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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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