Silicon Valley Archives
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The more time I spend poking around my old stomping grounds - the telecommunications lobby - the more certain I am that wireless Internet access will be the consumer issue that raises the profile of the pending rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Why? Well, take the announcement that Google is hatching plans to offer free WiFi. I wrote a column about it for eWeek saying, essentially, that the roll-out of such a service will rock the political debate on telecom and rattle the cages of all the industries that are trying to get in on the rewrite. Oh, and yeah, it's a good PR move.
The mailbox has overflowed.
Now most of the folks who wrote in said, basically, that Google can't provide free universal WiFi, it'll cost 'em too much and the phone guys will fight back and they don't have the cash etc. etc.
That may well be true. I dunno. I don't work at Google. But I do know a little about politics and a little bit about how people are using the Internet. They know a little about those two things at Google, too (CEO Eric Schmidt grew up outside Washington, D.C.). So, I'm thinking Google WiFi, if it comes to be, won't be universal (not really), will probably be as much brand-extension as technology, and will be seen by many people as really, really cool.
I had this little Google moment about a year ago while talking to my niece's babysitter. She was telling me about the virtues of Firefox, the Google-endorsed web browser. Since this woman didn't know that she worked in a house with 24/7 wireless access and thought that the transformer box on her computer power cord was part of the machine's inner workings, I was pretty amazed to hear her talking about how Firefox was written by, as she put it, volunteers and how that was better than Microsoft. Someone - not me - has explained this to her, of course. But still...
This is what Google's doing with its WiFi idea: Recruiting a whole new group of people to the idea of the always-on, always-connected Internet. And that leaps a gap that I think - as long time readers of the site know - is perhaps one of the true economic dividers at work in this country right now.
Fri 10:30 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This letter from reader Phillip Scott up in Washington state gets a prize for being one of the funniest ever. It's about last week's eWeek column on Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.
I read with interest your column about Larry Ellison's settlement. Does he get to pick the charity? A real punishment would be that the money went to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It will instead probably go to the Ellision Ocean Racing Foundation. (If there isn't one, there soon will be).
To which I have only one response: Snort!
For those of you not in the know: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's antipathy for Microsoft CEO Bill Gates is the stuff of American business legends. As for the racing foundation, see this month's Vanity Fair where Ellison admits, with his usual bellicose charm, that yeah, having a boat bigger than an apartment building is "absolutely excessive."
Larry Ellison: Giving Billionaires a Good Name for Almost 60 years. And doing a damn fine job of it.
Thu 09:53 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's column over at eWeek doesn't have a lot to do with Hurricane Katrina. But it does have a lot to do with faith in government.
It's about Larry Ellison's attempt to get out of a shareholder lawsuit by having his corporation, Oracle, pay $100 million to charity. How can he do this while investment banker Frank Quattrone, accused of obstruction of justice, waits to see if he's really going to jail?
Because Ellison's being sued by Oracle shareholders. It's a private action. Not an official government investigation. And, more annoying, it follows on the heels of a similar settlement that eBay executives made earlier this year. EBay's executives were sued by their shareholders over the acceptance of shares in first-day offerings of tech stocks during the bubble. Goldman Sachs, eBay's bank, like many other banks, including Quattrone's Credit Suisse First Boston, made the shares available to wealthy clients. Yet, eBay's Meg Whitman and Pierre Omidyar made charitable donations and "returned" money to their company. Quattrone is facing criminal charges brought against him by the U.S. Attorney's office in New York.
What's going on here? Nothing good, that's for sure. It's a good example -- as if after Katrina we needed one - of how the law, or public policy, or government procedure, unequally enforced leads to cynicism and contempt for government. I used to think this was a California mind-set, particularly when it came to dealing with the state government agencies, but I think it's spreading. Fast.
Thinking commentators like David Brooks - who, weirdly, makes his points better on TV than he does in his New York Times column - is saying that we are about to enter in to a large full-scale debate on the role and nature of government. Katrina is kicking it off, says Brooks. But other missteps - and he cited corporate scandals, the mishandling of the war in Iraq as well as the federal government's reaction to the hurricane - are also factors. What's even more interesting: Brooks doesn't sound like he thinks the conservative insistence on small government is going to triumph.
Yup. 'bout time, too.
Thu 10:25 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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It's really hard for me not to get really really really pissed off at the New York Times when I see opinion pieces like today's missive from Henry Blodget talking about how the stock market bubble of the 1990s was actually good for us.
That's right former Merrill Lynch stock analyst Henry Blodget. The guy whose fame and considerable fortune was based on his prediction that Amazon.com's share price would go to triple digits. The guy who likes to pretend that a few stray emails that "caught the notice" of the Securities and Exchange Commission were an innocent misstep that derailed his Wall Street career. The same Henry Blodget who insisted to Slate readers that Martha Stewart wasn't guilty of any crime. The one who, correctly and in private to his co-workers but not to his customers, called a wide variety of Internet stocks "POS" - that's Wall Street for "piece of shit" - and other equally nice names. All the while he was touting those stocks to the public market.
Here's why it pisses me off: Because Bloget was knee, no, he was hip-deep in the process of delusion in which everyone connected with the birth of Internet willingly, freely, happily and enthusiastically participated. His punishment? A fine, a ban from working on Wall Street, a book deal and a gig with Slate. For a guy who started out as a production assistant at CNN, that's not a bad writing career. See, crime might not pay - Bloget's fine was in the millions - but unethical behavior sure as hell does. I'm looking forward to reading a Times op/ed from Marc Rich on the benefits of the presidential pardon system.
