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June 21 Microsoft stops delivering Money Microsoft has decided to stop supporting and developing Microsoft Money. It has competed with Intuit's Quicken for at least a decade, and Microsoft Money has its loyal fans who prefer it to Quicken.
However, times are tough everywhere -- even at Microsoft -- and unprofitable products are being discontinued. Microsoft has recently discontinued development of its Encarta encyclopedia and its OneCare antivirus products. It's too bad that the 300 million dollars that Microsoft spent on PR for Windows Vista last summer hadn't been spent more fruitfully elsewhere. Vista has been a money pit for Microsoft.
Microsoft is expected to ship Windows 7 in October, which just might put Microsoft back on track.
Intuit is working on a data conversion tool that will help Microsoft Money users move their data to Quicken. It's expected to appear this fall.
Visit my website: http://russbellew.com
June 01 What's the future for OpenOffice and MySQL?  On April 20, Sun Microsystems agreed to be purchased by Oracle (http://www.sun.com/third-party/global/oracle/). Oracle is the leader in heavy-duty relational database systems. Sun Microsystems has overseen two popular software products: OpenOffice (an excellent free alternative to Microsoft Office); and MySQL, a relational database with over 6 million installations. Both OpenOffice and MySQL are open source products, meaning that for all practical purposes they are available to users at no cost. In practice, most organizations either purchase support contracts or hire IT staff to provide support. MySQL has won wide acceptance since its creation in 1996. Heavy-hitters Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia, Google, Nokia, and YouTube are built upon MySQL database engines. MySQL has steadily grown into a heavy-duty product that poses a potential threat to Oracle. The TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of MySQL is about one-sixteenth of the TCO for Oracle: http://www.mysql.com/tcosavings/ I had feared that Oracle, if allowed by the US Department of Justice to control MySQL, would find a way to kill MySQL. One of the creators of MySQL, a Finnish programmer named Ulf Michael Widenius (nickname Monty), recently left Sun Microsystems and formed a company called Monty Program AB (http://askmonty.org/). Read Monty's blog: http://monty-says.blogspot.com/ Monty has also recently formed the Open Database Alliance http://opendatabasealliance.com/ It appears that Monty's moves -- effectively forking the development of MySQL -- will pull the rug out from under Oracle's purchase of MySQL, should the DOJ approve the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle. Release 3.1 of OpenOffice was just published a few weeks ago. I hope that its development continues. There's no love lost between Oracle's chairman Larry Ellison and Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates, so my hope is that Mr. Ellison will provide the resources necessary to keep OpenOffice a strong competitor to Microsoft Office. The conclusion? If we're lucky, both OpenOffice and MySQL will continue to thrive, despite Oracle's purchase of Sun Microsystems. Visit my website: http://russbellew.com May 30 Speak with a human being
If you need to speak with a company or government agency, go to this site first to see if there's a trick to bypassing their voice menu system: http://www.gethuman.com They've begun to allow users to comment and grade support. Here's a related site: http://get2human.com/ One theme that runs through the comments is that tech support from India ranges from horrible to slightly substandard. The tech support from some companies such as Hewlett-Packard is truly abysmal. What happened to the simple quality control step that every CEO and COO should take: simply call your own company to ask for assistance? Visit my website: russbellew.com May 21 Here's a new powerful information tool illustration: Wolfram Research
To call WolframAlpha a "search engine" doesn't do it justice. Its creator describes it as a "computational knowledge engine".
It was just placed on-line a few days ago, and already it's pretty darned impressive. Unlike Google, its knowledge base is built upon structured data. When you query it, it adds organization, interpretation, and calculation to return answers -- not links to websites. I'm impressed -- but:
Do you remember 2001: A Space Odyssey? Do you remember how HAL would obediently answer all questions posed by Dave and Frank? WolframAlpha attempts to do HAL's job -- before HAL turned to the dark side. Have a look; the FAQ page is worth reading. Here's its URL: http://www.wolframalpha.com/ <-The word "alpha" indicates that it's under test.
Watch a video demo (by its creator): http://www39.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html
 Stephen Wolfram in 2002WolframAlpha is the brainchild of respected British scientist / physicist / mathematician Stephen Wolfram, who created the program Mathematica, which is beloved by today's mathematicians. Listen to his A New Kind of Science talk on how to model complex systems: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail202.html
WolframAlpha uses Dr. Wolfram's idea that complex systems such as human language can be broken down into simple programs. I hope that WolframAlpha grows up to become WolframOmega.
