BoingBoing has an interesting article about a joint RIAA/MPAA move started yesterday on Capitol Hill. From the article: ‘Hollywood has fielded a shockingly ambitious piece of Analog Hole legislation while everyone was out partying in costume. Under a new proposed Analog Hole bill, it will be illegal to make anything capable of digitizing video unless it either has all its outputs approved by the Hollywood studios, or is closed-source, proprietary and tamper-resistant. The idea is to make it impossible to create an MPEG from a video signal unless Hollywood approves it.
Yearly Archives: 2005
Altavista, Google and MSN Search
Don Dodge, former Director of Engineering at Altavista, once king of the hill in the internet search game, sheds some light on what went wrong in the 1990’s:
The AltaVista experience is sad to remember. We should have been the “Google” of today. We were pure search, no frills, no consumer portal crap. DEC is guilty of neglect in its handling of AltaVista. Compaq put a bunch of PC guys in charge who relied on McKinsey consultants and copied AOL, Excite, Yahoo and Lycos into the consumer portal game. It should have been clear that being the 5th or 6th player in the consumer portal business wouldn’t work. AltaVista spent hundreds of millions on acquisitions that never worked, and spent $100M on a brand advertising campaign. They spent NOTHING to improve core search. That was the undoing of AltaVista.
You need to remember the context of the time. It seemed like every week AOL was announcing a $50M deal to sell traffic. Yahoo was doing it too. The game was build traffic with search, keep them on your site with content, and sell traffic and “screen real estate” to sponsors for $20-$40M a pop up front. There was no proven search business model other than annoying banner ads that were not really contextual.
“Free American Broadband!”
Next time you sit down to pay your cable-modem or DSL bill, consider this: Most Japanese consumers can get an Internet connection that’s 16 times faster than the typical American DSL line for a mere $22 per month.
Across the globe, it’s the same story. In France, DSL service that is 10 times faster than the typical United States connection; 100 TV channels and unlimited telephone service cost only $38 per month. In South Korea, super-fast connections are common for less than $30 per month. Places as diverse as Finland, Canada and Hong Kong all have much faster Internet connections at a lower cost than what is available here. In fact, since 2001, the U.S. has slipped from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband use per capita. While other countries are taking advantage of the technological, business and education opportunities of the broadband era, America remains lost in transition.
How did this happen? Why has the U.S. fallen so far behind the rest of its economic peers? The answer is simple. These nations all have something the U.S. lacks: a national broadband policy, one that actively encourages competition among providers, leading to lower consumer prices and better service.
Via David Isenberg.
Fabius Maximus on Plame and the Decline of the State
Fascinating stuff.
NSA’s Guide to “Secure” Computing
Madison Leaf Collection Information
City of Madison Streets Department has a site with more information on local leaf collection.
This Weekend’s Other Event: The Madison Food & Wine Show
The Madison Food & Wine Show was held this weekend at the Alliant Energy Center. A first time visitor, I found the event enjoyable. Unsurprisingly, there was no shortage of cheese. One of the more interesting offerings was Swiss Valley’s fondue. Whole Foods had an elaborate set of tastings, from Olives to cheeses. The surprise of the show? a knife sharpening service. Photos here. Gail Ambrosius (Dark Chocolate) was also a worthwhile stop. Website with links to vendor’s site.
SBC’s Whitacre on “His Pipes”
SBC, Wisconsin’s largest incumbent telco, evidently does not believe in the open internet. Chairman Ed Whitacre expects internet firms to pay to send content to local customer’s homes (that TV thinking again). Perhaps I’m missing something, but I’ve not seen any SBC Fibre deployed to the home. We’re still using the copper networks, paid for by all of us, during the regulated telecommunications era. Fortunately, I think by the time SBC gets around to fibre (will they?), wireless will perhaps, be pervasive.
The telcos should be investing in personal web services to use these pipes.
Bob Berger has more.
Tea Leaves: Google & Madison Ave: Quid Pro Quo on Advertising?
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Not content to just suck advertising dollars from Web search, Google is using its windfall to pay for an eclectic range of ambitious projects that have the potential to radically disrupt other industries. Among other things, it is offering to build a free wireless Internet network in San Francisco, plans to scan nearly every book published and is testing a free classified advertising system it calls Google Base.
More quietly, Google is also preparing to disrupt the advertising business itself, by replacing creative salesmanship with cold number-crunching. Its premise so far is that advertising is most effective when seen only by people who are interested in what’s for sale, based on what they are searching for or reading about on the Web. Because Google’s ad-buying clients pay for ads only when users click on them, they can precisely measure their effectiveness – and are willing to pay more for ads that really sell their products.
Interestingly, Google placed a full page color ad, seeking advertising sales people, in today’s NY Times Business section. From what I can tell (I subscribe to the fishwrap version of the Times), this is rather rare. John Batelle raises some useful points as well.
Knutsen’s State Street Pepper Spray Halloween Video Clips
Kristian Knutsen, perched at the WSUM studio’s, posts video clips of the pepper spray crowd clearing operation. Dane101 has more, along with Channel3000 and the State Journal.