What did he do? He - and many others - helped make the general public feel as though investing in anything with a dot.com in the name was a lucrative choice. That it was a safe investment because the bankers at Merrill Lynch said so. And Blodget and all the others bankers knew it. Now, contempt on the part of stock traders and analysts for their customers is nothing new. And while that was small, closed world, it was a fine way to view things. But things changed during the Bubble. The Internet opened up the stock market to the general public. They profited. But they paid.
Now, let's put aside the fact that most Americans don't know the difference between a commercial bank (where you have your savings account) and an investment bank (where stock deals are financed). They were all just bankers to the nice folks clamoring for Netscape and Infoseek and Pets.com and FogDog and who can remember what else…..The banker and traders' public's support and enthusiasm for the market encouraged investments by folks like the young lady I talked to yesterday who didn't know that "equity" is another word for "stock" This young woman, by the way, had invested a considerable sum of money - about $20,000 - in an equity fund but said she wasn't interested in buying stocks.
Continue reading "Roll Over"Tue 01:03 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's column over at eWeek is about Google Print and the pressure the giagantico on-line media and advertising company is placing on the book business.
The story has the sort of web-booster drop head (that's the little paragraph below the main headline) that I try to avoid. It's another one of those "Lookee: Technology Matters" cheers that take away from what you're trying to say. But that's a minor point.
Google's doing some clever positioning with its decisions to copy -- it's using the more politically correct verb "scan" -- all the books in the libraries where's it's cut deals. It's going after college students -- future users for the next generation -- with this deal, getting them to think that everything that's worth knowing is on the Internet. If you're a book publisher, this is going to hurt your business in ways you can't -- or won't -- even consider.
Of course, for us, that's kind of a obvious statement. We've seen it with the record business; we're seeing it with the newspaper business. But there is - and there will remain for some time, I'm afraid - an enormous gulf between those who understand this new world and those who fear it. A long conversation with Allan Adler, the book publishers' lobbyist, convinced me of that. Although they are perfectly happy to sell books on-line (the web as a giant cash register remains the favorite vision of the not-so-technical) Adler's members don't want to become web sites.
Why? Because web sites don't make any money. To which any sane person asks: And the book business does? This is an industry that turns up its nose at anything that's not in the New York Times but considers a "best seller" to be anything that sells 100,000 copies. You wanna know how we got three books about Enron and AOL and why those works were considered "dot.com era" books. This is how. These folks aren't ostriches. They're moles.
To start with, the idea that a web site must be -- by definition -- free is starting to fade away. The Wall Street Journal went first. Some smart book publisher -- probably one already on the web -- will figure out how to put the infrastructure in place to sell books to a modern (and by that I mean young) audience. But first they're going to have to get over the idea that any and all change is a bad idea.
Thu 10:38 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Over at eWeek, this week's column is about the big fight that's starting to erupt between cities - San Francisco, Austin, Philadelphia and perhaps New York - and the big telephone and cable companies.
The cities are building wireless networks. It's a great way to make tourists happy, fix what's wrong with cell phone service - here in San Francisco, we play a game called "name the dead spots" - and prove you're cool. Big telcos - most of whom run cell phone companies - don't like it. Cuts into their business. What worse they say: Cities and towns are using tax dollars to compete against them.
They could use a little competition. Doing interviews for the piece - one with a spokesman for the Cellular Telephone Industry Association, one with the guy who runs Austin Wireless - their phones cut out. Went dead. They had to call me back.
And, no, I'm not making that up.
Continue reading "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down"Thu 09:03 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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I've been laughing a little bit about all the talk on the political TV shows and among Big Media reporters about how Judge John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court is the first of the "Internet age."
A lot of folks are complaining about how full their email in-boxes are. And the other are wringing their hands about bloggers. And everyone's talking about how quickly information can move in this new age.
You'd think Martians were really coming. My God! There are no insiders anymore! They all know what we know! And they know it when we know it. Sometimes they know more than us. The horror! The horror!
Anyway, I wrote an eWeek column about all this and you can read it here.
Enjoy. And watch out for alien space ships, okay?
Thu 11:02 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about Colin Powell and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers.
KP, already an institution in Silicon Valley, has been making some very interesting moves lately as it positions itself not just as a venture capital firm but as West Coast Institution as important as Bechtel Corp. or Walt Disney Inc. By hiring Powell it is saying that it – and by extension the firms it backs, the people those firms employ, the ideas and culture this firm both embodies and represents – want to count in the conversation about U.S. foreign and domestic policy.
It is no different from the way long-time Washington and New York establishments like the Carlyle Group, Solomon Brother or Goldman Sachs hire. And it represents a turning point for the firm, if not for Silicon Valley.
Think I'm exaggerating? Well, take a look at the tech guests that regularly show up on The Charlie Rose Show. Almost all of them – the most recent one was Eric Schmidt – can trace a path to KP. Schmidt, for instance, runs Google, a company funded and backed by KP. And, of course, he was at Sun for years. Another KP investment.
Continue reading "Ya Gotta Have Friends"Thu 11:45 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column offers more on the Internet tax controversy. As I said last week, I got a lot of nasty mail. And I made a boneheaded mistake in writing about the issue the first time.