Visit my website: http://russbellew.com
May 20 Resurrect old hardware with Linux Xubuntu's desktop
A customer came to me with a low-mileage 1999 vintage laptop which she wished to use for occasional web browsing. (specs: Dell Inspiron 3500. 333 MHz CPU, 64 MB Ram, 4.7 GB disk. Every spec was about one-tenth of today's PCs!). It was running Windows 98 Second Edition. Microsoft stopped providing Windows 98 updates years ago, and Windows 98 is now very vulnerable to attack. Worse, today's anti-virus and anti-spyware programs won't run on it. Shouldn't she just scrap the laptop?
Since the laptop was in like-new condition, we decided to extend its life by injecting some 21st century blood into it. We topped up its memory slots with the maximum RAM (a mere 256 MB!) and replaced Windows 98 with Xubuntu 8.10. It's not Microsoft Windows, but to a user it appears similar, and includes a word processor, spreadsheet, graphics / photo editor, and Mozilla Firefox web browser. I've not been able to get its onboard soundcard to work, but everything else works.
There are three big upsides to any Linux-based desktop operating system when compared to MS Windows:
A potential downside is that Windows applications won't run on Linux without the assistance of either Wine or running a copy of Windows XP within a virtual machine.
If you have a tired desktop or laptop PC -- especially one without a legitimate Windows license -- consider breathing new life into it with some form of Linux. Most are available for free, such as http://www.xubuntu.org/ I tried Damn Small Linux (too minimal for this case), Puppy Linux (it was okay, but just barely), and Xubuntu 8.04, 8.10, and 9.04. Xubuntu 9.04 added some features but did something to slow response to user inputs. I settled on Xubuntu 8.10. (Xubuntu imposes a lighter load on the hardware than Ubuntu because it has a leaner desktop.)
You can first just boot with the Xubuntu (or Ubuntu) Live CD, to see whether it's acceptable and runs okay on your hardware. (Of course it'll be slow when booting off the CD-ROM drive.) If so, you can install it on your hard drive from the same CD-ROM.
Oh -- one caveat: Xubuntu and its siblings may not install without problems on all hardware. I'm now fighting to get it to install on a 1.1 GHz AMD Athlon desktop PC -- I have no idea why it won't install on this system, yet it installed with almost no problems on the old laptop. Let me know of your Linux adventures, please.
Visit my website: http://russbellew.com May 08 Adobe Reader has become (dangerous) bloatwareDisabling Javascript within Adobe Reader
If you use Windows, you probably use Adobe Reader. It 's been overweight for a long time. The newest update enables Javascript by default. (Why? I have no idea.) This allows exploits by bad guys who embed malicious Javascript code in seemingly benign Adobe Acrobat or PDF files. Acck!
You can switch off Javascript from within Adobe Reader by choosing Edit, Preferences, Javascript. Turn it off. (There's no reason to embed Javascript within a PDF file! It can only cause grief.) Uncheck the box labeled "Enable Acrobat Javascript" and then press the OK button at the bottom of the Preferences page.
Supposedly Adobe has agreed that enabling Javascript by default was dumb and will turn it off by default in next week's Adobe Reader update. (Thanks to Steve Gibson for the heads up.)
I recommend a better solution:
Visit my website: russbellew.com April 24 Conficker will be tough to eliminate
Last night, Steve Gibson discussed the details of the surprisingly clever Conficker worm. You can listen to it on my website's Infections page. You'll see a widget (illustrated above) on the right side of the page. Click on the widget's Menu button (upper left corner) and choose the third selection, the Security Now! podcast. Press the round blue button to the right of the headphone icon. Give it a few minutes to download; the green bar at the bottom of the widget will indicate download progress. Once it's downloaded, you'll hear the podcast through your PC's speakers.
In a nutshell, Conficker originates in the Ukraine and makes its target computer a member of a botnet. It hides to resist detection and removal, blocks access to anti-virus and Windows update sites, and uses strong encryption to communicate with its master so that it can update itself. To protect your Windows computer from infection, keep your copies of Windows and anti-virus and anti-spyware up to date, and disable file and printer sharing on your laptop PC when it's away from home.
