The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

One more time

Win XP gets $1B marketing blitz
Microsoft said Tuesday that it, together with Intel, PC makers and retailers, will spend $1 billion promoting Windows XP, the software giant's upcoming operating system. Microsoft and Intel alone will spend $500 million to market Windows XP, which is slated for an Oct. 25 launch, with PC makers and retailers spending another $500 million. In May, Jim Allchin, Microsoft group vice president, said the company would spend "hundreds of millions of dollars" promoting Windows XP. Microsoft will spend a combined total of more than $700 million on marketing to launch Windows XP and the Xbox video game console this fall, according to estimates from the company and Merrill Lynch. Xbox is set to debut Nov. 8.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...chkpt=zdnn_tp_

Microsoft faces second patent claim
InterTrust on Tuesday said it has received a new patent that it will use against Microsoft in a closely watched intellectual property dispute that could affect the way consumers access music and other digital content. InterTrust, which makes digital rights management software designed to help copyright owners control distribution of their material, was awarded a new patent on a method of transferring digital content between computing devices. The company said it plans to add the patent claim to a suit it filed against Microsoft in April. In that suit, InterTrust claims Microsoft violated its patents by including anti-copying technology similar to InterTrust's in its software for storing and playing music and video files on a personal computer.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093296,00.html

Open-source maven joins Apple
Apple Computer has hired Jordan Hubbard, founder and leader of the effort behind the open-source FreeBSD version of Unix, to work on Apple's operating system, derived in part from FreeBSD. Hubbard, one of the co-founders of FreeBSD, launched in 1993, announced the news Monday on a FreeBSD mailing list, saying he'll shift his emphasis to Darwin, the open-source underpinnings of Apple's Mac OS X operating system. "The FreeBSD product line has reached the stage where I feel comfortable taking a job that allows me to focus more on Darwin," Hubbard said in the posting.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093293,00.html

EarthLink hikes Net access fees
Internet service provider EarthLink on Tuesday said it plans to raise monthly rates by $2 for its basic, unlimited Net service. The price increase to $21.95 from $19.95 will go into effect July 2 for all new subscribers and Aug. 1 for most of the company's existing customers. The move will affect approximately 3.1 million customers. With the price change, EarthLink follows the lead of Internet heavyweight America Online, which last month boosted its rates by 9 percent.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093264,00.html

Napster bags Euro labels for pay service
Napster on Tuesday signaled the end of free music swapping on its service, with the announcement that it has signed up the European independent music industry to its subscription-based service. At a press conference in London attended by Napster's creator, Shawn Fanning, Napster executives announced that music from independent labels would be included in the music-swapping company's new subscription plan, slated to go live later this summer. Earlier this month, Napster also announced a distribution deal with MusicNet, a separate subscription service launched by Warner Music Group, BMG Entertainment and EMI Recorded Music.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093263,00.html

ISPs fight for more than DSL scraps
Independent Internet service providers are mounting a mini-revolt against SBC Communications, saying the phone giant is trying to cut them out of the future of the high-speed Internet business. Since last December, SBC has been working with the ISPs to renew their contracts for high-speed DSL lines. Typically, the service providers lease phone lines and the service so they can offer their own customers broadband connections. But the new terms offered by SBC are sparking waves of resentment, letters to regulators, and early mutterings about lawsuits.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=tp_pr

Net auction fraud gets lawmakers' attention
Congress is starting to take a closer look at online auction fraud, and is asking some of the leading e-commerce sites how they cope with the problem. The chairman and one of the members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday sent a letter to the chief executives of eBay, Yahoo and Amazon.com, asking them to address questions about the prevalence of fraud and specifically about shill bidding. Shill bidding, made infamous in the sale of a faked Richard Diebenkorn painting last year, involves sellers bidding on their own auctions anonymously to increase the closing price.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=mn_hd

How the Web Changes Recruiting
Internet recruiting is, of course, a two-edged sword. If it's much easier for you to hire experienced workers, it is also much easier for competitors to hire away your own people. Employees can forget the advice that they need to market themselves, to develop their own "brands" in order to advance their careers. If they are good at what they do, recruiters will find them. Many employers are out there ready to snap up your workers, and everything moves quickly in the on-line world. But companies can reverse the destabilizing effects of on-line recruitment.
http://hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu/p...0&t=innovation