So I've set the record straight and talked a little more about the political realities at play. It's going to be an interesting and long fight. A presidential advisory commission on tax "simplification" won't finish its work until September. That means that any work on the issue will start in an election year. In 2006, a third of the Senate and all of the House face re-election. That muddies the waters a bit more.
Thu 11:01 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about the possibility – the liklihood, I think – that the era of tax-free shopping on the Internet is coming to an end.
And I have to say, I have not gotten this much nasty mail in a long, long time.
The arguments were pretty straightforward: How can Congress do this? Well, Congress regulates interstate commerce. That's in the Constitution. Besides, in previous years, they've exempted on-line commerce from state tax. The exemption clear the way for the imposition.
The other argument is a bit more of a stretch: on-line taxes will encourage people to buy foreign goods directly. Theoretically this is possible. But, well, between customs duties, shipping costs and language barriers, it's unlikely you're going to see a whole lot of folks ordering stuff from other countries.
The deal is here isn't much different from the deal with Grokster or the Federal Elections Commission attempt to steer its way through campaign finance on the 'net. The Internet isn't a novelty anymore. It's a way to conduct business. And everyday the entities that it's allowed to prosper and grow – this site is a good example – are slipping into mainstream use.
Fri 11:55 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Lots of mail in the in-box this week. And a few snarky comments around the web, too.
So, here's the deal on Grokster: Wishing there were no record companies or movie studios with lots of money to sue people doesn’t mean 1)they're corrupt jerks who are out to ruin your personal music or movie enjoyment pleasure or 2)thing are going to stay this way.
That doesn't, of course, mean you have to like the current circumstances. But the point of the Grokster post was to say, essentially, that if Silicon Valley wants change, it's going to have to work for it.
A lot of what was said about that piece on the web and in email was captured by Liza Sabater over at CultureKitchen.
"So, will this make car, liquor and beer makers liable for drunk driving?" Liza asks. No. It won't. This is what I call a good dumb question. To some extent, we already know the answer. Bartenders – the people who serve liquor – have been held liable in drunk driving incidents. So have party hosts. And gun shop owners have legal obligations and responsibilities. The Supreme Court was pretty clear on this point: It's not the technology, per se. It's what you encourage people to do with it.
Mr. Simon writes in a bit more cryptically:
Uh. I think you got two things wrong:1. The end of file sharing programs
2. America loves HollywoodThe RIAA and MPAA better get with the program.
More theft = more sales.
Think about how the MPAA railed against Sony video recorders. Claiming it would ruin business. Well thefts were up and business boomed.
What we have here is 30+ years of content industry stupidity repeated at every new technological intersection. In fact it didn't start 30 years ago. It started with Edison's invention of the gramaphone which was supposed to ruin the music industry. Or playing tunes for free on the radio was going to ruin the gramaphone industry. Or the cassette recorder which was going to ruin the music industry or boom boxes which could dupe tapes which was going to ruin the music industry, etc. etc. etc. Why all that bad stuff never happened? Why is it that every advance that made music easier to steal increased the size of the market?
There is some rampant stupidity going on here. However, it is not the tech geeks who are in charge of the stupid brigade.
BTW if suing becomes significant then file sharing will go further underground. Just like the drug war.
Hollywood is like the oil companies. The product is popular; the companies selling it are not.
Can you tell he's an engineer?
Well, I'm not so sure the Geeks are so smart about this stuff. I mean, who won? But I do think filesharing will be forced underground to some extent if lawsuit accelerate. Hollywood and the studios are playing a delay game – politically and in the marketplace – until someone comes to their rescue. The smarter play might be to figure out how to do that.
Continue reading "Oh, Boy Do We Got Mail"Wed 09:47 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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In the future, when the grey-bearded historians of Geekdom choose the moment when the tech business was forced to grow up, chances are good it will be the Monday in June when Silicon Valley awoke to find out that its innovators and inventors could be held liable for their mischief.
The Wizards of the Web are formally on notice: If tech wants to be in business and stay in business then it better start acting in a business-like manner. No foolin' around.
The Supreme Court has given geek determinism – the often adolescent belief that technology will triumph and that anything that stands in its way is lame, brain dead, foolhardy and stupid – a well-deserved smack upside the head. In its ruling today on MGM v. Grokster, the court said that the nudge-nudge, wink-wink advertising and promotion that Grokster and Streamcast engaged in to promote themselves as alternatives to Napster was inducements for customers to break the law.
"The classic instance of inducement is by advertisement or solicitation that broadcasts a message designed to stimulate others to commit violations. MGM argues persuasively that such a message is shown here. Three features of the evidence of intent are particularly notable. First, each of the respondents showed itself to be aiming to satisfy a known source of demand for copyright infringement, the market comprising former Napster users. Respondents' efforts to supply services to former Napster users indicate a principal, if not exclusive, intent to bring about infringement. Second, neither respondent attempted to develop filtering tools or other mechanisms to diminish the infringing activity using their software."
In plainer language: If you invent it and sell it, you can't completely avoid responsibility for what you’ve done. Particularly if your marketing campaign relies very heavily on the "screw the man" thinking that passes for macho street cred in the Geek community.
Continue reading "This Ain't No Party, This Ain't No Disco"Mon 01:05 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Today's eWeek column is about – what else? – Grokster.
