Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

scriptingNews outline for 6/14/2000

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:6/14/2000; 1:13:38 PM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 6/14/2000
Msg #:17798
Prev/Next:17797 / 17799

Courtney Love: "Somewhere along the way, record companies figured out that it's a lot more profitable to control the distribution system than it is to nurture artists. And since the companies didn't have any real competition, artists had no other place to go. Record companies controlled the promotion and marketing; only they had the ability to get lots of radio play, and get records into all the big chain store. That power put them above both the artists and the audience. They own the plantation."

"Music is a service to its consumers, not a product. I live on tips. Giving music away for free is what artists have been doing naturally all their lives."

"What the hell is content? Nobody buys content. Real people pay money for music because it means something to them. A great song is not just something to take up space on a Web site next to stock market quotes and baseball scores."

"Every single artist who makes records believes and hopes that they give you something that will transform your life. If you're really just interested in data mining or selling banner ads, stick with those "artists" willing to call themselves content providers."

"I ended up playing without my shirt on and ordering a six-pack of the rival cola onstage. Also lots of unwholesome cursing and nudity occurred. This way I knew that no matter how tempting the cash was, they'd never do business with me again."

Stephen King: "My purpose here isn't to skin anybody but to have some fun and try out a concept so old it may seem new; call it 'honesty is the best policy.'"

Salon: RIAA tries to shut down Napster.

James Snell: "IBM and Microsoft have both recently released two vastly different (and unfortunately, incompatible) reference implementations of SOAP."

John VanDyk: PostgreSQL and Frontier via ODBC.

What is Tellme Studio?

News.Com: Tellme, others open up the telephone Web.

Brent has a picture of the Frontier Room in Seattle, which is no doubt going to be the venue for the next dinner in Seattle.

David Brown: Scripting News comes to Seattle.

BookNotes opens with a great quote from Albert Einstein, which is a bit arrogant, but funny nonetheless.

The baby eagle story

This is one of my favorite stories, but I don't think I've ever put it on the Web. It was told to me by one of my friends and teachers, Diane Searles, quite a few years ago, and it made a big impression. See if there's not a lesson here for you too.

Hear Jakob Nielsen speak

On July 14 in Oakland, attendance is limited but free.

Hot hot hot

108 degrees in California! Wow.

The dinner last night at Mama's was the best part of the trip to Seattle. About 30 people, most of whom either work at Microsoft now or did at one time. There were several Frontier developers, people with Manila sites, and one guy from SlashDot. I think I have pictures of everyone.

Earlier in the day I saw a demo of BizTalk Orchestration, which is very impressive. It will reset expectations on the art of server-side programming, it's that good. And it's quite open, but not totally, nor could it be. However, it should be clonable. We went back and forth between the XML and the visual representation of the program. Personally, I'd like to try programming it in XML, without the visual stuff. More comments later.

My 7:30AM flight was cancelled, so I had to wait till 10:15AM to fly out. I read the NY Times pretty much cover to cover. On the plane back I read The Economist. Both had extensive coverage of the Microsoft judgment and The Times has the full text of the Microsoft brief filed yesterday. The Economist had an editorial which I agree with. It's time for Bill Gates to stop fighting and work with the government to solve this problem before it gets much worse, which it's sure to. The Microsoft rebuttal ignores the Allchin memo. I won't ever forget it.

I'd bet Microsoft loses on appeal. The big issue here is respect for the law. The more I read, the more I'm sure that the Jackson judgment and penalty is intended to get their attention and to get them to the negotiating table to work out a settlement with the plaintiffs. Jackson did not want to solve the problem. He wants Microsoft to do it. As long as Microsoft resists, the court has no choice but to impose a crude and ineffecient neutering of Microsoft. It's too bad that as this happens a lot of good work is going to get flushed.

Discussions at the dinner last night revealed once again the Microsoft culture of paranoia, which is echoed in practically every Gates communique. It's vicious industry. We're hanging on to dominance by a very slim thread. To which I say, let go. The rest of us did. We're doing fine.



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