In-Reply-To: <9604111757.AA24199@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Message-ID: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Status: O
X-Status: 



	Rex Ballard - Director of Electronic Distribution
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard


On Thu, 11 Apr 1996 janused@aol.com wrote:

> May I correspond with you regarding Landmark (as well as the internet)?

Sure!

> I had bad experiences with Landmark. Yet, it seems to have potential for
> me, however unrealized; and potential for society, at least initially
> realized.

It probably does.  You seem to have chosen not to participate - it's a
valid choice.

> I will try to phrase the following more usefully in a future post. My own
> confusion should not make my post confusing; sorry. Seems better to send
> now.
>
> For the Internet, I agree with a lot of the book "Silicon Snake Oil" and
> still regard the 'net as a blessing.

In any industry, there are unscrupulous players.  Remember the mechanic
who put alka-seltzer chips in your battery?  The "net" is actually quite
effective at self-regulation.  The bidirectional characteristics tend to
keep the "Snake Oil Salesmen" more honest than they might otherwise be.

> Blessing or curse, it seems immortal now.

Actually, the nature of the internet is that it is constantly evolving.
If anything, commercialization has only accelerated the evolution.
Because engineers on the net freely share information, each programmer
builds on the accomplishments of other programmers.

> In the past, you may have noticed, the best products in the
> information industry tend to die. An exageration? I guess so. Remember DR
> DOS, Amiga, GEM, GEO, and now, I suspect, OS2?

There were several factors driving this.

First, IBM did NOT want a multi-user system on the desktop competing with
the mainframe.  Gary Kildal's version of the story (Kilobaud or Byte,
1981), was that he showed IBM a copy of MP/M with unix-like extensions and
IBM told him they only wanted a single user system.  As it was, MS-DOS
coupled with NetWare killed the IBM Series-1 market within months after
the first PC was shipped.

Second, Microsoft had gone along with IBM, even to the point of selling
the rights to Xenix - and all future implementations of UNIX, to SCO.  It
wasn't until OS/2 2.0 that Gates "broke ranks" and put true multitasking
and multiuser capabilities into the kernel.

When Atari released the ST, IBM submitted 500 circuit board revisions to
the FCC for EMI testing and approval.  It kept Atari off the market for 6
months.  The Amiga also got delayed this way.  The Amiga also had problems
of no compatibility with anything.  It couldn't run UNIX applications, it
couldn't run MS-DOS apps, it had limited networking and communications
capabilities, and eventually became incompatibile with itself.  Backward
compatibility is important.

GEM and GEO were simply the victims of Bill Gate's effective advertizing
strategy.  With Microsoft spending $2 Billion on Windows promotions, and
the competition spending only a few hundred million, the media ignored the
"bit players" in droves.  Since the announcement of Windows NT back in
1991, the biggest threat to Microsoft has been UNIX, in it's many flavors.

As Bill Gates flooded the media, the Unix community was quietly
circulating a PC operating system called Linux.  This month, Linux was
outselling Microsoft in terms of number of units sold.  Unix represents
85% of the internet server market.  The Unix community includes HP, DEC,
Sun, IBM, SCO, Novell, Silicon Graphics, and 20 companies you may have
never heard of.  DEC has thrown it's support to NT in hopes of promoting
it's Alpha chip as the successor to the "Intel Chips".  Many companies,
such as Sun are donating free source code to the Linux project because
it is the only viable competition against the Microsoft PC/OS Monopoly.

The Internet is also a means of assuring open competition.  Microsoft has
tried to compete with it's own substitute (MSN), and even resorted to
releasing a browser that reports all visited sites to Microsoft to help
them target the competition.  Microsoft has begun paying license feed to
Sun, NetScape, and other "Open Systems" innovators because customers are
now interested.  FTP Associates proposed the original "winsock" standards,
but it required Microsoft's "Blessing" to be accepted.  I didn't
participate directly in the draft committee mailing list, but I was
frequently in communication with those who were.

Originally, Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL, Sprint, Tymnet, and Telenet were
threatened by the competitive nature of the internet.  Eventually, they
discovered that they could not only keep their own 4 million customers,
but could serve the 100 million (and growing) users served by Independent
Service Providers and Fire-Walled Corporations.

> The 'net could allow a
> 'perfect market' that would prevent the loss of the best - in any
> industry, or any realm of human awareness (Glen Canyon might never have
> been damned, pun, sorry, and great obscure artists could have a reputation
> instead of starvation).

The internet puts the individual in charge of his own "entertainment".
This means that the market becomes more fragmented.  It's like every
person was running their own studio.  They can follow threads based on
their interests.  It is interesting to not that adult boards are getting 1
million hits/month while "family" boards are getting only a few thousand.
On the other hand, adults are sexually active for 40-50 years, children
are communicating and choice making children for about 5 years (in terms
of their ability to be guided in their decisions by parents).

Over the next few years, barring censorship, the "fad" of "adult
entertainment" will fade or move into some other realm and media, and
prurient interests will dominate.  It similar to the video tape market of
the 1970's.  (visit my URL on that).

> We've started a small marketing firm in the
> industry "the best marketing for the best products" and I have only the
> fuzziest ideas how to get more clients,

First, learn to think like a woman.  Everyone has something they want to
sell, and people are always looking for something "different" to buy.
Spend a few hours watching the "shoppers" in a Mall.  They pass store
after store of the "same old stuff" and are drawn in by the unusual.
After about 5 hours of finding "something different" that "doesn't Fit",
the shoppers start looking like Zombies.

On the net, it is possible to specify exactly what you are looking for,
search 37 million pages of ads in 30 seconds, and casually browse through
the 10 or 20 most relevant sites.  Alternatively, they can go on an
adventure, following interesting links that lead them closer and closer to
the "treasure" (something they actually want to buy).

> though we can certainly penetrate
> channels with those who join up; if you have any of your favorites on the
> 'endangered products list' let us know. But, how can all of us build the
> 'net infrastructure faster than people log on to it?

As to how to reach more people, follow the same threads.  Get your pages
posted on search engines, even provide your own search engine.  Organize
your submissions such that the most important and relevant facts are
repeated or in the "keywords" area (even as comments).


> janused
>


From rballard@cnj.digex.net Tue Apr 16 23:39:20 1996
Newsgroups: alt.self-improve,alt.fan.landmark