More precisely, it's about MGM v. Grokster and how the Supreme Court decision is going to set the stage for the mother of all lobbying battles between Hollywood and the tech community. The geeks are going to win. Mr. Steve Jobs – the man who made on-line music legit – has taken care of that. The iPod is loved. So is the technology that makes it happen. Hollywood knows this; they've been playing a pretty decent delay game so far. How fast they'll come out of that defensive posture is the real question here.
One of the things that's been interesting to watch is the way in which tech PR folks are gearing up for the coming fight. They're treating the court ruling as if it's a trade show. One poor soul went as far as to predict a decision last Monday. Yes, well, they're the Supreme Court. They don't do things on anyone else's schedule.
And they're becoming increasingly less predictable. A supposedly conservative court said today that eminent domain – a government's right to seize property – can be expanded in certain circumstances. This does not bode well for our friends in Hollywood who are arguing that their right to protect their property – movies and songs – comes before the importance of innovation and invention.
One of the more fascinating part of this case is the way in which it neatly puts the two sides of the copyright clause of the U.S. Constitution – that's correct, copyright and patents are in the constitution – against each other.
Here's the clause from Article I, Section 8, Powers Granted to Congress:
Copyrights and Patents. To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited time to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
This wording alone suggests that copyright is Congress' mess to sort out. Which is why this fight is just getting started.
Thu 11:31 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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There's a name for those little ear buds that everyone's sprouted all of a sudden. You know the ones I'm talking about. The Bluetooth-enabled wireless earpieces for cell phones that have a kind of weird sci-fi feel to them.
It's not official, of course, but tell someone you got an "OhuraUHURA" and they'll know exactly what you mean. Particularly if they're geeky.
Who? Ohurathat's Uhura The Star Trek crew member best known for her little wireless earpiece receiver, that's who.
UPDATE:So much for my Geek street-cred. Greg Dewar wrtes in to correct my spelling. And rightly so. Although I note that the geeks at Gizmodo got it wrong, too.
Wed 04:20 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Tom Friedman started it but now, it seems, the rest of The New York Times has caught on to the – cough, cough - "rebirth" of Silicon Valley. We're back, I tell you. And the hype-machines couldn't be happier.
Two pieces in the Sunday paper – Gary Rivlin's long assertion that there are still lots of wealthy young people in Northern California and Randall Stross look at CraigsList – put a few more chits down on the table. Since both Rivlin and Stoss preferred activity is writing books (they share a literary agent, too), I'm sure there are at least two more Silicon Valley tomes a'birthin' here. Yet another sign of expansion.
No one in New York has been willing to believe that anyone in Silicon Valley has any money "left" since all of them lost all their cash betting on tech stocks. And why – why now? – the Times finds it necessary to weigh in a kind of backhanded way on Craig Newmark's impact on its own business is going to remain a mystery. That story, too, could have been done a year ago when eBay bought its 25 percent of Craigslist.
Another measure of the valley's increasing popularity? Google CEO Eric Schmidt's hour-long appearance on Charlie Rose. The interview, taped in front of an audience Rose described as "smart, rich people" – meaning tech types – is interesting in a number or respects but most of all because it echoes the kicker in Rivlin's piece, a sentiment that's widely shared among tech folks. It's all that "change the world" stuff. It's job two around here. (Job one was making lots of money which makes it a lot easier to do job two).
''We are not ready to stop changing the world.'' Rivlin quotes Sunil Paul who last year sold Brightmail, the company he started as the tech bubble was popping.
As a coda to all this: Naughty Nicky Denton who hates San Francisco more than almost any of its former high-tech residents was in town last week moaning about how all anyone out here cares about is money. The boys over at Silicon Valley Watcher, a "blog" that appears to be morphing into some kind of consulting operation (consultants, yet another sign of Bubbelicious-ness) say Denton is seeking a Silicon Valley-based writers for a site that could probably be best described as Gawker West or Defamer North.
Mon 11:04 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Today's eWeek column is about the Supreme Court's unanimous decision on Arthur Andersen and former Securities and Exchange Chairman William Donaldson.
Basically, the court has said that the jury that found Andersen guilty of obstruction of justice should have been told to decide if a crime had been committed. This has bearing on Silicon Valley banker Frank Quattrone's case, of course. Quattrone's appeal of his conviction for obstruction of justice is pending and the judge in his case issued similar orders to the jury that found him guilty of that charge and two counts of witness tampering last year.
But the Andersen decision is only a small part of this week's run of good-ish news for business folks. Donaldson's departure from the Securities and Exchange Commission and President Bush's appointment of California Republican Chris Cox to succeed him, is probably a sign that enforcement of the much despised Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is going to be administered with a lighter hand.
Bush might not be getting anywhere in the U.S. Senate, his Social Security reform ideas appear dead in the water and his foreign policy agenda is tottering but hey, he's still a pro-business Republican. So he's sent Cox – who can count doing away with estate taxes, reducing capital gains and that Silicon Valley favorite, securities litigation "reform" as of his political accomplishments – to work at the SEC. Cox is a big friend of Silicon Valley's because of securities reform which makes it a little bit harder to sue corporate directors. That's probably not the main reason Bush appointed him, it's certainly going to help the Republican pick up a few more friends in the tech world.
Fri 07:33 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's column over at eWeek is about last week's court ruling that the "broadcast flag" – a piece of anti-theft computer code that was supposed to go in your new TV set – wasn't legit. Combined with the pending decision from the Surpreme Court on MGM v. Grokster, copyright folks – normally quiet lawyerly types – are looking at a long, hot, contentious summer.
