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? --------------?
? Contest?
? --------------?
? Two of my favorite high tech CEOs sounded off on what should
happen to
? Microsoft.? Scott McNealy is against splitting up MS into
"Baby Bills", but
? his buddy Larry Ellison has a more innovative solution.?
He suggests
? splitting MS in half: Steve Ballmer runs one half and Bill Gates
leads the
? other half.? Then, let the battle begin.? This is
a pretty creative solution,
? which brings up Up-To-Date's first ever contest: can you come
up with a
? more innovative/creative solution on what should be done with
Microsoft??
? This does not have to be plausible, just creative.? Assuming
any of you
? actually enter, I will probably post the winning answers (if
there are any) in
? two week's time.? Being that this is a not-for-profit (hell,
not for anything)
? operation, I have nothing to give out except getting your name
and idea
? published here.? Lame?? Yes.? Do I care??
Not really... Send contest entries
? to ms@techdirt.com.?
? --------------------?
? Say that again...?
? --------------------?
? "This is sick. This reeks of greed. Boy, these lawyers are sticking
up for
? their own, aren't they? I don't think they're representing you
or me."?
? - Ann Stephens, President of PC Data, on the Texas judge's decision
to ban
? legal software such as Quicken Family Lawyer because it amounts
to the
? "unauthorized practice of law".?
? "It should be understood by those skilled in the art that a Web
browser,
? such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer ... is separate
from the
? operating system."??
? - Microsoft?s patent lawyers in a 1998 patent application.?
Aren?t lawyers
? wonderful??
? "It's like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. You
can pull over
? whoever you want to."?
? - Bill Burnham, Credit Suisse First Boston, on picking on E*Trade
for its
? outages...??
? "I think I will ask my lawyer about that tomorrow."?
? - William Tucker, founder of The Elevator, a Garage.com wannabe,
when
? asked about the fact that his site may violate SEC rules, by
not
? pre-screening investors.?
? "My first impression of the deal was almost no impression at
all."?
? - Scott Smith, director of Internet business strategies at Current
Analysis on
? the AOL MovieFone deal.?
? ------------------------------------------?
? Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like?
? ------------------------------------------?
? Apple cutting jobs in Ireland (that?s what happens when you
post nice
? earnings that are based solely on cost cutting ? to do it again,
you have to
? keep cutting)... Oracle, appearing a week late in the split
announcement
? business, plans a 3-for-2 stock split... Later on in the week,
Oracle Japan
? had its IPO, making it the highest valued stock on Japan?s over-the-counter
? market... Sprint PC lost over half a billion dollars in their
last quarter as they
? prepare to go public... More IPO madness: Perot Systems had
their
? impressive debut, as did ModemMedia.PoppeTyson or whatever it
they?re
? called.? The most impressive, though, was Pacific Internet,
a Singapore
? based ISP that priced at $17, opened at $88 and spent the rest
of the
? dropping to about $48 (and without the obligatory .com!)...
Cisco beats
? estimates as its revenues shoot up (but investors are pissed
off that they?re
? not splitting the stock)... Qualcomm has decided to lay off
almost 700
? people, and ?reassign? another 250... Intel to sell over 300,000
shares of
? Broadcast.com... Lots and lots of problems at AMD (has this
company ever
? had a good reputation?)... CompUSA earnings less than half of
last year?s,
? as they announce (ooh, how original) plans to spin off their
online unit... N2K
? beats estimates, but is still losing a ton of money... Infospace.com
beats
? estimates, but is still losing a ton of money... Paul Allen
invests $104
? million in Ziff-Davis (is there anything he hasn?t invested
in?)... Mellon Bank
? has bought nearly 6.5% of Apple Computer... Microsoft planning
a
? reorganization to place more focus on the Internet... NetObjects
files to go
? public...??
? ------------------------------------------------?
? Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...?
? ------------------------------------------------?
? Microsoft's plans to bring together its 9x and NT architecture
further off than
? originally thought.? Expect at least one more consumer
Windows not based
? on NT (suggesting that NT 5.0 is more screwed up than we already
? assume?)... Okay, would this one just happen already: NBC to
buy 25% of
? Lycos and merge Snap! into Lycos (this has been over reported)...
Of
? course, this puts the Yahoo! to buy CNet rumor into a different
perspective,
? but who knows... Dell has recently registered dellauction.com...
