December 2000
Friday, 29 December 2000
Archived Memepool Post: Dec 29, 2000
f—edcompany.com is collecting donations for families of the victims of this week’s shooting spree at Edgewater Technology (Posted to Culture)
Thursday, 28 December 2000
Slower Than Its Predecessor: Pentium 4
VC’s Funding Too Many Bluetooth Chips: “there is still no widespread demonstrated market demand for the technology at an application level.”
ClickZ : The Emergence of Luxury E-Tailers
ClickZ : The Negative-Press Generator: “[Insert obligatory encouraging quote from Richy Glassberg or Rich LeFurgy here.]”
Vodafone sued over brain cancer
Wednesday, 27 December 2000
High-speed light casts doubt on Einstein’s laws
Leading venture capitalist regrets Internet prediction: “It’s still going to be true, but I regret having said it”
Tuesday, 26 December 2000
The Price Is Wrong: “It is therefore widely assumed that the days of the $19.95-a-month Internet access plan are numbered. Andrew Odlyzko, head of AT&T Labs, does not agree.”
Dumb and Dumber Ideas: “All four of these predictions failed to materialize because these companies were throwing massive amounts of today’s cash at a far-off goal.”
Gates beats US in health spending: “The man who led the computer software revolution accounts for more than a quarter of what all industrialised countries spend for the health needs of underdeveloped nations.”
Sunday, 24 December 2000
Asteroid misses Earth ‘by whisker’
Saturday, 23 December 2000
Bad Loans Seen to Plague Banks in 2001
Friday, 22 December 2000
How to Defeat GI Joe: “17. Can The Giant Flying Fortresses. GI Joe is always destroying them anyways. You could reinvest the money set aside to create these machines for a new base or to supplement your 401K program.”
George Harrison Says ‘The World Is Going Mental’: “Your Planet is Doomed, Volume One.”
Thursday, 21 December 2000
Beef a la Dynamite: “shock waves penetrate the entire cut of meat, so bugs deep inside it are killed – achieving a thousand-fold reduction in bacteria levels during tests”
Texas judge dismisses lawsuit against Penthouse: “U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks dismissed it with a 12-line poem and a $250 fine against Joyner for filing a frivolous legal motion.”
Wednesday, 20 December 2000
Life After Routers: “They don’t need bigger and faster. They need better. Much better.”
Saddam Hussein hoards PlayStation 2s: “It has to do with the high-powered processor inside the next-generation video game console, more powerful than most desktop PCs.”
Tuesday, 19 December 2000
Half of U.S. teens to own cell phones by 2004
Monday, 18 December 2000
Sunny Scott seems cloudy about Linux: “You people just don’t get it, do you? All Linux applications run on Solaris, which is our implementation of Linux. Now ask the question again”
“He’s finished”: “A day earlier, […] Court, controlled by […] loyalists, issued a statement claiming it had annulled ‘parts’ of the election, and later a judge serving on the court told […] that the decision effectively nullified the results of the election and would permit […] to remain in office […]. […] repeatedly refused demands for a recount or international mediation.”
Tech stock boom was a legal con game
Sunday, 17 December 2000
BT sues Prodigy over U.S. hyperlink patent: “the company is wholly unconcerned about generating any negative publicity by suing for the use of such a commonly used Internet technology”
Friday, 15 December 2000
We’re shopping more online, liking it too: “Last year, it took up to three minutes longer to complete a transaction on a retailer’s site than on a Web-only retail site. This year, that gap is down to one and a half minutes”
Doerr defends deplored B2Cs: “In 1998 and 1999, people were confused that [online retailing] was a technology business”
Fab Four floor Backstreet Boys with “1”
Thursday, 14 December 2000
Sex chat read by millions - then the boss finds out: “Employees need to be alive to the possibility that employers could take disciplinary action if they forward personal information by e-mail.”
Bill Clinton - The RollingStone Interview: “Due to a transcription error, the words ‘don’t ask’ were printed in the latest issue as ‘dumbass’ in our interview with President Clinton. We regret the error.”
FTC Approves AOL/Time Warner Merger with Conditions
News Analysis: Another Kind of Bitter Split: “Among the most baffling aspects of the opinion was its simultaneous creation of a new equal protection right not to have ballots counted according to different standards and its disclaimer that this new constitutional principle would ever apply in another case.”