Thu 10:55 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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In the "two birds, one stone" category my eWeek column is an interview with Dan Glickman. Glickman is head of the Motion Picture Association of America. The most interesting thing about this particular interview is that it took place.
Why? Well, Glickman’s holding out an olive branch. It’s not a big one. Just a little twig. But he knows – he’s a former Congressman and member of the House Judiciary Committee and former Clinton Administration Secretary of Agriculture – that if changes in copyright law are necessary then he’s going to need the tech community. It’s worth noting that Glickman doesn’t expect – nor should tech folks – a slam-dunk on MGM v. Grokster, the peer-to-peer case and that he’s leaving room for negotiation on the law: look at what he says about distributions systems.
Now, I am not a big fan of interpreting decisions by the questions Supreme Court justices ask in oral arguments. But it was interesting to me – as I mentioned to Glickman – the number of lawyers who were impressed by the Justices questions, particularly their technical questions. Also worth noting: Glickman’s use of the “for now” when talking about the Creative Commons licensing system. Most folks in Washington think – because CC doesn’t do a good job of explaining the paid rights part of what they do – that CC is a free system. A little better messaging about how CC rachets up and down for different rights under different circumstances might go a long way here.
While I’m here, apologies for the light writing this week. I’m now in Nashville, Tenn., and am planning to show up at BlogNashville on Friday evening to hear Glenn Reynolds, J.D. Lasica and others talk about – like we in the on-line writing community can’t get enough -- blogging and journalism.
Thu 02:12 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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A change may be as good as a rest although, I must confess, it doesn't really feel that way.
Over at eWeek, the column is about John Markoff's new, cool book, "What The Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry" Markoff, one of the few people on the New York Times editorial staff who is loved by the people he covers and those he competes against, does a great job in this book which I think might be his best one yet.
It publishes today which means you can buy it now and if you're reading this from anywhere in Silicon Valley, and you're not in this book, there is someone you know in this book. Don't get left out!
I have a nice long well-edited (thank you, Professor Rosen) post about this thing I call stand alone journalism over at Jay Rosen's PressThink.
Why there, not here? Rosen teaches at New York University's Journalism School and is well read by media folks. Some of you regular readers are interested in what we do on this side of the curtain but not all of you are so it seemed more appropriate for the detailed discussion about this aspect of the news business – the how and where it fits, the what we've done and where we're going – to take place on a site dedicated to that purpose.
It's also a demo of sorts. The idea that one reader can get all their information from one place on the web – a hold-over from newspapers – is slowly but surely fading away. As RSS replaces book-marking, it will go for good. Posting for Rosen is a good a example of that shift.
Thu 09:34 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Seems I'm not the only person less than enthused about Tom Friedman's new book. Kevin Drum, who actually read the damn thing, poor guy, says – unbelievably – the Times scribe is less critical in "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century" than he was in his previous book, "The Lexus and the Olive Tree,". Friedman having drunk Silicon Valley's Kool-Aid for his first cheery look at globalization, came back for more and liked it even better this time.
My pal, Matthew Holt, a U.S. citizen living in Northern California who sounds very much like the Englishman he is, had a response similar to mine when one of his HealthCareBlog readers started gushing about Friedman: Welcome to the party, Tom.
Their correspondence – which includes a few tart insights on book deals and their relationship to the book publishing business – follows. Names have been redacted.
Fri 09:44 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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There's a Tom Friedman-palooza going on out there and as much as Friedman annoys me with his Panglossian take on the effects of globalization, the campaign he's launched to sell his new book "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century" is important.
It's important because Friedman – who has a decided gift for wrapping up difficult ideas and putting them into pop-speak – is a columnist for the New York Times and he has come to a few basic realizations about the networked society and the global economy. He's spouting them everywhere, from his home paper's Sunday magazine to Tuesday's Jon Stewart show. For these reasons – the publicity roll-out and his Times column – Friedman's got a best-seller on his hands. It'll be an important book, too.
This is going to have a couple of immediate consequences. First, there is no bigger fan of Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial culture that Friedman. Appearing on Charlie Rose's show Tuesday (he was studio-hopping; same suit, same too-short haircut as on Stewart) Friedman carried forth the valley's party line with a fervor I haven't seen from an East Coaster since, oh, since 1999. The valley's way of looking at the world – connected, fast, competitive – has become Friedman's. He's even gone as far as to endorse the tech community's stance on stock options – he's for it. Why? Because in China they don't expense stock options. And, he says, solemnly, this networked stuff is just getting started; the dot.com bust was the end of the beginning.
Sigh.
Continue reading "Tommy's Tune"Thu 03:25 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This morning, a bunch of lawyers and no shortage of reporters, spin doctors, Congressional staffers and lobbyists are gathered in the Supreme Court's ornate hearing room to listen to an argument about the merits and legal liability inherent in file sharing.
The case, MGM v. Grokster, brought by the record companies, is a turning point in the long and ultimately silly war between record companies and new technology that allows their customers (and, it's worth adding, the artists) to share music easily, simply and cheaply.
The Grokster case can be boiled down to one big question: Who's in Charge? Who's going to make sure the record industry runs with the smoothness (and immense profitability) that it's demonstrated since its creative geniuses began pressing vinyl? But they're not the only ones asking.