Why is Conficker called a worm? Because it crawls through networks. Steve states, "Once it's launched onto the 'Net, it finds vulnerable hosts, infects them with no user interaction, and they turn around and start trying to infect others."
Read the transcript: http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-193.pdf
April 16 Here's a simple Conficker worm test The infamous Conficker worm prevents an infected computer from accessing many anti-virus and security websites. (Some other malware does this as well.) At the end of this article is a link to a web page that uses this fact to simply tell you whether your computer might be infected or not.
When you go to this web page, your web browser will attempt to display the logos from 6 anti-virus and security sites. If you see all 6 logos (as illustrated above), your computer probably isn't infected with Conficker.
If you click on the link below and you don't see all 6 logos while connected to the Internet, either your computer is infected or there's another reason (access to the anti-virus and security sites is blocked by firewall, proxy, or router restrictions, etc.).
Test your computer: http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/infection_test/cfeyechart.html
Visit my website: russbellew.com
April 13 iTunes music will no longer be copy-protected One of my complaints about Apple's iPod and their iTunes store has been that their "special" MP3 files contained copy-protection that prevented a given MP3 file from being played on other machines. (This copy-protection scheme is called DRM: Digital Rights Management. I call it Digital Restrictions Management. You'll be pleased to learn that it's built into Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7.)
Apple has negotiated a deal that removes copy-protection, in exchange for variable pricing: new releases will be priced at $1.29, most songs will be priced at $0.99, and older songs will be priced at $0.69.
As far as I know, the iPod was the last platform with copy-protected music. Good riddance.
Visit my website: russbellew.com April 03 Every picture tells a story photo: esthrDo you recognize these people? Why are they smiling?
The man on the left is Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, and he's smiling because he's the founder of Craigslist. The man on the right is Arthur Sulzberger Jr (nicknamed "Pinch"), publisher and chairman of the board of directors of The New York Times. Craigslist has all but killed print newspapers' cash cow, the classified advertising section. For many decades the Sulzberger dynasty at The New York Times prospered thanks in part to classified ads in The New York Times. Now that income stream is dried up, thanks to Craig. I can't imagine why Pinch is smiling, unless Craig is telling him about Craigslist's plan to launch a book review publication . . .
I found this photo on flickr. The photographer is Esther Dyson, an early flickr investor. I guess that Esther took the photo at a conference in Aspen, Colorado. She captioned it, "The cool thing is how cheap we are . . ." I think it's great that she allows schlubs like me to use some of her photos. Thanks, Esther!
Visit my website: russbellew.com Search Craigslist in multiple cities photo: GerlosCraigslist has replaced newspapers' classified ads. However, from within a given city's Craigslist, you can't search other cities' Craigslist ads. Craig wants it that way. So bear in mind that the ideas that follow don't conform to Craig's wishes. And now . . . here are a few ways to simultaneously search Craigslist in multiple cities:
1. Go to www.google.com
2. Use www.CraigsPal.com, which is available in paid and free versions. You can search multiple cities and organize and sort results by date, price, and location in one results screen. View the videos on the site to see if it does what you want.
3. Use www.Crazedlist.org. It works within a Mozilla Firefox web browser. When you first connect to www.crazedlist.org, you'll see a pop-up window with instructions. Open another tab within Mozilla Firefox, and follow the crazedlist instructions. Crazedlist is simple, doesn't organize the results for you, and doesn't require that you install any software on your computer. I like it.
  photo by webmink photo: Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.
Visit my website: russbellew.com
April 02 Virustotal.com: Thoroughly scan a file for viruses To protect your computer from infection, you should scan all files that arrive as attachments to incoming email messages. Asking the antivirus program that's installed on your PC to scan the file is good. To be certain that it hasn't returned a false negative, you can upload the file in question to http://www.virustotal.com, and virustotal will submit your file to about 34 virus scanners.
