--------------------
Say that again...
--------------------
"My lawyers have advised me to just shut the fuck up on this one."
- James Gosling, big guy at Sun, when asked in an interview about Microsoft’s
use of Java, at the recent Herring Conference.
"Netscape would make an excellent partner to Microsoft."
- Jim Barksdale, Netscape CEO, in Wired. Huh?
"If you believe that trees grow to the sky and stock prices can only
move up, then perhaps Yahoo is the stock for you."
- Russell Wayne, President of Sound Asset Management, on TechWeb.
------------------------------------
In the "Oh, just shut up" category
------------------------------------
Jim Hoffman, the CEO of Bigfoot, apparently doesn’t know the meaning
of "pre-alpha" and certainly didn’t read the six million or so warnings
at mozilla.org (which *I* read, and I didn’t even download the damn lizard).
There were multiple stories quoting him as complaining that the source
code for Netscape Communicator 5.0 was much too buggy. That was the
point! It’s very clearly explained, and everyone knew this from the
moment that Netscape announced plans to release the code, that it would
be unstable, very early stage code. Thankfully, plenty of readers
of the various stories yelled back at the pure stupidity of such comments.
---------------------------
Welcome to boot-up camp...
---------------------------
Apparently some folks are recommending to Congress that the US government
institute a draft to create an army of programmers to fight the Y2K problem...
----------------------
Microsoft goes wacky
----------------------
First, Microsoft filed briefs in court about suspended "special master"
Lawrence Lessig, where they disparage his credibility via his taste in
pop music... Next, the LA Times reports that MS and its number one PR firm
have planned a fake "grassroots" support for MS campaign. They were
going to have seemingly random letters to the editor and op-ed pieces appear
all over the country in support of MS...
------------------------------------------
Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
------------------------------------------
Xerox to layoff 9,000 jobs, take a $1 billion charge, and "streamline
operations" (maybe they will finally think about bringing good ideas to
market instead of letting them collect dust in the corner? Or is
that too easy?)... AMD misses earnings estimates by a long shot, but claims
they’ve fixed their problems and will return to profitability "shortly"...
E*Trade reported earnings of 15 cents a share, exactly as expected... Yahoo!
blew away earnings estimates, showing the world that they do have an E
to put into that P/E everyone keeps talking about. The stock shot
up and dragged just about every company that was in any way related to
the Internet along with it... Motorola posted poor earnings, dragging the
semiconductor industry even lower... It became fashionable this week to
downgrade Sun... Earthlink is still losing money - just not as much as
before... Ascend beats first quarter estimates and everyone says "but can
you do it again?"... Network Associates to layoff 10% of its employees...
------------------------------------------------
Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
------------------------------------------------
Despite all the tough talk, Jerry Sanders is really looking for a way
to leave AMD... CNet is looking to ditch (officially to "sell") Snap! Online...
IBM says the new PII/mobile from Intel isn’t any better than the older
mobile Tillamook processor, but they’ll use it anyway...
-----------------------------------------------------
Berating the obvious: (they call this news???)
-----------------------------------------------------
Department of Justice realizes that (would you believe it?) its case
against Microsoft is really meaningless unless they include Windows 98
in the package, so now they’re "looking into the matter" (aren’t we all?)...
Excite, in its continuing quest to do something other than copy Yahoo!
has bought Classifieds2000 (nice try, but...)... RealNetworks announces
a bunch of deals at the NAB show last week. Nice deals, but somehow
everyone was paying a lot more attention to Microsoft... MSNBC to get Wall
Street Journal info on its web site... CMPnet has decided to ask its nearly
half a million subscribers to "opt in" to receive spam (good luck)... QuickTime
supporters say mean things about Microsoft’s new digital video standard
(now, there’s a strategy)... Engine trouble on Mir cuts space walk short
(anyone else think it’s about time they gave up this little experiment?)...
The US Census Bureau has decided not to use the Internet to compile census
information "just yet"... In a wonderfully paranoid talk, US Senator Sam
Nunn and CIA chief George Tenet basically explained why it is vitally important
that the CIA be able to read your email... MS and Sony to work together
to create technologies for home networking, linking PCs and consumer electronics...
IP telephony companies have decided to work together to define standards
(it’s good that they finally realized the necessity of this - now let’s
see if they actually carry through)... Yahoo! extended its e-commerce agreement
with CDNow (my guess is this means that CDNow has paid Yahoo! more money,
as CDNow is discovering it’s losing market share rapidly)... At the same
time, CDNow has announced an "exclusive" deal with Lycos Bertelsmann in
much of Europe (for which they only paid $5.5 million)... Now, the
amazing thing about these CDNow announcements is that the stock shot up.
Basically, they’re saying "we’re desperate, and no one’s coming to our
site, so we’ll shell out lots of money in the hopes that some more people
will come" and Wall Street applauds. I don’t know... TheTrip.com
has signed a deal to be the "exclusive" travel service for AltaVista...
Meanwhile a company named Alta Vista in the UK has sued Digital for trademark
infringement (this has nothing to do with the American company named Alta
Vista, which is also involved in a lawsuit with Digital)... Swiss Online
grocer has servers overloaded on its first day and has to shutdown... Intel
and Microsoft to work together on TV-in-PC products... Yahoo! continues
to improve its service offerings - now you can buy insurance through them...