The New Cybersquatting Law Also Stops "Typosquatting"
In the sometimes fuzzy intersection of new technology and the law, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) is that rare example of a statute that actually lives up to its promise. Enacted with great fanfare in November 1999, the law has proven to be an effective weapon against cybersquatters -- i.e., people who register trademarks of other companies as domain names and then try to ransom them back to the owners. More significantly, however, the ACPA is now being used against "typosquatters," or people who register variations of trademarked names to capitalize on the inevitable flow of misdirected Internet traffic.
http://www.ecompany.com/articles/web...,12501,00.html

Assimilating the Web
Like "Star Trek's" all-powerful Borg, AOL and Microsoft are determined to crush the spirit of online independence. Is resistance futile? We're reaping the worst of both worlds, networked chaos and monopolistic consolidation. The least common denominator of individual behavior multiplies, while the least common denominator of mass taste prevails. In other words, we're screwed.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...web/index.html

Revenge of the Laid-Off Techies
As layoffs at technology and manufacturing companies continue to climb, more and more disgruntled former employees are attempting to damage or break into their former employers' networks. "It has definitely been on the rise. We have had more referrals to and complaints from victim companies," says Andrew Black, a special agent in the office. The FBI can't reveal the exact number of such cases, and getting an accurate tally of these attacks is problematic.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/...010626_024.htm

More news later on

[Squid]

Good stuff. I'd like to buy you a

[walktalker]

Got to go back to work
Interactive TV: It's watching you
Privacy advocates warned consumers Tuesday of burgeoning dangers posed by the interactive TV industry, where companies are planning to collect massive amounts of personal data. According to a report released Tuesday from nonprofit Center for Digital Democracy, a raft of companies with interests in the ITV industry are creating technology to suck up data on viewers to better target advertisements or personalize programming -- despite a lack of privacy safeguards. Companies such as Microsoft, AT&T, Liberty Media, News Corp., A.C. Nielsen, Gemstar, Proctor & Gamble and Young & Rubicam are among those developing software or investing in technology that can monitor consumer behavior through interactive set-top boxes and personal video recorders, according to the report.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,44801,00.html

Encryption flaw allows e-mail tricks
Common encryption standards that allow users to digitally sign their e-mail have a well-known flaw that could allow the message to be surreptitiously forwarded to another person, a researcher plans to announce Thursday at a technical conference. The problem could allow the recipient of a signed and encrypted e-mail to forward the message to a third party, while making it seem as if the original sender mailed the message directly. If the message contained, say, trade secrets and the third party was a competitor, the technique could be used to, among other things, frame a co-worker.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=cd_pr

Red Hat's database move mirrors Microsoft
Red Hat took a page out of Microsoft's playbook Monday as it launched a new product that adds database software to its operating system. As previously reported, Red Hat is bolstering its core Linux operating system product with Red Hat Database, a higher-level server software for handling databases, e-commerce transactions and Web page delivery. And with the move, Red Hat's product portfolio is coming to resemble that of Microsoft's Windows NT and 2000 line. Databases -- programs that let servers store every kind of information, from a parts inventory to medical records -- are a key part of the infrastructure of computer networks. Red Hat is aiming its product at lower-end customers such as small companies or departments of large companies.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=ch_mh

European firms fear cybercrime most
Major European companies have lost billions of dollars to fraud during the past two years and many view cybercrime as the greatest threat in the future, new research said Tuesday. The "Economic Crime Survey 2001" of 536 companies by professional services company PricewaterhouseCoopers found that companies lost at least $3.1 billion in total in the past two years, and that only one in five recovered more than half of the lost assets.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=ch_mh