Procedure:
If your file is clean of infections, Virustotal will return results similar to this:
Visit my website: russbellew.com
April 01 April 1: IBM tries to patent offshoring IBM's recent outsourcing and layoff actions have made it hard to tell reality from parody. Can you place this story about IBM's attempt to patent offshoring in one category or the other? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/30/ibm_offshore_patent/ Worthwhile comments on this April 1 article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/30/ibm_offshore_patent/comments/
Visit my website: russbellew.com
Retro docu: The Swiss spaghetti harvest, 1957View a documentary of the Swiss spaghetti harvest of 1957 on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyUvNnmFtgI
 . . . or here on BBC's own archive site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_7180000/newsid_7185500?redirect=7185593.stm&news=1&nbram=1&bbwm=1&bbram=1&nbwm=1
Here's the story behind the making of this memorable documentary which first aired on April 1, 1957: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Swiss_Spaghetti_Harvest/ March 27 IBM plans to outsource (another) 5,000 jobs Alternate title: Dude, where's my job?
Earlier this year, IBM announced that it planned to lay off about 4,700 workers from its Global Business Services division and outsource their jobs to India. Within the past few days, it's been learned that they plan to outsource another 5,000 jobs from the same division to India. This division employs about 180,000 workers distributed throughout the world.
In February, in response to outsourcing complaints, IBM magnaminously announced that outsourced American workers could relocate to India to resume their old positions -- at a reduction in pay to the Indian pay scale. Trying to put a happy face on this dismal news, IBM dubbed this plan, "Project Match". IBM is willing to assist with relocation costs of laid off American workers to other countries as well: Brazil, China, and supposedly Czech Republic, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. Salaries for all of these jobs are based upon the local pay scales (read: a fraction of US salaries).
My, how IBM has changed! Until the late 1980s, IBM never laid off workers. A programmer friend said that as one IBM project was completed, if there weren't a need to hop right on a new project, her boss would tell her to spend her slack time learning a new language or system, until more programmers were needed . . . while remaining on the payroll. Those days are gone.
Read the Barron's article (I like the comments): http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2009/03/25/ibm-cutting-some-service-jobs-moving-work-to-india/
I know that we're approaching April Fool's day. You may have thought that this news was a joke. Sorry: it is not a joke.
Visit my website: russbellew.com
March 26 Software helps recover your stolen laptop I like the idea of having software installed on a laptop so that if (or when) it's stolen, the laptop will assist in its own recovery. There are a number of commercial packages that will do this, and now there's an open-source alternative that's available at no cost.
One commercial product that's available in a 90-day trial version at no cost is Laptop Retriever from Front Door Software. It will use a stolen laptop's Wi-Fi network adapter to, in the background, sniff out nearby Wi-Fi networks and use them to report its position and attempt to locate the thief. It also allows some remote control of the laptop, including hard drive lockout, by the theft victim. It's priced at $30 for a 3-year license. There may be a free single laptop license for students. This article describes how it works: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/may/11/software-locks-down-stolen-laptop/ Publisher's website: http://www.frontdoorsoftware.com/
Other commercial products include The CyberAngel (http://www.thecyberangel.com), PhoneHome (http://www.pcphonehome.com), and Lojack For Laptops (http://www.lojackforlaptops.com).
The open-source product, called Adeona, is developed by grad students at the University of Washington and is available in Windows, Mac, and Linux versions without cost. Read its FAQ: http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/faq.html I like the feature that allows its Mac version to use the Macbook's built-in camera to capture images of the stolen laptop's user (presumably the thief) and upload them to a server that may be accessed by the rightful owner. It lacks the remote hard-drive locking and Google mapping features of some commercial products, but its price ($0) is right.
 Q: Dude, where's my laptop?
A: The burglar stole it.
Visit my website: russbellew.com
March 25 What exactly is inside a Google data center?Google has been less than forthcoming about the details of its data centers, since they regard them as tools that provide a competitive advantage. Here are 3 pages of information about Google's data centers and their locations: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/03/27/google-data-center-faq/
 Google data center locations, 2008Here's a peek inside Google's inner workings and hidden mechanisms, in surprising detail, from a Google fellow: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9955184-7.html?tag=mncol;title Highlights:
 Google's chairman and CEO is Eric Schmidt, who followed Ray Noorda as CEO of Novell. One of Novell's better pieces of server software was named NetWare SFT-III (System Fault Tolerance), which debuted around 1991. It ran on two identical servers, and kept running even when one server died. It worked like magic: when a server failed, users had no indication that the system had been severely wounded. Novell later developed this into server clustering, and it sounds like Google has implemented this idea on a broad scale, based upon a Linux core. If Google were to market this server operating system (and who knows what they have planned?), it could seriously affect server software sales for Microsoft and Sun.
