Flux
Bush Loses: Remember Don Wilson, President Bush's national archivist who, in the last hours of the administration, signed over almost total control of Bush's presidential records to Bush, rather than to the Office of the President? Well, that assignation has been declared null and void by a Federal judge, and the records, which include approximately 5,000 mainframe magnetic tapes and more than 140 hard drives, will remain the property of the National Archive. Wilson, you may remember, left the archive to take a job at the - ahem - Bush Presidential Library. There is some justice in the world.
Borland Wins: Borland could use some good news, and earlier this spring, a Federal appeals court gave the software maker a healthy serving. Lotus had sued Borland for US$100 million in damages, claiming Borland's Quattro Pro spreadsheet infringed the Lotus 1-2-3 copyright, particularly when it came to Quattro's "emulation mode," which employed a 1-2-3-like interface. But the appeals court found that Lotus's menu structure and command keys were "uncopyrightable subject matter." The upshot: it's going to be harder to copyright the "look and feel" of a particular application or interface. But the fight isn't over yet: Lotus is mulling over an appeal, possibly to the US Supreme Court.
Microsoft Notwork: Microsoft continues its role as the World's Largest Target: it's the subject of two antitrust investigations (for the Microsoft Network and Video for Windows), a rogue judge is threatening to overturn the sweetheart deal it cut with the DOJ, and Bob, the idiot-proof user interface, has taken off like a lead zeppelin. WordPerfect and Lotus have taken out snarky ads ridiculing Microsoft's "Where do you want to go today?" campaign, and Bill Gates hasn't been on the cover of a business magazine in months. What to do? Start a news service, of course! The Microsoft Network will have its very own news service, staffed by at least 60 dedicated scribes. Now that should guarantee some positive press!
Homework: USA Today (of all sources!) reports that the average American with a PC spends more than 10 hours a week working at home, a boon for US productivity as compared with other countries.
Web Facts: Sun Microsystems, one of the earliest Web sites around, reports that there are now more than 27,000 WWW sites, and the overall population is doubling every 53 days.
Caught in the Web Hype: Here's a wonderful note from a miffed Prodigy user: I'm dreadfully steamed because when I saw that Prodigy would offer WWW services (in a New York Times advertisement), I called the damned company, ordered the starter kit, got it home, installed it, tinkered around with what I found to be an ugly and overly commercial interface, and then took 20 minutes to find (not easy, BTW) and set up the WWW service. That's 20 minutes of mounting frustration - only to finally get a dialog box that says, "You can't use WWW without Windows software." Huh? So I went back to the NYT advertisement and the documentation they sent me with the kit, and found absolutely nothing about Windows software (I use a Mac). Then I called the tech support, which is also irritatingly cheesy, and finally got through to a woman who said, "You're right - no WWW without Windows." I asked her to double-check her materials, and she said, "Well, you're right again, nothing we have here mentions that, but it's true."
Junk Suit: CompuServe member Robert Arkow is sick of junk e-mail, so he's doing something about it: earlier this year, he filed suit against CompuServe under the Telephone Consumer Privacy Protection Act of 1991, which prohibits automatic calling "for which the calling party is charged for the call." He claims that since he pays for his CompuServe account, he has a right to force CompuServe to stop sending him spam. We'll keep you posted.
