Accidental Empires, Chapter 14 — Counter-Reformation

os2warpACCIDENTAL EMPIRES

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

COUNTER-REFORMATION

In Prudhoe Bay, in the oilfields of Alaska’s North Slope, the sun goes down sometime in late November and doesn’t appear again until January, and even then the days are so short that you can celebrate sunrise, high noon, and sunset all with the same cup of coffee. The whole day looks like that sliver of white at the base of your thumbnail.

It’s cold in Prudhoe Bay in the wintertime, colder than I can say or you would believe—so cold that the folks who work for the oil companies start their cars around October and leave them running twenty-four hours a day clear through […]

By |March 24th, 2013|2013, Books, Companies, Computing, Entrepreneurship, history, Intellectual Property, Product Development, Software|30 Comments
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Accidental Empires, Chapter 11 — Font Wars

john-warnock-steve-jobsClearly, given the recent battle between Flash and HTML5, things changed later in life between John Warnock and Steve Jobs. There’s a story I’d like to understand better. Meanwhile, back in the early 1990s….

ACCIDENTAL EMPIRES

CHAPTER ELEVEN

FONT WARS

Of the 5 billion people in the world, there are only four who I’m pretty sure have stayed consistently on the good side of Steve Jobs. Three of them—Bill Atkinson, Rich Page, and Bud Tribble—all worked with Jobs at Apple Computer. Atkinson and Tribble are code gods, and Page is a hardware god. Page and Tribble left Apple with Jobs in 1985 to found NeXT Inc., their […]

By |March 14th, 2013|2013, Books, Companies, Computing, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, Product Development, Software, Startups|39 Comments
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DMCA Smart phone Catch-22: Major de Coverley for Librarian of Congress!

Welles… Milo carefully said nothing when Major —— de Coverley stepped into the mess hall with his fierce and austere dignity the day he returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line to sign loyalty oaths. At the far end of the food counter, a group of men who had arrived earlier were pledging allegiance to the flag, with trays of food balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the table. Already at the tables, a group that had arrived still earlier was singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in order that they might use the salt and pepper and ketchup there. The hubub began […]

By |January 27th, 2013|2013, Business, Government, Intellectual Property, Internet, Media, Phones, Privacy and Security, Technology|69 Comments
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Instagram’s Exit Plan

instaUpdate — Instagram now says it was all a huge mistake, that users own their pictures and there’s no way Facebook is going to sell them to anyone… but the company hasn’t yet revealed alternate legal language, which they should have been able to cobble up in an hour or two. The underlying problem of mean-spirited, self-serving, over-reaching terms of service is still with us at Instagram and almost everywhere else. Their revised terms of service were stupid and couldn’t stand. Let’s hope in their next attempt to grab rights (because that’s what this whole thing was about and probably still is) Instagram and Facebook treat their users fairly. Until they do, most of what’s […]

By |December 18th, 2012|2012, Breaking News, Business, Companies, Intellectual Property, Privacy and Security, Public Relations, Social Media|Comments Off on Instagram’s Exit Plan
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Amoeba Music’s Vinyl Vaults is no Napster despite what musicians say

Remember Napster? Not the paid streaming music service sold last year to Rhapsody, but the original peer-to-peer music sharing service that was hugely popular from 1999-2001 when it went down in a legal ball of flames over copyright infringement. Well something Napster-like is emerging from Amoeba Music, the huge pre-owned music and video stores in Berkeley, San Francisco and Los Angeles and some musicians and vinyl junkies are up in arms about it, though I can’t understand why.

Napster was a peer-to-peer service that allowed people to share their music collections online. What Amoeba is doing with its new Vinyl Vaults service is similar in that the company is ripping tracks from […]

By |December 4th, 2012|2012, Business, Intellectual Property, Internet, Media, Music, Technology|Comments Off on Amoeba Music’s Vinyl Vaults is no Napster despite what musicians say
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