Sunday, March 4, 2007

WIRED Blogs: Danger Room - The Pentagon Wants TiVo (to Watch You) Reuters yesterday reported on a recently issued study on future technologies written by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board. More than anything, it seems these outside advisers want a surveillance system that would put Big Brother to shame, and they're looking at the commercial sector to provide it: 10:34:51 PM

PC World - Microsoft OneCare Last in Antivirus Tests Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare came in dead last out of a group of 17 antivirus programs tested against hundreds of thousands of worms, viruses, Trojan horses and other malware, an Austrian antivirus researcher reported Wednesday. The AV Comparatives Web site, which is maintained by Andreas Cleminti from Innsbruck, Austria, posts quarterly results of tests that pit the top antivirus products against a dynamic list of nearly half a million individual pieces of malware. 10:27:26 PM

Microsoft OneCare Last in Antivirus Tests. Microsoft OneCare Last in Antivirus Tests. Juha-Matti Laurio writes  "PC World has a story reporting that Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare came in dead last out of a group of 17 antivirus programs tested against hundreds of thousands of pieces of malware. The report of an Austrian antivirus researcher was released at the AV Comparatives Web site this week. Several free AV products were included in the test as well." ---  While the top dog was able to find 99.5% of the malicious code, OneCare clocked in at 82.4%. Of course, there's no metric for the severity of the malware in the 17% gap. [Slashdot] 10:23:42 PM

Techdirt: An Economic Explanation For Why DRM Cannot Open Up New Business Model Opportunities Continuing my increasingly lengthy series of posts on the economics of non-scarce goods, I wanted to take a look at an issue that I mentioned in passing earlier this week concerning the ongoing insistence among the entertainment industry (and the DRM industry) that DRM somehow will open up new business models. I'd like to explain why, economically, that doesn't make sense. First, to clarify, I should point out that, technically, I mean that it doesn't make sense that DRM could ever open up feasible or successful business models. Anyone can create a new unsuccessful business model. For example, I'm now selling $1 bills for $1,000. It's a new business model (well, perhaps not to the dot coms of the original dot com boom), but it's unlikely to be a successful one (if you disagree, and would like to pay me $1,000 for $1, please use the feedback form above to make arrangements). However, for a new business model to make sense, it needs to provide more value. Providing more value than people can get elsewhere is the reason why a business model succeeds. So, any new business model must be based on adding additional value. 10:11:01 PM

Why DRM Cannot Open Up New Business Models. Why DRM Cannot Open Up New Business Models. An anonymous reader writes "Techdirt has a cool post up that doesn't just explain why DRM is bad, but gives a really interesting economic explanation for why DRM cannot create successful new business models. Since the RIAA and MPAA keep insisting that DRM will create new business models, it's useful to see an argument for why that's basically impossible." As the article says, anyone can create a "new" business model. Creating a successful "new" business model is what is so elusive here. [Slashdot] 10:08:11 PM

© Copyright 2007 Paul Hardwick. Last update: 3/18/07; 9:44:47 PM.