Continue reading "Take Me To Your Leaders"Tue 10:01 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Todays' eWeek column is a little peek at the future, the immediate and the slightly more distant. I have preview copy of J.D. Lasica's Darknet:Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation so I called Lasica up for a chat.
Turns out he didn't just write a book. He and Marc Cantor have started something they're calling OurMedia.org. Kinda kewl. And even better demonstration of his theories: I knew the column was up at eWeek when I saw that Lasica had mentioned the column on his site.
Until you think – as The New York Times' John Markoff is pointing out today – about the Supreme Court hearing, MGM v. Grokster. I have a sneaking suspicion that a court ruling in Hollywood's favor isn't going to be the slam dunk everything thinks. I suspect it may well galvanize the very folks in Lasica's book– normal Joes and Josies who just happen to like fiddling with gizmos – in ways that the studio dudes don't quite grasp.
Why? Look at what folks like Josh Micah Marshall are doing on their on-line sites. Marhall is using technology – the power of his network of readers – teaching them how to lobby Congress. Imagine if the issue that everyone worried about wasn't the great – but for many people somewhat esoteric fight over Social Security – but a smack-down on how you could use your TiVo, you iPod or your computer. The conventional wisdom in Washington has always been that the TV broadcasters got what they wanted from Congress because they're a TV station in every district; Hollywood gets what it wants because of it star-power and fundraising ability. Those two political realities could be sorely tested very soon by tech-savvy on-line activists.
Thu 10:21 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Today's eWeek column is about the Federal Elections Commission and the hysteria that's broken out among political bloggers about potential oversight and regulation.
The commission isn't going to regulate blogging. But it is going to take a look at the relationship that many bloggers have with political campaigns.
Now, I'm one of those people who loves to say I told you so.
In this case, I did.
Thu 10:10 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and the World Bank job she may well get.
It's a great choice. First, it's one more way for the Bush Administration to solidify its support among married, career-minded women and for that alone you have to admire its political shrewdness. The World Bank gig is one of the ultimate Washington power jobs; whoever holds it helps determine economic policy around the globe. Fiorina would be the first woman to run the place. That's a big deal.
Continue reading "Carly's World"Wed 03:46 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about privacy and Paris Hilton.
Okay, so it's a cheap gimmick. But how often do you get to combine eWeek and Paris Hilton?
If you're not that tech-savvy, you might want to have a read and then a little think about how you store and protect information that's stored in the many little device you carry around. And if you tote a portable computer with all your banking and finanicial information you might want to have a hard think. Encrpytion my friends, encrpyption.
Thu 09:48 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Today's eWeek column is about patents. Again.
Shabbir Safdar at Mindshare Interactive Campaigns is asking other consultants who help non-profits raise money on-line to pool their patents. It's an interesting idea. If you're in politics and if you're in politics and you don't understand how Amazon managed to patent "one-click" buying, Safdar's idea is a sound one.
Thu 08:12 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about on-line lobbying and copyright. I'm not so sure that the on-line efforts to lobby on copyright are going to go anywhere. It feels a little bit too much like preaching to the choir.
The story started because – like a lot of folks trying to quantify the web -- I've been spending some time thinking about on-line numbers. And about distortion.
It starts with one of the first little things you have to cope with as a California-based reporter. When you talk about numbers in this state for almost anything, you usually talk about enormous sums. With more than 36 million people, the statistics for California are huge. Or they can be. So it's easy to swayed by pure numbers. But that's misleading.
A good, provocative website can also attract a lot of attention. Audience numbers can be enormous. So it's easy to get swayed by size. After all, we are accustom to the idea that a large audience indicates a groundswell of support for an idea, a TV program, a book.
The problem with web-related numbers is that they're HUGE. For instance, Yahoo serves 3.6 billion pages a day, to a worldwide audience. So rather than compare on-line to off line (did you know it only takes 100,000 books sold to make a "best seller"? Sad, no?), it might be better to compare new online entities to the enormous ones that already exist.
That skews things, too, of course. But I think in contemplating the web's reach – the potential for enormous numbers – it's really is better to compare the elephant to the ant.
Thu 07:48 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's column over at eWeek is about privacy. Lately it feels like this very tech topic is going mainstream. And unfortunately, it's going to provide us with yet anther view into the chasm between the last 20th Century and our current time. More and more, Washington, D.C. is the Old Country and the politicians working there - on both side of the aisle and all sides of this issue - need to struggle to catch their politics up to reality.
The elements of the privacy debate have been lingering around the edges of political discourse for a while, now. In his oh-so-scary scenario on how the U.S. lost the "war on terror, Richard Clarke talks in passing about a national ID card in this month's Atlantic. A few pages later, Jim Fallows talks about the ridiculous systems in place for airport "security" – take you shoes off! – and contrasts that to the inattention being paid to chemical plants, ports and a host of other potential targets.
Continue reading "You Know What They Say About Good Intentions, Don't You?"Fri 04:09 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's column at eWeek is about patents and IBM.
It's kinda geeky. But if you're working in the gap between politics and tech, it's interesting to see how Big Blue's business has changed. IBM is more and more a services business that helps people with software. That may well be where the business is headed. Which makes outsourcing even more a part of our futures.
Thu 03:00 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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It is miscellany day here at Politics From Left to Right. Lots of little things to do. Remember the $100,000 that James and Jim the Hotornots were giving away?
Well, they had to badger the winner but he finally answered the phone and collected. Here are the details. Since Eli Ivie, the lucky college student – ain't that great? – registered directly with VoteOrNot.org, James and Jim got to keep the $100,000 they were promising the person who referred the winner.
