__/ [ Roy Culley ] on Sunday 31 December 2006 14:41 \__
> begin risky.vbs
> <1631394.phEcO6UhQi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>>
>> It's the end of the line for Microsoft: sorry, Mr Gates, you've just
>> been Googled
>>
>> [snip]
>
> Not a bad article overall. I liked these parts especially:
>
> If you're an old-media outfit, creating 'content' is an expensive
> business: you have to hire producers, directors, studios, actors,
> writers and a host of other low-life types, pay them good money up
> front and wait until they produce the goods. Only then can you
> start to make money from it. But the explosion of user-generated
> content suggests that there are millions of schmucks out there who
> are willing to do all this for free! So the question for the
> old-media world was: 'how do we cash in on this racket?'
>
> Oh dear, seems it is not only OSS developers that will are happy to
> give their work away. What will our wintrolls have to say about that!
> :-)
Yes, it's this whole phenomenon/movement known as Free culture. Creative
Commons comes to mind (Lessig has just had somebody else take his chair).
The Internet enables people to share vast amounts of content and cull out
the middlemen. This leads to better products that involve everyone. Same
with code. Where would Linux be without broadband, for example?
One side effect of this is that content providers must evolve. I participate
in a site that's explaining Open Source journalism (from software's
perspective) and it has actually become quite popular. Scared journalists
are trying to learn about inevitable changes. Even an Australian member of
parliament took notice. Over the (un)holidays I sent a friend of mine who's
in journalism the following articles:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/29/photojournalism_and_copyright/
http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2006/12/love_american_style_web_20_and_narcissism_1.html
These are just the recent few among many more that I've collected. Quite
eye-opening, isn't it? The industry relies on Microsoft and the rest of the
greed mafia to change the rules. Remember Allison? The land of the free?
Hell no. The "Land of Nothing for Free".
The Land of "Nothing for free"
,----[ Quote ]
| I was down there to give a talk on "Open Source Business Models"
| for a conference. Also represented were entertainment industry
| lawyers, "Big Telecom" management, and a smattering of software
| people. Microsoft was there of course. You can't hold a church
| fete with "Open Source" on the banner these days without Microsoft
| turning up and requesting representation. At least we also had
| Bruce Perens on our side to help make up the balance. The venue
| eas an unbelievably expensive hotel. Even though I was on
| expenses I balked at asking the company to pay for a room
| there and found something cheaper (not by much) a few miles
| down the road.
`----
http://samba.org/samba/news/articles/low_point/column11.html
> The trauma of producing Vista has shaken Microsoft to the core,
> and revealed the extent to which it has become a middle-aged
> company which is poorly adapted for a net-centric world. Its
> dominance of the PC has become a wasting asset, because the PC is
> no longer the cornerstone of our information ecology. The network
> has become the computer, and it is Google, not Microsoft, that
> dominates there.
>
> MS ignored the Internet when it first became widely popular. They got
> away with it that time by using unscrupulous means. Can they do it
> again? I don't think so.
Bill Gates in 1993... was he truly saying "the Internet -- we're not
interested in it"? People still listen to this man's prediction. Reminds me
of the song "If I were a rich man" which suggests/says that people will
stupidly take your views more serious if you are wealthy. Never mind the
fact that corruption gets many people to the top and often they are rather
dumb... just look at some presidents... or Larry Ellison. There's a
relationship between aggressiveness and mental capacity.
--
~~ Kind greetings and happy holidays!
Roy S. Schestowitz | Run a Linux server, sit on your hands all day
http://Schestowitz.com | RHAT GNU/Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
3:00pm up 74 days 1:14, 7 users, load average: 0.47, 0.16, 0.13
http://iuron.com - help build a non-profit search engine
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