N.Y. Assembly approves cell phone ban
The state Assembly gave final approval Monday to a measure that would make New York the first state to ban drivers from using handheld cell phones. Gov. George Pataki will sign the bill into law this week, said spokesman Michael McKeon. "The benefit is quite large in the number of deaths that we will avoid," said Assemblyman Steve Levy. The measure, adopted in the lower house Monday night, was approved by the state Senate last week. Opponents said the law would be unenforceable, and there was no proven need for it.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Yahoo puts faces to chats
Yahoo is adding video capabilities to its instant messaging service as it tries to avoid being left in the dust by America Online and Microsoft. Instant messaging is one of the Internet's most popular activities because it lets people chat in real time. Some services enable voice transmissions with the messages, but Yahoo is the first to add a video feature for people with Web cameras. The images will come through at one frame per second--far from the quality of live streaming video, but enough to let people express more emotion in their messages, said Lisa Pollock, Yahoo's director of messaging products
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Publishers purge files following court ruling
.S. publishers are preparing to remove thousands of articles from their databases after the Supreme Court ruled Monday that publications must compensate freelancers for electronic archives of print pieces. Six freelancers sued The New York Times, Time, Inc. and Newsday in 1993, arguing they should have received extra pay when their pieces were included in electronic databases such as Lexis-Nexis or on a CD-ROM. In a 7-2 decision, the court sided with the writers. "Both the print publishers and the electronic publishers, we rule, have infringed the copyrights of the freelance authors," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,44736,00.html

Napster Finds Old Space Crowded
The two biggest names in file sharing continue to move toward security-wrapped subscription models even as free alternatives continue to appear. Both Napster and Scour took the online world by storm in 1999, offering users the opportunity to find and trade music and movie files with the simple click of a mouse. Neither service charged users for the experience, prompting millions of people to gravitate toward the networks. Two years –- and two major lawsuits –- later, both companies face the daunting tasks of creating similar file-trading systems while trying to entice users to pay subscriptions fees to join.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,44808,00.html

Napster is nothing if not resilient
Despite receiving another apparent death blow on Monday, the file-trading company managed another nice rebound on Tuesday, even as a potential rival made some noise of its own. Napster and FLIPR, a Canadian startup, have both reached agreements that will allow European organizations to distribute music separately on their networks. Napster, whose request for a rehearing of its court trial was denied on Monday, signed a deal with the Association of Independent Music, a group of 400 independent labels including Beggars Banquet and Ministry of Sound. AIM tried to develop licensing parameters for Internet radio stations last August.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,44809,00.html

Protesters Steamed Over Rice
Looking out upon a small group of protesters gathered outside the Bio2001 meeting here, Ronald Cantrell of the International Rice Research Institute said he was baffled by protests against genetically modified foods. Cantrell was miffed by the 30 protesters who gathered under a tent festooned by a banner that read "Weird Science Betrays our Children." "They must have some solution," Cantrell, director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Manila, said during a press conference on Monday.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,44804,00.html

(Non)-Profiting From Experience
Signs of hope that for-profit technology companies really can help nonprofits raise money are finally beginning to emerge.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,44514,00.html

MS Monopoly Vigil Intensifies
Nearly four months have elapsed since a federal appeals court heard arguments in the Microsoft antitrust case, and advocates on all sides are starting to sweat. It's not just the summer heat. A combination of events -- including the court's recent announcement of its plans for distributing the decision of U.S. v. Microsoft and the announced retirement of the chief judge in July -- have led to a kind of nervous anxiety not seen since U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson was preparing to declare Microsoft a recidivist monopolist.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,44780,00.html

Pentagon trains tech for war
The Defense Department said on Tuesday it was pouring research dollars into high-energy lasers, microwave systems and a host of other advanced gizmos designed to win 21st-century wars more quickly and decisively than ever. Development of such things as unmanned systems for land, air, space, sea and underwater was to counter the spread of "asymmetric" threats to U.S. forces in the past decade, Pentagon officials told Congress. Among these they cited ballistic missiles, possibly tipped with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons; keyboard-launched "information operations," for instance against U.S. military satellites, and "terrorism."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...780115,00.html

Private rocket launch is 'suicidal'
British rocket experts are denouncing as suicidal the latest plans of controversial rocket engineer Steve Bennett. If he goes ahead with them, he could well be killed, and the burgeoning British rocketry effort will be permanently stuck on the launch pad, they warn. Their concerns were voiced as Bennett prepared to unveil his latest project, which he describes as the world's first private spacecraft, at an exhibition in London. He intends to become the first private astronaut to go into space with his own rocket. Within two years, he hopes to take two passengers into space with him. Critics are already calling it the "bye, bye, Bennett mission".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1407210.stm

