Archive for the ‘microsoft’ Category

Death of a Business Model

Saturday, June 28th, 2008

Historically, almost every significant economic crash has been due to one factor of the human psyche, the inability to conceive of change. Not adapt to change; we’re pretty damn good at figuring things out after the fact. Beforehand? Not so much. Entire industries collapse because of ...

Why DRM sucks

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

I am a writer, that means I make money off of my intellectual property.This does not mean I like digital rights management in any way, shape, or form. Here is an object lesson why. I don’t even blame Microsoft for giving the finger to all their former MSN ...

Microsoft, the Beast That Cannot be Fed

Friday, December 7th, 2007

You may have heard of the non-profit initiative called “One Laptop Per Child.” It is essentially an attempt to bridge the technology divide between the technological west and the developing world. OLPC was founded by Nicholas Negroponte with the goal of producing a laptop as cheaply as possible ...

Since We’re Talking About Intellectual Property Law. . .

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Microsoft seems to be in the vanguard, defending a 19th Century economic model for IP law. Not only has it deformed the purpose of its operating system into one giant copy-protection scheme, but now it’s attacking open-source software vendors with vague threats of patent violations.Here’s the problem in a ...