BRUCEB NEWS
How To Lose Friends And Influence People: Microsoft Rolls Out New Edge Browser
Microsoft is going to give you a lovely gift soon. Will you be grateful for their kindness? No. You will purse your lips like you sucked a lemon and you will be annoyed. Microsoft is kind of like a puppy who runs around peeing on things, hoping that you'll notice and...
RIAA v. VERIZON
The federal court decision in RIAA vs. Verizon on Tuesday was a very bad thing. Legal background: the DMCA has a very unusual provision, allowing copyright owners to obtain a...
WORM ATTACK SLOWS ENTIRE INTERNET
Worldwide Internet traffic suddenly slowed down dramatically for hours on Saturday, after a fast-spreading computer worm clogged major servers. Experts called it the most...
HILARY ROSEN STEPPING DOWN AS RIAA CHIEF
At the end of the year Hilary Rosen will step down as chief of the Recording Industry Association of America. She bears a great deal of responsibility for its reign of terror,...
IOMEGA AS A TAKEOVER TARGET
Iomega never recovered from the double blow of manufacturing defective Zip drives and failing to foresee the world of cheap, ubiquitous recordable CDs. It has no growth products...
COPYRIGHT UPDATES
If you’re interested in the ongoing intellectual property turmoil, pick up this month’s issue of Wired Magazine – an interview with RIAA chief Hilary Rosen, an article with a...
SBC TELEMARKETING
It took me a while to figure out what the recording meant when calling Pacific Bell – the one where they asked permission to “access your records.” Most people reacted the way I...
APPLE MYTHS, CONTINUED
An interesting comment today from Paul Thurrott in the Windows Magazine newsletter: ”Because Steve Jobs gave his Macworld address just days before Microsoft Chairman and Chief...
COPYRIGHT DEVELOPMENTS, GOOD AND BAD
The bad news is that the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Congress did not exceed its authority when it extended existing copyrights for another twenty years. (See my news item...
DELL AXIM HANDHELD
My new Dell Axim PocketPC looks just great. Although the $199 version would be just fine for everyday use, many people will appreciate the extra memory in the $299 version (64Mb...
COOL ENVELOPE TRICK
Microsoft Word is full of tricks. On this page, I described one simple trick to customize the way addresses appear when you drop them in from Microsoft Outlook. A client told me...
KAZAA LAWSUIT CONTINUES
A Los Angeles federal judge ruled that record companies and movie studios can proceed with a lawsuit against the parent company of Kazaa in the United States. Here's an article...
SPACE SHIFTING
A great new buzz word has turned up. You’ve heard about "time shifting," in which you use a video-recording device – a VCR or a TIVO - to delay the viewing of live content, such...
MORE DMCA ABUSE
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed in 1998 after strenuous lobbying by Hollywood studios, record labels and other intellectual property holders. They argued that new...
THE FUTURE OF HOME TECH
There’s exciting stuff being developed that will change the way your home entertainment system works. It will take a couple of years for it all to come to fruition, but the...
FCC TO PERMIT TELECOM, MEDIA CONSOLIDATION
An article in today's Washington Post reviews some of the major decisions the Federal Communications Commission will be making in the next few months, moves that could...