Bush Horrified To Learn Presidential Salary
? ? "I guess I'll stay in the race and take the job if I get it. But, regardless, something's got to be done about this situation," Bush said. "Aren't there some agencies we could cut to clear some room under the salary cap for the president? What does the Department of the Interior do? That could probably go. Housing and Urban Development, too. We could probably sell some congressional skyboxes. That's what we did to get Nolan [Ryan] when I was running the [Texas] Rangers."

? ? ? "I know my dad made a bundle off the Gulf War," Bush continued. "But I guess it wasn't through the job. I'll have to ask him just exactly how he did it. Maybe something like that would work again."

Partnership paves way for ad-support software on the Mac
Aladdin Systems and Conducent have agreed to create an advertising-supported software developers kit for use in software designed for the Mac OS.

The companies say that it's the first time that Mac developers can provide free ad-supported software to their users with no licensing fees for consumers. With the Aladdin-Conducent partnership, standard-sized ad banners, animation and other content delivered by Conducent's proprietary flexible technology can appear in part of any software application's graphic user interface, whether the user is connected to the Internet or not at the time the software is in use.

digitalMASS at Boston.com
Stan Smith, an Alabama resident, is suing NSI, contending that it's abused its power. His attorney, Scott Powell, claims that Network Solutions is deliberately withholding expired names from the general pool with the intent to auction them, which he says violates the registrar's agreement with ICANN.

Slashdot | Enter The 'Stupid Patent Tricks' Contest
"A method of using javascript or similar technology to produce a series of Web page-displayed images that, when "rolled over" by a customer's mouse in a predetermined order, either causes a purchase to be consummated or causes a series of preselected items to be placed in a single customer-accessible data file so that the customer can purchase all selected items at the same time instead of having to perform a series of separate transactions."

Redherring.com - MASTERING TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT- From the Guide to issue
Schrage: You can't help but be impressed by the astonishing rate of technical innovation surrounding the Internet. It certainly rivals the crazy early days of the PC. But it's not the technology or, frankly, even the people that I find exciting. What I find so exciting and provocative is how organizations are using the Net to test and explore new business models. You really can't market a traditional branded packaged good or a network service in your standard brandvertising/direct-response mode over the Net. You need to draw on what the Net can do as a medium rather than simply launch into brochure-ware, which is what a lot of Web pages -- and sites -- are like. So Inter-preneurs have to be every bit as clever in designing their business as they do in designing their technologies or in listening to their customers.

EBay Suit Refiled

Seven users of eBay refiled a lawsuit against it yesterday, accusing eBay of neglecting to protect consumers from sales of forged sports memorabilia in its online auctions.

More educators opting out of Mac, WSJ says

Apple's recent fourth-quarter earnings warning was attributed, partially, to the fall in education sales. Apple will release final quarterly results Wednesday after the close of the stock market.

CNN.com - Technology - Congress weighing Internet filtering for schools, libraries - October 15, 2000

The proposal "fails to prepare our children to act responsibly as Internet citizens," the ACLU's Marvin Johnson wrote lawmakers. "Responsibility implies choice, but blocking removes all choice."

"The filtering mandate sets a troubling precedent for federal regulation of Internet use and Internet access," according to a letter signed by the Computer & Communications Industry Association and Information Technology Association of America, groups that represent the high-tech industry.

Teacher associations and the American Library Association also oppose the effort.

Mandatory filtering opponents say the filters are imperfect and frequently fail to block pornography. Sometimes, they say, the filters reflect a political view. At various times, filters have blocked sites that cater to gays and lesbians as well as conservative sites that contain language hostile to homosexuals.

Only one filtering company will release its list of blocked sites so parents and teachers can review them.

Comment Filtering is always from a political point of view!!!!!!

News, Views and a Silicon Valley Diary

Last update: Monday, October 16, 2000 at 7:22:23 AM Pacific.

News, Views and a Silicon Valley Diary
Monday, October 16, 2000

Agenda


I'm in Phoenix for the Agenda conference. Look for updates later in the day.

Friday, October 13, 2000

A River Flows Through It



The Vltava River flows through Prague and is after the imposing Prague Castle on the hill, the most notable feature of the local landscape.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dot-com Confidence, and a Hard Look


Or maybe the word should be "arrogance" -- because even in the wake of the current market debacle and the real-world return to rationality, the dot-com executives here at the European Technology Roundtable Exhibition managed to pretend they weren't all that concerned. Good acting, I guess.

I had a useful chat with Paul Deninger, the chairman and CEO of Broadview, a mergers-and-acqusitions advisor focusing on information technology. He's been outspoken for at least a year now about the ugly charade that has played out in the tech marketplace.

Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investment bankers and brokerages managed to shift almost all risk into the public markets by taking companies public ridiculously soon, often businesses that operated on a wing and a prayer, not any serious fundamental value. The people with the least information and the most to lose -- average folks who bought into the hype and wanted into that "Internet stock thing" -- were the suckers.

"Small investors are all at a disadvantage," he says in a classic understatement.

But Deninger has a theory that the day traders, also among the biggest losers in the recent downturn, share the blame. Through profound ignorance of fundamentals, they created markets for companies that had unsustainable business models.

When companies needed secondary financing, the day traders were't around, and helped create a double-whammy against survival.

"Day traders don't own," Deniger points out. "They trade."

Most of them lose, too. It's a shame if they're

BookNotes News
If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis

Educational Technology Research
Interactive Learning Environments (10/12/00; 6:54:41 AM - Educational Technology Research)

Quote: "The journal now begins to broaden its scope to cover technologies such as Internet, groupware and multimedia and their impact on the fields of education and training, life-long learning and sharing knowledge in the global village. We welcome articles dealing with courseware and the pedagogic, content, and engineering issues that impact on learning. The tools and organisational support required for the authoring of courseware is itself an important topic which merits closer study. We invite evaluation of the impact of open and frequent communication among learners within knowledge building classrooms, the role of peer tutoring and mentoring in computer mediated learning and the place of self assessment and peer assessment. The virtual classroom may use courseware but is primarily an environment for student-student and student-teacher interaction, and the appropriate systems for particular students and learning material remains to be delineated. The journal welcomes analyses of the role of schools, governments, or corporations in developing virtual schools and universities that transcend space, time, and organisational boundaries."

Tomalak's Realm : Daily Links to Strategic Web Design News
Industry Standard: This Is Only a Test. But the established entertainment companies are not learning what the folks at Yahoo know implicitly: The media application that gives the viewer control ? and turns the viewer into more than merely a viewer ? is the one that will succeed.

Scripting News
Sometimes having a database integrated with the content system works better. (The usual disclaimers apply, Murphy runs all websites, our system screws up too.)

http://www.scripting.com/images/integratedDatabaseWorksBett.gif

Scripting News
Sometimes having a database integrated with the content system works better. (The usual disclaimers apply, Murphy runs all websites, our system screws up too.)

http://www.scripting.com/images/integratedDatabaseWorksBett.gif

MacFixIt.com: Troubleshooting for your Mac
StarOffice for the Mac? A ZDNet article notes that Sun Microsystems has placed its StarOffice 6 alpha code into open source. Of special interest, the article notes (italics added): "The (eventual) commercial version of Version 6 of the suite will support Windows, Linux, Solaris, and the Mac OS platforms."

CamWorld: Thinking Outside the Box
Here is an interesting compilation of links and opinion about the "character assassination" of Al Gore by the Republican National Committee and the mainstream press.

The first post on the blog to the wall blog be the blog blog tall