Monthly Archives: December 2001

It isn’t just Microsoft that treats people this way. Every big company with significant lock-in potential pulls tricks on customers. I just installed America Online’s Windows software, version 7.0, and found to my astonishment that it had slipped a URL … Continue reading →

Doc Searls: Microlith. Whatever else it’s about, lock-in appears to be, literally, the strategy. I’d always laughed at the analogy of Microsoft as the Borg civilization from Star Trek. It’s getting more realistic all the time. This company is relentless … Continue reading →

Brad Templeton: Origin of the term “spam” to mean net abuse. Much to the chagrin of Hormel Foods, maker of the canned “Shoulder Pork and hAM” luncheon meat, the term “spam” has today come to mean network abuse, particularly junk … Continue reading →

The Register: The Microsoft Secure PC: MS patents a lock-down OS. The patent application seeks to protect “a computerized method for a digital rights management operating system comprising: assuming a trusted identity; executing a trusted application; loading rights-managed data into … Continue reading →

I spent the morning in San Jose at the Silicon Valley Technology and Homeland Security Summit & Expo (the Mercury News is one of the sponsors), where I moderated a panel on corporate network security. Good speakers, fine material for … Continue reading →

J.D. Lasica wonders if the murderous Osama bin Laden will be Time’s “Person of the Year” and predicts there will be hell to pay if he is. My prediction: It’ll be bin Laden and George W. Bush together. Comments

I’m tuning into CSPAN’s coverage of a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’shearing on Microsoft and the antitrust settlement. One senator quoted a survey showing that 70 percent of Americans want the case settled. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee chairman, … Continue reading →

A tip of the hat to the folks at Google, who’ve posted Usenet messages dating back 20 years. It’s a little weird, as some people have noted, to have your every public online utterance available for inspection, but there are … Continue reading →

As Molly Ivins so accurately notes, the Enron debacle is a national scandal. It’s not just a story of arrogance, however. Enron’s collapse reflects a system that protects the kind of opaque business dealings that reward insiders while leaving the … Continue reading →

Sorry for the reduced number of postings lately. I’ve been swamped with other things, and spent the better part of of yesterday afternoon in a dentist’s chair. I’ll be back at it soon. Comments