GTE finally got around to buying BigBook... Sun to give out free Java licenses
to non-profit institutions... A group of major banks have decided to form
a group to "address" Y2K concerns (perhaps their time would be better spent
teaching themselves COBOL instead, yes?)... First, Cyrix gets Intel intellectual
property thanks to being bought by NatSemi, and now AMD gets the same stuff
via IBM... 3Com modems have a tendency to become a paperweight if you try
to upgrade them... GTE plans to rollout integrated messaging service...
------------
Surprises:
------------
Microsoft snapped up Firefly, of collaborative filtering/agent fame.
One of the big name Internet companies two years ago, they quickly fell
into the "what happened to them again?" category. Turns out (no surprise
here) they couldn’t make any sales, and so were forced to sell out to MS
(at a reported $40 million - though no one will say for sure). Microsoft
is planning to use their technology to "advance the cause" of e-commerce...
Qualcomm has a $117 million contract to make CDMA phones for Globalstar’s
LEO system... Zip2 and CitySearch, creators of local guides, are going
to merge (so they will become one big combined money-losing machine)...
Level 3 (wasting no time in making a big name for themselves, yes?) is
buying Xcom, as the race for CLECs heats up... Paul Allen ponied up $2
billion of his own money (spare change!) to buy Marcus Cable (there was
lots of speculation as to what he would do with it, but in summary it seems
he’s "got plans")... Microsoft gives up on the Palm PC name with barely
a fight (bigger problems to worry about?)... Motorola severely cuts its
estimates for worldwide semiconductor growth... Big Flower Holdings has
invested in 24/7 Media, an Internet advertising company... NBC has said
that it (really!) will broadcast digitally and move towards HDTV... Many
years after it was supposed to happen, people are finally discussing MathML...
Bell Atlantic to enter NY’s long distance market (if I were them, I’d hit
up a market where they don’t currently serve local service, so they might
actually get a few customers)... Yahoo!, which has consistently had
that nostalgic Netscape 1.1 look to it, is testing out a slightly more
modern interface at http://beta.yahoo.com/
(fear not, it keeps the simple, quick-loading front page - but just makes
it easier to find all their other features)... The Israeli hacker responsible
for those infamous Pentagon break-ins not so long ago is being used in
a computer company’s advertisements... The US data encryption standard,
Triple DES, really isn’t that strong... Hedy Lamarr sues Corel for using
her image on its product (Corel, in response claims that it’s not her image
that makes people buy their software - which brings up the next two questions:
who exactly *is* buying Corel’s software, and for what reason?)...
-------------------------------
(Mis)Uses of Technology:
-------------------------------
internmonicalewinsky.com is for sale for a mere $18,500 (if someone
actually pays that much, could someone let me know, so I can offer them
an "elite" subscription to Up-To-Date for a few thousand a year?)... In
the wake of the FCC’s mentioning that they "might, possibly" have to charge
IP telephony companies the same charges they place on long distance providers,
IDT (one of those companies) has offered users the ability to call the
FCC for free to complain... Seiko to sell wristwatch personal computers,
called Ruputers, using Microsoft software (no offense, but I have no desire
for my watch to crash)... At Stanford’s Business School, an outside contractor
failed to make sure data was saved before trying to move servers to the
university’s central computing system. A bunch of faculty members
and Ph.D. Students lost information, including databases, notes, as well
as parts of dissertations and books. Ouch (though it brings up the
question - who the hell doesn’t keep a backup copy of something as important
as a dissertation or book?)... Digital Personnel Inc. will sell you a "virtual
employee" for your web page for "fielding complaints or taking product
orders". Oh, I’m sure the complaining customer will be thrilled to
deal with a virtual employee no matter how "photo-realistic" they might
be...
----------
Studies:
----------
A Coopers & Lybrand’s study, in conjunction with the Internet Advertising
Bureau, made a lot of news this week, since it showed nearly a billion
dollars was spent in online advertising in 1997... No big surprise here:
Yahoo! is still the most visited web site, according to Relevant Knowledge.
The biggest site movement upward was from the Kelley Blue Book site, which
had 127% more visitors last month... According to a survey of Human Resource
executives at the American Management Association conference, email is
used more frequently than the telephone as the primary means of business
communication... Price Waterhouse has released a study showing that Venture
Capitalists invested nearly $2 billion in Internet companies in 1997...
According to Forrester 700,000 homes will have Internet access via cable
by the end of the year... A new survey of telecommuters by Kensington has
found that 75% of telecommuters feel they get more work done at home (well,
*of course* they’re going to say that! They don’t want to go back
to the office!)...
--------------
Predictions:
--------------
Time for a backlash against all the Y2K doomsayers (okay - quick question:
anyone else find it odd that two of the biggest Y2K screamers have almost
identical names? Ed Yourdon from the computer world, and Ed Yardeni
from the financial world, are two of the most well known town criers on
the Y2K matter). So far it’s simply been apathy on the part of people
who don’t believe in the horror stories, but now I’m beginning to see people
argue back that the world won’t end on the first of January 2000...
-----------------------
Memes o' the week:
-----------------------
Free software is cool. I’m amazed at how many news organizations
just now picked up on the idea of free source software, now that Netscape
has jumped into the fray. It was only a couple of months ago that
they were reporting how you could be fired for using such "untested" software
- and now they’re all clamoring about how it will change the world.
------------------------
Too much free time:
------------------------
ASCII-fy any image:
http://www.io360.com/v2/yo/asciiworld/gs.html
|