Shrink to fit
A new transistor manufacturing technique developed by IBM could increase the speed of internet communications significantly, but some experts are not convinced about its technological claims. IBM says it has refined its silicon germanium (SiGe) manufacturing process to create a transistor with a maximum switching speed of 210 gigahertz, while using just one milliamp of current. This is an 80 percent speed increase over IBM's existing transistors, with a 50 percent power reduction, but the transistor has only been made in the laboratory so far.
http://www.newscientist.com/dailynew...p?id=ns9999925

The Light Brigade
A Howitzer is a crude-looking weapon, essentially a small smokestack with a door at the bottom that allows the insertion of breadbox-sized shells. but operating one requires a year of specialized schooling. That's because howitzers, like most artillery guns, are "indirect fire" weapons—that is, if you aim directly at your target, you'll literally miss by a mile, and probably by several. But the U.S. military is gearing up for laser warfare.
http://www.techreview.com/magazine/jul01/freedman.asp

The Outernet Is Coming
Just when the space for billboards seemed to be exhausted, small-screen technology has opened up a whole new vista of marketing terrain. Got a car? You can be pitched at the pump. Hold season tickets to your favorite sports team? Get ready for seatback commercials. Use an ATM or work out at a gym? Well, you get the message-and you'll be getting a lot more of them, a lot more often, if some cutting-edge marketers have their way. Stores, restaurants, restroom stalls, anywhere a screen will fit, a screen may soon be installed. The "outernet" is coming, and it adds up to a significant, if unproven, opportunity for local and national advertisers alike.
http://www.business2.com/marketing/2..._is_coming.htm

More news later on, perhaps even more interesting

[walktalker]

Yep

Physicist To Head White House Tech
President Bush has named physicist and engineering Professor John H. Marburger III to be his chief advisor on science and technology policy issues. Currently director of the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and president of Brookhaven Science Associates, Marburger also served as president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1980 to 1984. If confirmed by the Senate, Marburger will join the administration at a time when it is faced with several controversial issues that will fall under his purview, including the White House's energy policy and funding for stem cell research.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167303.html

Don't Skimp On Customer Service
When the economy slows down, companies cut costs. But a new study from Jupiter Media Metrix warns that customer service should not go on the chopping block, in fact businesses should take the counterintuitive step of actually increasing spending on customer relationship management (CRM). Apparently, most companies agree - the study found that 74 percent of businesses will spend more money on CRM infrastructure in 2001 than they did last year. The majority of respondents said they would increase spending by 25 to 50 percent.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167297.html

Crackers Deface Two AOL ICQ Servers
America Online confirmed today that one of the Web servers operated by the company's ICQ instant-messaging unit was defaced. But AOL assured users of its popular Internet messaging service that their personal data was not compromised. The defaced server, located at groups.icq.com, provides information about ICQ interest groups and was running Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) software, according to AOL officials. A group calling itself Men In Hack on Monday replaced the default home page with one of its own design. The defaced page included the ICQ logo, a green flower, with the words "hacked" flashing in red capital letters across it.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167293.html

Tasini Ruling: Will It Impact Digital Music?
A U.S. Supreme Court decision Monday granting freelance writers compensation rights if their works are resold to electronic databases may reverberate in the music industry as well. In the case Tasini vs. New York Times, the Supreme Court Monday ruled 7-2 in favor of freelance writer Jonathan Tasini, saying that publishers must seek the permission and compensate writers if freelance articles are resold to online databases like Lexis-Nexis - provided that the writers' initial work contracts did not specifically grant e-publishing rights up front. The case is viewed as a major defeat for publishers, because publishers have only begun including electronic publishing rights in freelance contracts during the past several years.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167291.html

Study Depicts Hopes, Fears Of Tech-Driven Future
Will the U.S. retain its position as the world's high-tech superpower? This and other digital-future questions are posed in a study by Euro RSCG Worldwide. The survey, conducted by online advertising network RSCG in 19 cities around the world, sought insight and tech-savvy opinions about what the tech-driven future may bring. When asked if the U.S., an original pioneer of the digital age, will continue to dominate, more than half (52 percent) of British respondents said the country's reign soon would be over. But, only 36 percent of Asia-Pacific respondents agreed, and only 30 percent of Americans agreed their digital dominance soon would end.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167260.html

