03.31.04
Posted in forum archive at 9:07 pm by
Not just free email – the world’s foremost search authority intends to offer an entire Gigabyte of free email to its users. Here’s the neat part – the intent is that you’ll never have to delete anything and what you have will be completely sortable, searchable, and meaningful (well, maybe not that last part):
The way we’d like to say it is that part of our mission is to organize and present all the world’s information, and e-mail’s part of that information that currently is not well organized.
The service, called GMail, is currently under beta test by a lucky first 1000 people.
Two questions: (1) Is the idea of a gigabyte of free email appealing to you? (2) Do you suppose this will force Hotmail, Yahoo, and the like to increase the sizes of their free accounts to keep members?
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Posted in forum archive at 3:53 pm by
A Canadian judge has ruled that sharing copyrighted works on P2P networks is legal. The reasoning may be because things in Canada work slightly differently than they do here in the US:
The regulators cited a long-standing rule in Canada, in which most copying for personal use was allowed. To repay artists and record labels for revenues lost by this activity, the government imposes a fee on blank tapes, CDs and even hard-disk-based MP3 players such as Apple’s iPod, and distributes those revenues to copyright holders.
Would you be willing to pay $0.10, $0.25, or even $1.00 per CD-RW if it meant that you could use P2P networks without the threat of legal backhanding?
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03.30.04
Posted in forum archive at 11:16 pm by
I had been hearing about mass layoffs for Microsoft’s Salt Lake City Studio (were I worked on contract from 2002-2003) for awhile. Today the shoe dropped.
Microsoft on Tuesday said it will not release new versions of its sports video games this fall in a move Wall Street saw as opening the door to deeper ties with industry leader Electronic Arts. Since introducing its Xbox game player in 2001, Microsoft has struggled to gain share in the intensely competitive sports video games market, and EA has shunned Xbox Live, Microsoft’s online gaming service, over concerns about its financial model.
In the list of games dropped, Links, Top Spin, and Amped were included. Links and Amped were developed and tested by the SLC studio. The major testing for the French developed Top Spin was also handled there. It is good to see the reasoning why the studio was shut down (an EA ultimatum) but sorry to see it go. Links and Amped were great games. 
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Posted in forum archive at 6:07 pm by
Enter the wierd Hip-Hop world of FunHI – social experiement, networking software, customer bilker, or all three?
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03.29.04
Posted in forum archive at 7:52 pm by
or at least that’s the conclusion that Harvard came to in the most comprehensive study to date:
For the study, released Monday, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was “statistically indistinguishable from zero,” they wrote.
“We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales,” the study’s authors wrote. “While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing.”
With that question answered I pose a new one: will the RIAA say its sorry? :unsure:
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Posted in forum archive at 2:48 pm by
In a bold move Sony has announced that its PS2 game console will have a 10 year product life cycle.
Sony Corp. believes that its market-leading PlayStation 2 video game console can continue to sell until 2010, twice as long as most in the industry had assumed was possible, an executive of Sony’s U.S. video game unit said on Thursday.
In a keynote address at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California, Andrew House, executive vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said the success of the original PlayStation, nearing its 10th anniversary, had convinced the company that two-thirds of its potential PS2 sales were yet to come.
It’s just another nail in the coffin for technical innovation driving the game industry.
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Posted in forum archive at 2:26 pm by
Think the iPods look special? So does Apple:
In a patent application 20040055446, published Thursday, Apple describes a graphical user interface “and methods of use thereof in a multimedia player.” The patent application refers to a hierarchically ordered graphical user interface and lists Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs as one of three inventors, along with Jeffrey L. Robbin and Timothy Wasko.
Apple’s interface is unique and is the source for any competitive advantage that Apple has (always has been). But its filings like this that make me leery. Can you really patent the way something looks? What if I went out and got a patent on blue-eyed, blonde haired supermodels? Could I then walk up to Heidi Klum and demand money?
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Posted in forum archive at 2:16 pm by
Hopefully not a sign of things to come: 
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/mower.html
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03.26.04
Posted in forum archive at 6:09 pm by
Julian Dibbell is a cool person – he’s a writer who’s pieces have appeared in Wired. His latest project is to declare to the IRS on April 15th that his chief source of income was the trafficking of imaginary goods – mainly the buying and selling of Ultima Online items. Living that kind of lifestyle leads to some interesting situations:
I write to you from exit 292 of interstate highway 80, in Davenport, Iowa, USA. I’m in a back corner booth of the local Flying J truckstop, which along with diesel fuel, hot showers, laundromat, Louis L’amour audio books, and other necessities of the modern truck-driving life, now offers broadband Internet connections for the reasonable rate of $4.95 per day, $24.95 per week. The air conditioning is on too high, but my little office here is otherwise comfortable enough — handsome faux-wood-laminated particle board table and banquette, warm fluorescent lighting. The connectivity options include modem, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi. I am going with Ethernet at the moment, the wireless currently being a little more Wi than Fi.
I’ve been sitting here conducting business for almost four hours, which is surely the longest stretch of time I have ever spent inside a truckstop.
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Posted in forum archive at 11:32 am by
Ben Forta happened to pick up on a great article comparing the usage of different scripting languages on the net. While the article mainly talks about how ASP.Net has overtaken Java/Java servlets, it also convincingly shows that ColdFusion is the most used web scripting technology used by the Fortune 1000. It’s always a good feeling to see that the carriage you’ve hitched your horse to is a popular one that has taken other companies far.
It also bodes well for the future. I’m sure there are some excellent Fortran programmers out there but I would be worried about job security – its not like new stuff comes out with a Fortran component. With ColdFusion so prevalent work should always be there.
What I really would have like to see is where other technologies like CGI-Bin/Perl and Phython would be on that graph. Of course, they might not show up in use by Fortune 1000 companies (unless they also measure internal sites/links).
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