads, wondering whether this was a trumpet blast against open-source software development (which would have been odd at the same time Microsoft was sealing a deal to bring the open-source Apache web server into the .Net tent) or a warning to file-sharers that the boom is about to be lowered on their heads (which might make sense during the same week that Hollywood-friendly congressmen introduced a bill making it legal for copyright holders to hack into your computer to see if you've been naughty). The statement is in fact opaque. I'd guess that Microsoft is trying to say, "The free-for-all that began with the Internet boom is over -- everybody better get used to paying more for everything digital from now on." Which is probably, whether we like it or not, an accurate description of reality. The troubling thing, for Microsoft and everyone else in the technology business, is that the free-for-all also caused the Internet boom. It was the "free exchange of digital information" that enable the amazing growth rate of the '90s, along with all the sales of hardware and software. Cutting it off may be what the holders of intellectual property rights (which includes both "content" publishers and software companies) want. Cutting it off is also a recipe for stagnation and loss. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]
3:32:51 PM
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© Copyright 2003 Clarence Westberg.
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This is my blogchalk:
United States, Minnesota, Bloomington, West, English, Clarence, Male, 51-55.
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