Visit my website: russbellew.com
Google will replace a paper mill with a data centerGoogle recently confirmed that it will open a new data center in Hamina, Finland. (Why Finland?) They bought the building and hundreds of acres of land last year from Finnish company Stora Enso, for $51 million. It had housed a newsprint plant (i.e., a paper mill). Stora Enso had closed the plant in early 2008 because of declining demand for newsprint. Google plans to invest about 200 million Euros in the data center and staff it with about 50 workers.
How's that for a symbol of the shift away from publishing on paper to publishing online?
Visit my website: russbellew.com
March 24 Giddyap! It's fun to watch customers succeed rider: Dave MooreKim Moore, a student of mine, owns a horse stable and riding school. She told me last week that her husband and business partner, Dave, just won the Florida Derby. There's a great Youtube video of Dave putting his horse through its paces in the competition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSsc06LYDwg
It's an amazing performance. I like the part when it seems that Dave shifts the horse into reverse gear and the horse just backs up. Kim tells me that the rider is judged, among other things, on how little he relies upon the reins. She says that Dave communicates with the horse through his legs and riding position.
When I first met Kim, her business had a website, but it was old and its pages were out of date. It needed to be freshened up. There was just one problem: she lacked administrative rights to her own website. (This happens a lot.) It was hosted at www.register.com, who helped her gain admin rights. Kim has recently created an entirely new website for her business: http://www.davemoorereining.com
Visit my website: russbellew.com
March 22 Major flaws revealed in Diebold's voting software photo: Joebeone)Diebold Elections System AccuVote-TSx DRE voting machine with a VVPAT attachment (at right).
I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that more flaws have been discovered in Diebold's (now renamed Premier Election Systems, since Diebold's reputation has been tarnished) voting software. California's Secretary of State, in a new report, states that it's possible to delete batches of votes without recording the deletions in the Diebold machine's audit log and that it's possible to easily delete the audit log itself. Yikes! Read details: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Diebold_voting_system_sported_delete_button_0304.html
I vote for decertifying these voting machines and their software.
Which government employees certified these clunkers? How about decertifying them?
Although I'm pretty familiar with computers, I don't trust them when used for voting. (I also don't trust them when built into clothes washing machines and driers: I much prefer simple mechanical rotary timers because they're more reliable and cheap and easy to repair.)
Visit my website: russbellew.com
March 16 Get your free DTV converter coupons now! After June 12, US television broadcasters will no longer transmit programming via analog signals. To view TV programming that's received on an antenna, you'll need to have either a digital- ready TV or a digital to analog TV converter.
The U.S. government has freshened up the funding of its digital television converter coupon program. It entitles each U.S. household to a 40 dollar discount on each of up to two converter boxes. I ordered mine in early December and received the coupons about February 10th.
The government claims that the turnaround time has been reduced to 5 or 6 days. If you don't have your coupons, go to https://www.dtv2009.gov/ to order yours now.
Read about the upcoming switch to digital television: http://www.dtv.gov/
Visit my website: russbellew.com
March 13 The times, they are a changin' for Microsoft Office I'm trying to see a big picture, and haven't yet done so. I've gotta believe that these two recent events are related:
1. March 4: Microsoft announces that it's discontinuing three of its fledgling Office Live ecommerce services for small businesses:
o Store Manager
o. E-Mail Marketing Service
o. adManager Service
All three services are less than two years old and were offered as extra-cost options to Microsoft's Office Live (website hosting and shared workspace provider).
2. March 8: Microsoft announces that with the release of Microsoft Office 14 in 2010, they'll release a "free" ad-supported version with ads displayed alongside the workspace. (Read about it.) Presumably this will be a stripped-down version of Office, but that's just a guess. This will be the carrot that persuades users to pay for a full copy of Microsoft Office.
