I can’t believe that someone had the gall to do this. My systems are safe enough, because I use long random strings that I’ve been able to memorize, but most of the WiFi networks of my friends and associates — the ones I’ve been given the passwords for — would fall to it quickly. I [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Business category.
“Ultraviolet Movie Locker Aims to Solve the Movie Industry’s Digital Mess”
Sorry, but I just don’t trust the movie industry to do something like this. It sounds good, and it would be welcome, but think about it… the movie industry made a killing on the VHS-to-DVD format change, just as the music industry did on the cassette-to-CD change, and the 8-track-and-LP-to-cassette change before it. Maybe the [...]
“AOL sales drop by a quarter, reports billion dollar loss”
Before the Internet became widespread, AOL made money by charging ridiculously high rates to access the content on their network. Afterwards, their content was worth less every day as web sites sprang up everywhere, so they reinvented themselves as an Internet Service Provider (a pretty slick move, in my opinion, not that they had a [...]
“Cashless World”
Sometimes I think Scott Adams (yes, the Dilbert guy) is just throwing outrageous stuff out there on his blog, to provoke reactions. I can’t tell if this article, on getting rid of cash and making all financial transactions digital, is one of those though, or if he truly believes that it’s possible. It would offer [...]
“How Burma Shave sent Frenchie to Mars”
I love this… an advertising gimmick gone wrong, and a company that made good on it… after a fashion.
“Microsoft writes down $240m on Kin debacle”
I’ve often wondered just how Microsoft could be so incompetent. This quote might just shed some light on it: [...] Notwithstanding Kin’s shortcomings as a product, the most entertaining aspect of the cock-up is that it appears to be the result of ego battles in Redmond: rumor has it that Kin was throttled in its [...]
“Movie, tech giants prep universal online media store”
It’s a good concept, but is it going to catch on? [...] the question remains, will consumers care about not possessing the files? There are clear advantages in not doing so: you don’t need buckets of local storage, and you don’t have to fear losing your collection to burglars or housefires. There are clear advantages [...]
Spin
I never realized, until I started reading the Bad Science blog, just how much “spin” there is in science papers. Spin is great when shooting pool, but it’s simply dishonest when someone uses it in a scientific paper. And when that paper is about the efficacy of a medicine or the safety of a product, [...]
“I could license you to use this software, but then I’d have to kill you”
Most of the licenses listed here are perfectly normal, but there are a few really odd ones…
“Winds howl through the deserted moonscape behind Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper paywalls”
If newspapers are relying on paywalls to survive, then they really are the equivalent of walking dead men. Even more so than those of us who have watched this saga from the beginning realized. As this article points out, there’s no point to putting the papers online if only subscribers can see them or link [...]