Site Grabs Attention By Setting Horses Free
Ryan Dohrn says a single promotional idea was the key to greatly increasing traffic on his Web site. But it isn't an easy idea to execute. Says Dohrn: "It can be a nightmare to give away animals." But, he adds, darn good marketing. Dohrn, who did promotions for a Chicago TV station, and his wife, Andre, who wrote government housing grants, quit their jobs to work full time on a Web site they started in 1996, HorseCity.com. By September, they had about 3,000 regular users. And Dohrn, 29, knew he had competition: "There are already about 7,800 horse-related sites of some significance." So he decided on a regular, monthly giveaway: A horse.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167290.html

'Author' of A.I. Recalls When Kubrick Dreamed of Making a Hit, and Spielberg Came With His Checkbook Open
In an interview, British sci-fi writer Brian Aldiss tells of his struggles with the notoriously difficult director who wanted his own Star Wars. When Spielberg took over the project and offered to buy one of his sentences, 'I fell about laughing.' It stands to reason: the first Stanley Kubrick blockbuster would be directed by Steven Spielberg. ut even before Spielberg would ever dream of partnering with his mentor, the famously difficult director of famously difficult films was confiding with a British author, Brian Aldiss, about how A.I.: Artificial Intelligence could be his big popcorn movie. The relationship began in the late 70's thanks to a fortuitous footnote -- one where Aldiss, the author of some 300 stories and novels, oddly proclaimed Kubrick ''the great SF writer of the age'' in his guide to science fiction.
http://www.inside.com/jcs/Story?arti...3576&pod_id=10

Add Oscar to Long List of Napster's Courtroom Foes
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has sued the file-swapping service -- take a number -- saying that unauthorized recordings of live performances from the award show are being traded. It was bound to happen: The entertainment-related organization most protective of its copyrights has sued the entity most accused of copyright infringements. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took Napster to court on Monday, claiming the online file-swapping service is allowing users to copy live performances recorded during the last three Oscar ceremonies. The suit states that within hours of the Academy Awards broadcast, sound recordings of live performances from the show were made available for downloading. Some of the recordings made available on Napster have not yet been released to the public, the suit adds.
http://www.inside.com/jcs/Story?arti...3558&pod_id=10

U.N. agrees to global AIDS plan
Two decades into the AIDS epidemic, all 189 member nations of the U.N. General Assembly have agreed upon a global blueprint for action on HIV/AIDS and will formally adopt it on Wednesday, U.N. officials have told MSNBC.com. “It is an extremely strong document of commitment” that maps out a worldwide strategy to halt the disease’s spread and reverse the epidemic, said Kathleen Cravero, deputy executive director of UNAIDS.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/592884.asp

Army Chow Know-How
In Star Trek, the crew of the starship Enterprise could instantly acquire any meal by ordering up their preference on the food-producing "replicator." Now that was a Meal-Ready-to-Eat. Such technology may seem like a pipe dream of the far future , but it provided inspiration for scientists developing high-tech food ideas for Army troops. In a newly released scientific report commissioned by the Army, scientists suggest, among other ideas, that soldiers could one day carry specially engineered seeds that would sprout from the ground in a matter of days, instead of weeks. plus capable of fighting off disease and making warriors glow.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scite...ood010626.html

MP3 owners get stroppy with open source coders
MP3 Pro is proving just as popular as its predecessor - the MP3 digital audio format. Pro has only been available for just under two weeks, and the software has already been downloaded above 600,000 times. So says co-developer Thomson Multimedia, which posted demo software on 14 June. The demo release is limited to 64Kbps encoding - but can generate files half the size of a 64Kbps MP3 encoder. That said, feedback from Register readers suggests that while MP3 Pro does indeed sound better than MP3, subjectively, WMA 8 has the advantage on quality. The MP3 partners won't win themselves any friends for their licensing policy, which has seen them bashing open source MP3 encoder development efforts.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/19982.html