Wednesday, 13 December 2000
FTC Tackles Wireless Regulation
Tuesday, 12 December 2000
CMU, NASA Establish Venture: “The embedding of software into the whole fabric of the United States … introduced a level of dependency that demands utterly reliable, utterly dependable systems”
Sunday, 10 December 2000
The Science of Self-Preservation: “Am I supposed to take seriously that wishful thinking on the Web site of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) about how the discipline is a hot new degree and corporate America is panting to hire anthropology majors, and how ‘anthropologist Katherine Burr, chief executive of the Hanseatic Group, an investment company, was among the first to predict the 1998 Asian financial crisis [and] as a result, her investors made profits while the clients of other money managers lost out’? And you thought the Asian financial crisis hit in 1997.”
Saturday, 9 December 2000
Are Parents Legally Responsible for Their Children’s Internet Use?: “lawyers criticized the ruling harshly, saying that a computer is no more dangerous an article than a pencil. Both objects may be abused to create a defamatory statement, but it would be silly to haul parents into court on charges of negligently supplying their children with writing instruments.”
Are B2Cs the next S&Ls?: “He figures that 80 percent of the $183 billion invested by U.S. private equity firms between 1998 and 2000 will be written off”
Thursday, 7 December 2000
New Study Shows Seed Money, Not Personality Creates More Successful Entrepreneurs
Long Welsh words could be road hazard: “The worst case scenario involves the first Anglesey exit of the A5 dual carriageway - to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.”
A Lasting Marriage is worth £60,000 a Year Concludes New Analysis of Happiness
Iridium Satellite signs contract with Defense Department: “Approximately 20,000 government employees will have unlimited airtime to make wireless phone calls under the deal.”
Internet May Be Just A Fad, Says European Body
Comments on the Carnivore System Technical Review: “Although the IITRI study appears to represent a good-faith effort at independent review, the limited nature of the analysis described in the draft report simply cannot support a conclusion that Carnivore is correct, safe, or always consistent with legal limitations.”
Wednesday, 6 December 2000
High tech’s missionaries of sloppiness: “But what does the personal computer industry mean when it says ‘first version’? Seemingly, anything.”
Techies log more hours but produce less
Victims of their own success: “If Yahoo were a magazine or TV program, it would be swimming in dough from brand advertisers such as McDonald’s (MCD) or Procter & Gamble (PG) . But this increased ability to provide functionality and performance measurements to advertisers has actually worked to the detriment of companies like Yahoo. It has turned the Net into a direct-response medium.”
FBI Hacks Alleged Mobster: “Scarfo, who has been charged with masterminding a mob-linked loan sharking operation in New Jersey, reportedly used the popular PGP encryption software to shield his computer’s secrets from prying eyes.”
Tuesday, 5 December 2000
Are Keywords Still Key?: “They were actually proposing that an advertisement could be offered up to someone based on an individual’s actual state of mind.”
Screen Wars: “We want users to be able to run applications without even knowing it”
The new economy grows old: “Internet time – the idea that three months represented one year in the Internet economy – by now must be seriously discredited. The intense rush it created resulted in a lot of bad decisions, shaky projects, and shaky companies. The speed of technology will always be limited by the more careful workings of the human brain. There’s only so fast we can go without losing control. It’s no harm to slow down a little.”
Monday, 4 December 2000
The Great Patent Giveaway: “There’s a pretty strongly held view in the legal community that the current state of affairs is inadequate”
Porn a Thorn for Indian Portal: “Considering the allegation that the accused company is advertising their search engine facility and thereby provoking the citizen to view their website, I am of the opinion that enough material is available on which the accused can be put up for trial”
Cops: May the Force Be With You: “Herr says the device has yet to be tested on animals or people, but it is a safer and more efficient way to stop criminals than handguns or ‘Taser’ guns – which release physically painful darts that can only travel to 20 feet.” - ‘Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster.’
‘Click Here’ Becomes a Grabber/Telling consumers what to do helps boost direct sales: “It’s not that consumers are getting dumber or more malleable – quite the opposite.”