MTV Online
? is planning on buying Imagine Radio (after talks fell through
with
? Spinner.com)... Compaq putting desktop AMD chips into portables
(wonder
? why that laptop?s on fire?? Now you know)... @Home is still
looking into the
? idea of buying Road Runner (buy the competition while they?re
cheap, and
? your stock is over inflated.? What could possibly go wrong?)...??
? ----------------------------------------?
? News you should have read elsewhere?
? ----------------------------------------?
? AT&T in a deal with Time Warner to offer telephone service
over coax...
? Microsoft admits to making a "dramatization" instead of an evidentiary
video
? (say what?)... AOL bought MovieFone, leading to painful jokes
about
? combining two of the world's most famous voices... E*Trade gives
the world
? a little lesson on testing your software upgrades before you
release them
? (three days of outages, pissed off investors, and E*Trade?s
fairly obnoxious
? replies has many investors looking for other ways to piss away
their
? money)... AT&T doesn?t have to open up its high speed Internet
network to
? greedy other companies (go build your own, dammit)... MCIWorldcom
jumps
? back into the Internet space by teaming with CompuServe (so
when do we
? get the big merger of MCIWorldcom/AOL/Netscape/CompuServe?)...
US
? Department of Commerce and the FTC to track e-commerce in their
monthly
? economic indicators...??
? --------------------------?
? News you could do without?
? --------------------------?
? ICG dumps off the Canadian bit of Netcom (as if this matters)...
? TheGlobe.com buys Azazz.com (the online department store you
probably
? never heard of) for plenty of inflated stock... Seems as though
CDA II (aka
? COPA) is doing a repeat of CDA I... Sony and Intel, along with
Amerindo
? Investment Advisors dumps $12 million into Spinner.com... TV
Guide Online
? relaunches again (again)... CNet buys little known NetVenture's
for their
? ShopBuilder technology... Network Solutions makes a deal with
Netcom so
? that Netcom can sell domain names (yes, this is the same Netcom
that
? doesn't really exist any more)... Apparently TV advertising
wasn?t the only
? place that made big money during the Superbowl: SportsLine raked
in
? nearly a million dollars in sponsorships for their coverage
of the game...
? eBay continues to shell out cash to Netscape to be a ?distinguished?
? provider on Netcenter (?distinguished? meaning what exactly?)...
CDNow is
? giving its one-millionth customer a free CD each day for a year...
OnSale
? reaches its one-millionth registered user (but did they give
them
? anything?)... Amazon.com admits that they?re not even *trying*
to become
? profitable (yet)... Eolas Technologies is suing Microsoft for
patent
? infringement for making ?plug-ins? and ?applets? (I sense quite
the uphill
? battle)... Auctioning off eBay?s ?Cool Shopping Site of the
Year? award
? (which they couldn?t be bothered with picking up) on eBay (Todd
Levin gets
? an A for concept, but a C on execution ? besides, how many of
those bids
? do you think are from his friends?)... First USA to pay AOL
$500 million
? dollars for an advertising/co-branding partnership (um... no,
it can?t be worth
? that much)... Borders.com has become the exclusive bookseller
for go.com
? (wow, two sites that no one visits have found each other)...
GoodNoise feels
? the pressure of the Harry Fox Agency and will start making royalty
? payments for downloaded music (and reels in Rykodisc to provide
? content)... Intel to work with Analog Devices on DSPs... Yahoo!
to create
? co-branded home pages for members of Gateway.net (while I understand
? that people are lazy, and unlikely to change their default home
page, I still
? don?t see how this is that big of a deal)... FAO Schwarz?s web
site
? accidentally displays personal info about customers... Sony
doesn?t get its
? temporary restraining order against Connectix for its Playstation
emulator...
? Companies don?t feel Priceline deserves a patent for its reverse
auction
? business model... Intel is pissed off that computer manufacturers
are
? already selling Pentium III based machines (get over it)...??
? ------------?
? Surprises:?
? ------------?
? Lycos decides to get into the MP3 portal business (and faster
than you can
? download a song, the fun folks at the RIAA freak out - but it's
okay now,
? because Lycos will only point to "legal" MP3 sites)... Macintoshes,
which
? claim to be Y2K compliant, are only partially so: apparently
after next year it
? will interpret many two-digit dates as starting with 20.?
Thus, those files you
? saved from 1995, are really waiting to be created in 2095...