Maxtor plans 137GB+ hard drives
Maxtor today set out its stall in the heavy duty hard drive market, saying it planned to surpass the 137GB interface for ATA drives by the end of the year. The vendor has joined forces with other IT companies, such as Compaq, Microsoft, VIA Technologies, ONTRACK Data International and StorageSoft, to support the latest standard by the American National Standards Intstitute (ANSI) T13 technical committee. The standard allows the future development of capacities of up to 144 petabytes (PB) of storage, or drives that can access around 100,000 times more data than the current 137GB interface standard.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/19994.html

Radiohead bassist slams Cubase software
Radiohead's bassist Colin Greenwood has kicked loose with his hardware and software preferences during an interview with UK site Culturelab. Colin says all the band have Powerbooks, which you might have guessed, and he's also got an Atari ST. On the Powerbooks the band run eMagic's Logic music production software "because it never crashes, unlike Cubase." Other things he likes are "an Akai MPC 60 for those like hiphop, swing moments and an Akai S3000 200XL just because everything sounds great. They're just things to play with instead of playing on the Playstation."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/19990.html

Fancy a 1GB flash disk the size/weight of a plastic lighter?
Fancy a 1GB flash memory disk that plugs straight into your USB port and is the size and weight of a plastic lighter? It'll set you back £990.95 ex VAT, and you can't get it off a bloke standing outside the tube station holding a tray, but it is on sale in the UK. The downside is a read transfer rate of 750KB/second and a write rate of 450 KB/second. Well you can't have everything. The device, called OnlyDisk, comes in sizes from 8MB to 1GB, and a 2GB device is on the cards. A 32MB disk will set you back £49.88 ex VAT.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/19986.html

The Era Of Living Wirelessly
It's late March in Hannover, Germany, and the mammoth high-tech industry shindig known as CeBIT is primed for a coming-out party. An emerging short-range wireless networking standard, named Bluetooth after a fierce 10th-century Viking king, is planning a massive demo. The organizers of CeBIT — a worldwide trade show whose name is the German acronym for "Center for Office and Information Technology" — are promising to turn Kmart-sized Exhibition Hall 13 into the "world's largest Bluetooth mobile communications network." That means folks with specially equipped handhelds will be able to exchange information via radio waves, without cords. But Bluetooth has bitten off more than it can chew. The network never networks; gadgets don't gab. The throngs in the hall instead witness a throbbing technological toothache.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167279.html

Done !

[TankGirl]

Thanks and WT! You are a great newsman and your daily contributions (which I know to take hours) are greatly appreciated!

- tg

[mike4947]

Thanks, and for our sake please DON'T get a life.

thanks wt, i'm set for days.

[walktalker]

Originally posted by mike4947
Thanks, and for our sake please DON'T get a life.

Don't worry about that

[Ramona_A_Stone]

:bump:

I'm just going to bump, rational, interesting, mature things until a few people kill each other and we all get on with it.
(ahem)
Perhaps if more people around here would actually read a couple of these things, there might be more interesting conversations, and less pointless testosterone squirting and pathetic antler locking.

You rule WT.
and TG

btw, Jack, you need to post something HAPPY over there at the P2P, you're making me suicidal.
hehehe.

[walktalker]

Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
:bump:

I'm just going to bump, rational, interesting, mature things until a few people kill each other and we all get on with it.
(ahem)
Perhaps if more people around here would actually read a couple of these things, there might be more interesting conversations, and less pointless testosterone squirting and pathetic antler locking.

You rule WT.
and TG

Well put, Ramona ! You rule too

[relic]

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=tp_pr

a good article there.

One of my friends tried to start his own ISP business. He was providing 56k access and had some customers from here in Nebraska and a person or two out of state (South Carolina and Wisconsin). But he just recently had to shutdown his business venture because of the exact thing the article is referring to. To get anywhere he had to conflict with big coporations and this wasn't worth the time or effort to make a measly buck or two. I wanted him to offer cable or some other type of high speed access but that just never evolved. So now here I am...getting stuck going with AOL Time Warner's Roadrunner. I'll have to see if this cable connection is as good as everyone tells me.

good news.

[walktalker]

Yet another bump.