Subject: Re: [TS] I'm back
From: Stephen Danic (sdanic@memes.net)
Date: Mon Jun 26 2000 - 01:39:51 EDT
> I was only able to keep a cursory watch on what has been going on in the
> world; if anything has happened that I should now about, feel free to
> drop me a line (or just tell the whole listserv). In particular, I see
> on memes.net that Natrificial has shut down their message board again.
> Was there any visible cause for this? (iirc they did the same thing
> before when their user base started to turn hostile)
I assumed that they were going to install their new sitebrain-style
message board. This doesn't explain the unnecessary downtime though. I
suspect that the real truth is somewhere in between. They are actually
working on a sitebrain style forum, but they wanted to silence their
hostile user base. They really don't want to support end-users. The real
money for them is in enterprise apps and ISP/ASP licensing.
The biggest worldly matter has been British Telecom's patent assertion
for "hyperlinks". This is way bigger than the brain's patent on mindmap
interfaces. They're actually planning to generate revenue by asking
ISP's to pay license fees for "hyperlink" technology.
No one's quite sure how easy it will be to bust this patent, and whether
ISP's will pay lawyers to break the patent (6 figures) or pay a (4
figure) license fee instead. Unisys licensed GIF and thousands of ISP's
actually paid them.
Of course, the same prior art that we've been talking about all along
applies to the British Telecom patent. Most notably, Ted Nelson's Xanadu
project.
...Steve
www.memes.net
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