Qwest beats out
? AT&T, Sprint and GTE to upgrade the Treasury Department?s
? communication infrastructure... Lycos to tie in Open Market?s
ShopSite to
? their e-commerce infrastructure (Massachusetts based companies
have to
? stick together, apparently)... Government lawyer in the MS trial
so
? unaccustomed to techno-speak that he pronounced ?log-in? as
?lojun?... Yes,
? it was only a week ago that AT&T WorldNet was having trouble
handling
? their load of users.? Yet, this week they?re ranked the
top ISP in the country
? by PC World (they say the Internet world changes quickly, but,
that?s a little
? too crazy)... Sierra actually recalls NFL Football Pro 99 and
offers a full
? refund, apologizing for releasing a game that?s ?too buggy?
(now, you know
? there?s a company that has no former Microsoft folks near the
top)... Every
? time you try to like Microsoft (and, believe it or not, I sometimes
do try),
? they do something like telling all their employees to fake posts
to online
? forums rooting for Microsoft... Microsoft wins a patent for
stylesheets? (No, I
? don?t know what the patent office was smoking)...??
? -------------------------------?
? (Mis)Uses of Technology:?
? -------------------------------?
? Building Audible's technology into WinCE machines (yet another
weird
? attempt at taking on MP3)... Divx hacks (do we care that much?)...
Intel and
? Mattel to work together to create new toys (but will they fight
with
? Microsoft's Barney?)... Bell Atlantic and IBM to create ?smart
homes?
? (having once lived in Bell Atlantic territory, I can safely
suggest *not* being a
? part of the beta tests for this)... My Ticketmaster (and the
fact that it took
? them nearly a year and a half to actually implement the 360
degree photos
? of event venues)... MIT?s Sloan School creating an Internet
Time Capsule to
? record the state of the Internet for five years (as if any of
us would like to go
? back 5 years and relive the fun of gopher?)... It?s been so
long since my
? weekly Mir jokes: but this week they attempted use a giant mirror
to shine
? reflected light on the earth (sound like the plan of an evil
genius in some bad
? movie?).? Of course, in typical Mir fashion, nothing worked,
and the whole
? thing was aborted (keep up the good work, guys!)... Hearme.com
discovers
? the wonders of party lines on the Internet... Starbucks to start
opening up
? Internet cafes (but will they give confusing names to normal
internet
? functions so we?ll be even more confused?)... PalmPilots being
used in
? British supermarkets for personalized shopping lists...??
? ----------?
? Studies:?
? ----------?
? A Stanford University exercise expert has determined that if
you spend 2
? minutes a day emailing colleagues instead of walking over to
talk to them,
? you will add about 11 pounds over the course of a decade.?
Damn, I think
? that means if I stopped emailing folks at work, I'd weigh nothing
within just a
? few years - what a diet...The General Accounting Office's study
of welfare
? readiness for Y2K finds that Medicaid systems are only 16% ready...
? According to eMarketer seven times as many emails were sent
than first
? class snail mail over the past year... IDC has found that nearly
$100 million
? was spent in 1998 on home banking applications, and expect that
number
? to more than triple this year... A study by IDG has found that
e-commerce
? sites cost an average of $6 million to build and $13 million
to maintain on an
? annual basis... Demand for cable modems beating xDSL 14 to 1,
according
? to Broadcom (let?s see, considering the fact that most consumers
will make
? the decision based on price, and phone companies have been too
stupid to
? realize this, while cable modems are being offered at reasonable
prices,
? yeah, that makes sense)... Edison Media Research and Arbitron
have
? released a new study showing that nearly 13% of people in the
US listen to
? radio on the Internet... According to Piper Jaffray the number
of accounts at
? online brokerages nearly doubled over the last year, making
1998 the year
? that ?individual investors discovered the power of trading online?
(and online
? brokerages discovered the problems of crappy software ? and
1999 can be
? the year they discover lawsuits)...??
? -----------?
? Overhype?
? -----------?
? The Victoria's Secret fashion show webcast.? No matter
if a million people
? saw it or couldn't see it because the video was too choppy to
get a "clear"
? picture of the material, this was talked about way too much.?
How many
? reporters chose to write about this, just so they could justify
their own
? chance to look at half naked women on the web?...??
? --------------?
? Predictions:?
? --------------?
? As if this isn't obvious: but the term Portal has to start going
away.? Now
? that Weatherlabs has announced plans to make a "Weather Portal",
it has
? become abundantly obvious that this term has outlived its usefulness
(if it
? ever had any)...??
? ------------------------?
? Too much free time:?
? ------------------------?
? If you were a disgruntled Blockbuster Video employee with an
AOL account
? and too much free time, what would you do??
? http://members.aol.com/caly5150/index.html??
???
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