Thu 11:21 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This being the day before New Year's Eve, my eWeek column is about tech's political future.
It has one, never fear. And it's not a dismal as many would like to think. Silicon Valley has made great progress in talking to non-tech folks in their language. But there's lots of work that still needs to be done and tech folks have got to stop thinking with their hearts (Bush is bad) and get a little political sophistication.
The split between hardware vendors and software guys on copyright, the industry – particularly Silicon Valley's – refusal to really think hard about immigration and it's approach to tax policy are just plain lame. It's not quite irresponsible but it's getting there.
Thu 10:22 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is a little bit of inside baseball for tech folks.
If you care about copyright legislation – and, really, who doesn't? – you're probably going to spend this Congressional which starts Jan. 4th, twiddling your thumbs and waiting to tell us if Sony V. Betamax, the case on which most videotaping, Tivoing and iTuning rests, was a one-shot wonder.
If the court says it was – that producers of machines that can easily duplicate songs, TV shows and movies are liable for those actions when the break the law – we're all going to become overnight copyright experts. In the meantime, however, tech folks can concentrate on weightier issues beause Social Security and tax reform are going to suck most of the air out of Capitol Hill for a while.
Thu 02:06 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about privacy. Danny Weitzner, a long-time friend of mine from the Old Country, has come up with an interesting idea about transparency and privacy and how maybe – just maybe – hiding in plain site is a good idea.
Continue reading "See-Through Privacy"Thu 04:02 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Did you happen to catch the premier of KPCB-TV?
It ran last week on Charlie Rose. Taped at Google (a spectacularly successful Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers investment), it was a bunch of tech folks sitting around talking to Rose about the future.
It was quite the BS session. There wasn't a lot of news for anyone who's been rolling around Silicon Valley for the past few years and who understand that on this coast, venture capital firms are what law firms are in New York or Washington: Places where the smart and political savvy work so they can pool their resources and address books. But for New Yorkers, this was probably revolutionary stuff. They're still alive! My God! Honey, plug in the TiVo! The future -- it's here!
Continue reading "Brother From Another Planet"Mon 10:42 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week, over at eWeek.com I'm talking – again – about Sen. Arlen Specter. He's in big trouble. And if you're not crazy about Hollywood's attitude toward copyright – I'm talking to you Larry Lessig – you might want to consider what is to be done about the ugly political fight that's looming in the U.S. Senate. The web has a lot of political power and right now it's being used to corner a man whose moderate politics aren't new or unreasoned.
I've already suggested that you Liberal Democrats send Specter a few bucks. And yes, I am well aware that this is the man who disgraced and ridiculed Anita Hill. That, my friends, is how far we've come.
Thu 04:33 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about all the good things that President George W. Bush's re-election means for tech folks. It's a good-sized list that focuses on personal income. Basically if you're rich – and that's most of Silicon Valley with you money in stocks and real estate – you're going to do better. If you invest in companies, if you run one, if you own one, you're going to do very well.
But if you've got a job that pays less than $150,00 a year, well, things are a little different. The various programs the Bush administration is proposing to let wealthier folks defer taxable income aren't going to be as easy to access.
Fri 10:35 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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John Markoff has a simply amazing story on the front page of today's NYTimes business section.
It's about computer scientist Steve – not his real name, you can bet on that – Chen and his recent decision to commute between his new office in China and his home in San Jose California. That's right, he commutes. The Chinese offered to help him build his dream supercomputer. So, well, he followed his bliss, so to speak.
For the West Coast, that's only a 9 hour plane ride, like going to Paris from New York. But, culturally, Chen and his compatriots in bi-cultural living are breaking all kinds of new ground. This is one of the odder features of the 21st Century, one we still haven't really grappled with. When you leave your native country, even if you do so as a young man as Chen did, you do not need to forsake it, even if it was once hostile to the very ideas of the land you have called home for years. That's a new development and for U.S. politics toward Asia -- China in particular – and it's hugely important.
Continue reading "The Great Cray Of China"Mon 02:36 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Gov. Terminator is in Silicon Valley today getting folks to cheer on Republican Steve Poizner who's running against Democrat Ira Ruskin for a state Assembly seat.
Apart from Schwarzeneger, Poizner's got endorsements from The Chron and The Merc so chances are good – for a bunch of reasons – he'll get this thing. If he wins, Poizner becomes the second tech-rich guy to put down his cash and get into politics via Sacramento. There are, I'm sure 'cause I talk to most of them all the time, more to come. And they ain't all Democrats.
UPDATE: Today's LATimes has a nice piece on Poizner. See what a little Schwarzenegger star dust can do for you?
Mon 10:46 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about a very important article that's in this month's Harvard Business Review, "America's Looming Creativity Crisis" by Richard Florida. The HBR is – after its own special CEO-level version of a sex scandal -- making a play to be seriously serious without being stuffy. It's working.
This piece also marks Florida's solidifying his reputation as the consultant/professor/wise man most likely to fill Peter Drucker's shoes as the guy who knows what's going on in this century. He's got a new book coming out next year, a consulting business and, one suspects, a very hard-working PR team. I'm normally a little suspicious of trend-spotters like Florida. He created a trend with his first book, finding his creative class and now he's worried they'll go away. But this is an important set of insights.
