Business — Page 17

Web Networks’

June 2, 2000 by Michael Boyle

highly-coveted domain – web.net – was hijacked the other day by an unknown person who sent an unauthorized change of information email to Network Solutions, which they promply executed without following proper procedures. So an innovative, old-guard non-profit internet host who works extensively with other non-profits, charities, and is a member of the Association for Progressive Communications, was left high and dry for a few DAYS – as were their clients.

I bet Network Solutions makes excuses rather than apologizing. I wonder when they’re going to realize that this isn’t just a game, this is people’s livelihoods, their vision of the future, their business. A bank doesn’t start sending my statements to someone else without a lot of information and confirmation. I wonder why Netsol thinks they should offer any less security?

The one consolation

May 23, 2000 by Michael Boyle

after reading an article like this is that companies have been trying stuff like this, and more to the point, hack business writers have been crawling over each other to write about the Next Big Thing, for ages now. But it hasn’t really happened yet. Same with the elusive “community”. The only real successes are those that do it for its own sake, not to help sell something else. Let’s root for more failures! [link via Derek Powazek]

Wired is running

May 18, 2000 by Michael Boyle

a fantastic story about Lawrence Lessig’s speech at the Ninth World Wide Web conference in Amsterdam. One thing that he neglects to mention but forms the backdrop of the whole story is that the Telecom Reform Act (the one that the CDA came packaged within) explicitly paved the way for AT&Ts current behaviour. That should have been a bigger story than the CDA at the time – it sure is now. By allowing mergers and combinations in the telecom space that were previously illegal, it opened the door to many really cool business combos that weren’t possible before. But it also raised the spectre of a virtually private network that could be controlled by capital in ways that the net cannot be. And, really, who needs CDA-style censorship when you have a closed network in the first place?

Arg

May 2, 2000 by Michael Boyle

this ongoing Time Warner/ABC story takes the award for biggest non-story all month. “my god – what will they do next – will the poor subscribers have to miss regis? how will they know how to match tomorrow? the poor souls will have to slink past the watercooler at work, what with nothing to talk about! oh the humanity of it all!”

Seriously – there are dozens of important issues surrounding media distribution in the post-Telecomms Reform Act era – this ain’t one of em.

Kottke

April 4, 2000 by Michael Boyle

makes a very good point. If MS is broken up you get 2-5 little Microsofts running around, each of which will own some killer technologies that, if anything, are under-exploited now. Imagine if a Word group wanted to push to make their underlying text engine the standard, integrated into anything and everything. Like that, x 10.