Charles on… anything that comes along

A lot has been written about the EC decision on Microsoft being upheld (as in, MS will have to comply with the original ruling while it prepares and fights its appeal against the original ruling).

Most people seem to be making noises about the fact that Microsoft will have to produce a version of Windows without Media Player. That might be tough, but it’ll hardly destroy it, because there aren’t going to be many OEMs who’ll sell Windows sans WMP.

However, the other part of the ruling is that MS has to reveal more detail about how its client and server systems communicate. That’s really important to efforts like the Samba organisation, an open-source attempt to reverse-engineer that communication.

The key point is that that information will now get out there - irrevocably. It won’t stay in Europe. And if Microsoft wins the appeal, how is it going to recall the information.. Hmm. Unless it were to threaten to sue in the event that it wins the appeal; such an approach would effectively stymie all but the very brave who were sure that the appeal would be lost.

Given how many businesses took fright when SCO waved patent threats at Linux, the latter might be what’ll happen.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Yeah, what he said (27 June 2005; score: 44.93%)
• The first time email has made the BBC Ten O'Clock News? (17 May 2005; score: 37.11%)
• Patch Windows XP - but get a Passport first (15 July 2004; score: 35.61%)

Over at SiliconValleyWatcher, there’s an interesting example of what happens when you’re not able to serve as well on the web as on paper.

In Trapped inside a crumbling business model? Exposing print advertisers to online can be disastrous, Tom Foremski notes: I recently had a chat with a buddy of mine who publishes one of the best business magazines around, and it’s been doing reasonably well despite the continuing downturn in advertising.

He told me that his publication might close down its web site. Why, I asked? We lose money from advertisers pulling their ads from the magazine, he said. When their online ads get very few clicks, they then decide that the print advertising is also not getting through to the right people. So they pull all their print and online ads.

Apparently $1,000 of under-performing online advertising can thus kill $20,000 of print advertising. Though this seems to me to be the effect of marketing people who are obsessed with metrics for everything - because they can measure the “effectiveness” of online advertising so much more directly, they think that tells them about the print form too, even though I think of online and offline properties completely differently myself.

As Tom says: Big changes are ahead. That’s what I tell people who’ll listen too…

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• New job, and stuff you realise (30 November 2005; score: 66.73%)
• On PR and journalism: which one's in "structural decline"? (3 May 2005; score: 41.78%)
• How to print an iTunes Gift Certificate on A5 paper (or card) (16 December 2004; score: 37.06%)

In this week’s Science and Technology section in The Independent, I’ve written on whether Firefox and Thunderbird, the free browser and mail reader, outdo Internet Explorer and Outlook Express; while Christine Evans-Pughe looks at studies on nanotechnology which suggest it should be kept away from the body. Or the bits inside.

Bonus link: if you haven’t read Deborah Ross’s Christmas guide to gadgets, “It’s not rocket science - it’s worse”, then get some now. Hilarious. Sample: What is it with gadgets and Christmas? And how come I don’t want any of them?

Actually, that’s not true. I lust after most them, but I’d simply rather not go there because I know what it will mean: frustration, temper, tears, a throbbing headache. The instruction manual will have been recklessly translated from the original Korean: “Pause now you are in shortly, stop.” There will be CD-roms and uploading and downloading and folders and subfolders and sub-sub-subfolders of the most fiendishly sub-sub kind, and I’ll get lost and befuddled and it will all go horribly awry and then I’ll cry.

Treat yourself - like a gadget, but cheaper.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Firefox encroaches on IE.. slowly, slowly... (28 April 2005; score: 55.74%)
• Firefox on OSX: mostly negative, I'm afraid (16 September 2004; score: 42.07%)
• The trouble with software, in Bill's view; and what Jonathan Ross said (2 August 2004; score: 41.45%)