False Lessons of the Dreamworks Deal
The sale of Dreamworks to Viacom's Paramount unit, for cash and the assumption of debt, is teaching the media and the Bellheads the wrong lesson. They lesson they're hearing is that distribution trumps...
View ArticleNationalize the Phone Network
It's a crazy notion that is going nowhere. But it would solve a lot of problems, most especially for the Bells, who would be the idea's staunchest opponents, if it were proposed. (It's not being...
View ArticleMemo to Soros
George Soros (left) has emerged as one of the primary boogeymen of the Right Wing. Not only do the Warbloggers invoke his name in order to justify their continuing to wear Vast Leftwing Conspiracy...
View ArticleDiminishing Returns on Spectrum
The U.S. government approved yet-another auction of spectrum last week. (The picture is of bids in an Australian spectrum auction.) But there's a problem. The big hoarders of spectrum -- phone...
View ArticleA Government Action I Like
Too bad it's not my government. The Korean government has jawboned an agreement from that nation's mobile operators to get rid of the walled gardens and make mobile Internet service, well, Internet...
View ArticleThe Video Fiction
Video is NOT the future of the Web. (This picture, by the way, comes from a fine student project at the University of North Carolina on Webcasting rights. Go Tar Heels.) It’s part of the future, no...
View ArticleThis Week's Clue: Circuit Breakers
This week's issue of A-Clue.Com is another one of those policy cum history cum politics ruminations I know some of you don't like. But it's my newsletter. And some of the subscribers enjoyed this one....
View ArticleRailroaded
NOTE: The following entry is being mirrored at the new Infrastructure Held Hostage blog. We live in an uneasy relationship with the past.Photograph courtesy RPI.) The whole past is available to us,...
View ArticlePorn Fight Kills the E-Mail Guy
Everyone hates spam. But there has been no political constituency potent enough to fight the well-organized Direct Marketing Association, which has successfully defended spammers from meaningful...
View ArticleThe Internet Necessity
A few years ago some wags talked about people having a "right" to Internet service, and they got laughed at. Let's try it another way. America's economic future requires every citizen have access to...
View ArticleSt. Google and the Dragons
Change is the one business constant. Those who embrace it succeed, those who resist it fail. But change also dislocates. Workers threatened by change organize unions and seek protection from...
View ArticleA World of Rationed Liberty
If you want to launch a lynch mob against the "Chinese Communists," I'll probably be there with a pitchfork. I'm an American who believes in ordered liberty, after all. Of course, when Congress tried...
View ArticleThe Superbowl's Most Important Ad
The funniest Super Bowl ad was probably the FedEx bit with the caveman saying "it's not my problem" FedEx hadn't been invented and the other caveman's package got stomped by the dinosaur. (Although my...
View ArticleGoogle Images Ruled Illegal
Google's Image Search service is illegal. U.S. District Judge Harold Matz of Los Angeles delivered this stunner in a suit originally filed by a porn firm, Perfect 10. At issue is the Google Image...
View ArticleThe Legend of Dennis Hayes
Those of you under 30 may never have heard of Dennis Hayes. But once he was somebody. I knew him. His was one of the first tech stories I wrote in Atlanta, back in 1982. Dennis Hayes made modems. His...
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