Small Business Reading Room

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Peer-to-Peer Networking In Trouble Again

It seems that Peer-to-Peer Networking services are in trouble with the law again. This time its Grokster.

The Supreme Court is to decide in this case whether Grokster should be held accountable for the file swapping done through their service.

The Cato Institute has an interesting analysis written by Michael A. Einhorn and Bill Rosenblatt posted on their website. The authors' suggestion? Have the government step aside and allow the private sector to fix it. It won't take too long before the private sector develops technology that would stop the peer-to-peer file sharing.

It's worked for some CDs that now have technology that makes them impossible to copy. Maybe the recording industry should spend more of their time and money looking into new technologies than suing the Peer-to-Peer Networking services and their users. If this were the case, maybe then the government could spend their time working on more important issues.

posted by Anonymous at 3:15 PM - permalink 1 comments

Usability Study for Life

William Slawski, internet usability guru and search engine optimizer, often lectures me about usability issues on the web. Turns out this usability thing is catching on! Even on the highways of the United States and Canada.

A company called Clearview has researched and gotten approval from the FHA to use their new font on roadsigns for Federal highways.

Clearview offers samples for viewing. But they want almost eight hundred dollars for the first workstation installation of the font. Wow, only the Government could afford that. See my prior post today :)

posted by Larry at 3:15 PM - permalink 1 comments

Budget Games in Washington

Only in Washington DC is a budget increase a cut, and a cut an attack on our cities.

The CATO Institute's David Boaz writes in the most recent Daily Commentary that the budget proposed by the President is actually $80 Billion higher than last years. In fact, Federal spending has gone up 38% since George Bush took over from President Clinton.

But the press and the politicians are acting like he is cutting this thing to the bone. The Democrats want to be seen as protecting the interests of their constituents and the Republicans want to be seen as protecting the people's money. They both get what they want and the Press gets lots of good quotes:

"Slashing Funding" - Hilary Clinton

"Immoral" - Nancy Pelosi

"Three million children left behind" - Edward Kennedy

The Republicans are pretending this is a serious cut in Government spending:

"Spending discipline requires difficult choices" - President Bush

"This is the tightest budget that has been submitted since we got here." - Vice President Cheney

But the most frightening quote in Mr. Boaz's report is from Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley:

Back on September 11, terrorists attacked our metropolitan cores, two of America's great cities. They did that because they knew that was where they could do the most damage and weaken us the most," O'Malley said. "Years later, we are given a budget proposal by our commander in chief, the president of the United States. And with a budget ax, he is attacking America's cities. He is attacking our metropolitan core.

posted by Larry at 2:04 PM - permalink 0 comments

Monday, February 21, 2005

Name Research

Denise O'Berry has been blogging on the name issue lately. In here latest entry she shares the title of a book she recommends for researching naming issues for businesses.

The Book is "The Name's the Thing: Creating the Perfect Name for Your Company or Product" and it is available from Amazon.com. I thought that title, with her recommendation was worth a mention.

posted by Larry at 4:40 PM - permalink 0 comments

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