 I'm sure that there's a strategy behind these changes in tactics, but I have no idea what it is. For years, Microsoft Office has been Microsoft's most profitable product, so you can bet they'll do whatever is necessary to protect its market share. Microsoft started Office Live a few years ago as an online companion piece to Office, to pull users away from Google Docs and Open Office. From what I've seen in my year of using Office Live to host my website, Microsoft has done a good job: you can use many Office Live features without having Microsoft Office on your desktop, but to get full functionality, you need to install Microsoft Office on your desktop computer. This allows almost seamless exchange of data between your desktop and the web-hosted Office Live apps, and the desktops of others in your workgroup(s). I think that this is a smart way of selling more copies of Microsoft Office, but . . .
Office Live, while very flexible, has appeared to lack cohesion. It's obvious that lots of developers have been working on various aspects, but it has seemed as though they're not all pulling in the same direction.
Is Microsoft abandoning the market for small business ecommerce capabilities? Are their administrative costs too high to support small businesses? (Many software vendors have never been interested in the small business market: Siebel, SAP, Oracle . . .)
It seems that Microsoft may be moving its Office Live service away from offering ecommerce solutions (which have almost no connection with promoting Microsoft Office on the desktop) and toward collaborative workspace solutions (which can promote Microsoft Office on the desktop).
I'm guessing that these two events are related in that somebody at Microsoft wants to focus on selling more copies of the cash cow (Office) and spend fewer resources on long-term gambles on a small business market with lower profit margins. What do you think?
Visit my website: russbellew.com
March 12 Koobface worm threatens social networking users
If, while using Facebook, Myspace, or Friendster, you receive a message from a supposed friend with a subject such as "you look funny in this new video" or "is it u there?", delete the message wihout reading it.
If you open the message and click on the video link, you'll be taken to a Youtube-like site (which actually includes the word "youtube" in its domain name) which will tell you that your Flash player is out of date. If you click on the Download button, you'll install the Koobface worm. This worm installs itself on your computer and (1) searches your PC's cookies for credit card data and (2) waits for you to purchase something online. Once the Koobface worm captures your credit card data it uploads them to the bad guy(s), and you're sunk.
Koobface takes advantage of the trusting nature of social networking sites' users, who think that messages may be sent from bona fide friends only. (They're wrong: infected computers propagate the worm without permission of the computers' owners.) The lesson? On the Internet, Trust no one.
There are many Koobface variants. Facebook security recommends that you reset your Facebook password and scan your computer for viruses with an up to date scanner. Read more: http://www.kaspersky.com/news?id=207575670
Visit my website: russbellew.com March 10 Woz dances!
He did it! Steve Wozniak (58 year-old legendary Apple Computer founding engineer, builder of blue boxes, philanthropist, financier of the US festival, billionaire, über-techie, and all-around good guy) danced last night with dancing partner Karina Smirnoff on Dancing With The Stars. Karina's dancing was fantastic, and Steve's was um, stunning. The emcee's reaction: "Take that, Bill Gates!"
I give Steve and Karina 4 big gold stars. Read Steve's post-dance comments on his personal website: http://www.woz.org
I had no idea that Kathy Griffin and Steve had been an item. I like Kathy's opinion.
View a video clip (3 minutes:27 seconds) of Steve and Karina's dance and the judges' opinions. Because of copyright issues, this clip may not remain long on Youtube.
March 09 What's the reason for layoffs at RIAA? The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has recently laid off dozens of workers, representing a major part of its staff. I'm not sure what this means.
It's obvious that eventually all information and entertainment will be stored in digital form and transported via packets. This poses questions regarding intellectual property rights, copyright law, and so forth. I wonder if our current idea of intellectual property will remain viable as we move further into the digital age?
The RIAA has been pursuing downloaders of copyrighted music in the courts. This hasn't won them friends. Maybe the layoffs signal that the well is drying.
In popular music, the Beatles were the first rock group to abandon live concerts and rely solely upon their recordings for revenue. This model worked while good audio copies were expensive and exact copies were impossible for individuals to produce. Today, exact copies are cheap and easy to produce. Will this fact allow the existence of an industry based upon residual payments from millions of listeners to a musician(s) for a single performance? I don't know.
Here's a Cranky Geeks episode that discusses copyright law: http://www.crankygeeks.com/2006/07/cranky_geeks_special_the_dmca.php
In your trade, whatever that may be, are you paid over and over again by users for something that you created only once? If you are a carpenter, are you paid every time someone opens the door of a cabinet that you made?
Visit my website: russbellew.com
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