PDF, Very useful.
Yearly Archives: 2005
Berlind on Getting Ripped off By DRM
Secondary in my mind (not by much) to the DRM goal vector is the technology vector. This is where Hollywood’s need to protect its turf has turned into a gift from heaven for the technology companies that incessantly seek out market control points through the use of proprietary technologies. To you, proprietary generally means one of two things. Lack of compatibility or increased cost to get compatibility. Today, the different DRM technology makers are in a race to drive as much DRMed content (DRMed with their different DRM technologies that is) into market as possible. By doing so, they are securing the future of their playback technologies because you’ll always need them to access your content. In this context (driving DRMed content to market), Microsoft is the tortoise and Apple is the hare
Milwaukee negotiating for citywide wireless network – 2005-10-12
Milwaukee working on citywide wireless network – 2005-10-12
The city of Milwaukee is in negotiations with Midwest Fiber Networks, Milwaukee, to have the company install a citywide wireless network at a cost of $20 million to $25 million.
Yin and Yang: Gates & Jobs
While Bill Gates visited the UW Wednesday (more from the Badger Herald), Steve Jobs introduced new imacs, ipods (with video playback) and the ability to buy and download video online, via the iTunes music store (lookout Netflix). John Markoff and Laura Holson have more on Jobs introductions:
But Mr. Jobs, Apple Computer’s co-founder and chief executive, concluded a 90-minute presentation at a theater here by framing his plans in the broadest possible terms. “I think this is the start of something really big,” he said. “Sometimes the first step is the hardest one, and we’ve just taken it.”
Apple is not the first company to enter the market for digital video. A range of efforts are under way by consumer electronics companies and studios looking for ways to make high-quality digital video available on computers and hand-held players.
View the presentation here (Wynton Marsalis plays toward the end, which is simply wonderful).
Sun Prairie, China and the Yuan
Richard T. Wilkey (owner of Fisher-Barton), who runs a small Wisconsin company that makes cutting blades for lawn mowers and harvesting equipment, worries that he will soon be vulnerable to competition from China. But he is afraid that by the time he gets help from Washignton, it ma be too late.
KPMG Tax Shelters: A Very Strange Indictment
Robert Weisberg and David Mills:
The recent indictment of some KPMG partners makes for very interesting reading. In the months leading up to it (and the now-rumored indictment of other tax advisors on similar grounds), numerous news stories suggested the KPMG accountants had somehow knowingly participated in tax fraud by creating fake losses for wealthy clients. Whether or not this proves true, the indictment makes no such allegation. While the accountants and their clients may have done some bad things, the notion that their behavior is criminal, and even sufficiently criminal to threaten the very existence of this major firm and its thousands of jobs, casts doubt on the fairness and judgment with which the federal prosecutors have exercised their discretion.
Why did they do so in this case? Probably for the simple reason that they are — quite properly — offended by the proliferation of newfangled and economically questionable tax shelters, yet at the same time exasperated that Congress shows no interest in legislating these shelters out of existence or enacting a clear “business purpose” requirement, in spite of repeated requests from the Internal Revenue Service. The prosecutors seem to be venting their frustration over this failure to act by fashioning felony charges out of ethereal legal material.
Delphi’s Bankruptcy
Peter DeLorenzo points out the stakes in play with Delphi’s bankruptcy:
The Delphi bankruptcy is the latest major crack in the pressure cooker that the U.S. auto industry has become over the last two decades – only this one is definitely the tipping point into a dimension that industry insiders have been dreading. Lower cost competition from around the world has changed the auto manufacturing landscape completely – and Detroit has been operating under a model that has been obsolete for years. Strapped with a crushing wage and benefits structure negotiated in an environment fueled by an optimism that in retrospect had absolutely no right to exist, the American car companies and the United Auto Workers union are now facing a future that revolves around a harsh reality that comes down to this one simple but all-encompassing statement: change or die.
Northern Opportunities
Fascinating article on plans to open polar shipping routes. Reminds me of 15th century opportunism:
With major companies and nations large and small adopting similar logic, the Arctic is undergoing nothing less than a great rush for virgin territory and natural resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Even before the polar ice began shrinking more each summer, countries were pushing into the frigid Barents Sea, lured by undersea oil and gas fields and emboldened by advances in technology. But now, as thinning ice stands to simplify construction of drilling rigs, exploration is likely to move even farther north.
Entrepreneurs: Austin’s Soup Peddler
Yes … that’s David Ansel, the Soup Peddler, in a lengthy spread from November’s issue of FOOD AND WINE magazine. (Nice to see the Law of Remarkability in action.)
This autumn we find the Soup Peddler in the beginning throes of his fifth soup season. But this year, many things have changed for Brand Autopsy’s favorite jumboSHRIMP Marketing business. Gone is the infamous delivery bike in favor of deliveries by refrigerated trucks. And gone is the single-minded soup menu. In its place is an expanded menu including entrees because as David said in an email to his Soupies,
Wholesale Surveillance: Boston’s License Plate Scanners
he Boston Transportation Department, among other duties, hands out parking tickets. If a car has too many unpaid parking tickets, the BTD will lock a Denver Boot to one of the wheels, making the car unmovable. Once the tickets are paid up, the BTD removes th boot.
The white SUV in this photo is owned by the Boston Transportation Department. Its job is to locate cars that need to be booted. The two video cameras on top of the vehicle are hooked up to a laptop computer running license plate scanning software. The vehicle drives around the city scanning plates and comparing them with the database of unpaid parking tickets. When a match is found, the BTD officers jump out and boot the offending car. You can sort of see the boot on the front right wheel of the car behind the SUV in the photo.