Continue reading "Floridian Predictions"Thu 12:08 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about China and Google and Yahoo and France and how the conversation about what people can talk about is only going to heat up.
Part of the problem here is the lack of real understanding within the U.S. government about the 'net and how it works. I know, I know, they say they get it and then they trot out their Treos. But they're faking it.
Thu 10:51 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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The L.A. Times ran a very good story over the weekend about the rising volatility of household incomes. Americans are making more when they earn but their incomes can vary wildly from year to year. It's a nice thorough bit of reporting and it raises – or it should raise – a lot of questions about public policy.
But I'm betting it won't. Politicians don't have volatile incomes. Republicans are too busy rewarding corporations without regard for employees. Democrats are too hooked up with what unions want and unions are having a very hard time with all this self-employed new economy stuff. They can't see the relationship between the lack of sympathy their getting, Wal-mart's triumphs and the rise of the self-employed workforce. Even the people profiled in the Times story – and the reporter – didn't seem to know what to do about this new fact of economic life: There are big dry spells between pay days and everybody's got to look out, first and foremost, for themselves. 'cause no one else will.
Continue reading "The Ups are Ups and The Downs are Down"Mon 01:31 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about Diebold, the company that makes – by Slashdot's lights – the worst-ever voting machines ever made. It goes without saying that it using Microsoft's operating system. And yes, let's just get it out of our systems: Clearly when Diebold went up against the code Geeks it didn't really know what it was letting itself in for, did it?
Writing this column was a good excuse to take a look at all the hollering about Diebold's machines. And, once again, there is nothing – almost nothing – that can top Geek indignation at bad software and the determination to drive lousy engineering off the face of the planet by ridicule, white-paper critique or open hostility. It's almost worked with Diebold.
But, as Kim Alexander notes, elections have always been rife with cheating. Just 'cause a new group – a new group that's tech savvy and pissed off beyond belief by Florida's ballot nonsense -- is getting that not particularly surprising fact, doesn't mean their solutions are, in fact, the right ones. Much of the Deibold debate on the software side is – and will remain – theoretical. Yeah, you can hack the machines. You can hack any machine, you got enough time and money.
Thu 09:18 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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I'm a bit late in getting to it – and site renovation is only half the excuse – but this week's column over on eWeek.com is about Creative Commons, its licensing scheme and the political implications.
I haven't been a fan of the CC crowd for a couple of reasons, the most important being the whiff of nerd-determinism that seemed to get stirred up anytime some TCP/IP junkie uttered the words "intellectual property." But I'm getting over it.
I'm getting over it in part because the world is catching up to the web and, well, that means me too. It's still a hard path. I went to a conference on California government and policy on Friday that was more notable for what it didn't have for a gathering of more than 10 people. There was no wifi, no bloggers, no IRC chat, no social networking gurus, no, well none of the stuff I know now and love or, perhaps more accurately, need to get through my day.
It was a little trip back to the "Old Country" -- Wahington, D.C. and well, that's where they still make the rules.
After the eWeek piece appeared, Russell McOrmand wrote to say that CC is now officially up and running in Canada.
Sat 12:00 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week’s eWeek column is a round up of stuff in Congress that tech folks care about: Stock options and copyright.
Nothing too fancy; the action’s going to come during a lame duck Congressional session after the election. Lame ducks used to be unusual. There was one in 1994 for Nafta. That was the first in more than 10 years (or five Congressinal sessions). But things have gotten so bad, now they have lame ducks every session. I’m telling you, we’re due for a change if for no other reason that the nation’s business interests cant’ get anything done in Congress. A paralyzed government is bad for all of us.
In doing the eWeek piece I found some interesting numbers on Congressional races. It’s been overshadowed by the presidential race and, of course, we here in California are pretty much written off on a number of levels. But there really is a shot that the Democrats could take the Senate. Same on the House side. They’re slim odd but the presidential race has very tight margins. And yes, as you might expect, many of the presidential swing states are the one with tight Congressional or Senate races. So maybe, just maybe Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi could become Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Now, there’s a party I’d like to attend.
About.com has a couple of nice charts on House and Senate races so you have a look. The Republican majority in the Senate is 8 seats. In the House it’s 12 and there’s some reason for a little teeny bit of optimism.
Thu 11:01 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Today’s eWeek column is about, well, it’s about Redwood City.
It wasn’t my idea but I spent a little time in Redwood City back in 1999 when it was a dusty little out-of-the way county seat with a few tech companies looking for cheap office space, a couple of burrito joints, some bad sushi places and well, not a lot going on at the Courthouse. It was only a short drive to Palo Alto but it felt like a little time travel from one version of the Peninsula to the other.
Continue reading "RWC Wires Up"Thu 09:52 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Today’s eWeek column is an interview with John Kerry California Finance Chairman Mark Gorenberg.
I called him up and asked to make the case for tech folks to vote for his candidate. I wasn’t so much interested in foreign policy – not for this interview – as I was in talking about the business environment. The idea was to talk past the sound-bite stuff about stock options and outsourcing and get some sense of why guy like Gorenberg – well-off, tech savvy, once a Republican – find Kerry’s candidacy attractive.
The short answer: Some personal sacrifice (higher taxes) is worth a long-term pay-off (a more profitable business environment). The Bush folks – I’m going to do an interview with a Gorenberg peer next week – say something similar, of course, saying that cuts put money in the hands of folks like Gorenberg who make investments.
Thu 10:45 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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