DudeAsInCool

Microsoft in talks to acquire AOL? Time Warner executives have held discussions in recent months with Microsoft about a potential sale of AOL, The Post has learned. In addition, Time Warner lawyers have begun analyzing any potential antitrust issues from such a deal, and to date their conclusion is that there would be few roadblocks to a Microsoft acquisition of AOL, according to sources familiar with the matter. Time Warner spokesman Ed Adler said "such speculation is silly and pointless," and wouldn't comment further. A Microsoft spokesperson declined comment. Sources say the deal being discussed within Time Warner would include Microsoft paying cash plus the assumption of debt to acquire AOL. A possible investment by Microsoft in Time Warner Cable has also been considered, sources say. Microsoft previously invested $1 billion in Comcast, the nation's largest cable operator, and owns about 7 percent of that company. Time Warner and Microsoft are already deep in discussions about ways to use Microsoft technology in Time Warner's content businesses, and discussions about a deal for AOL emanated from those talks, sources say. As first reported by The Post this week, Time Warner is stepping up efforts to consider alternatives for AOL. Its bankers at Goldman Sachs are putting together a proposal for the division, which could include a sale, spin-off or radical restructuring of the business. Sources close to Parsons insist that no deal is imminent and that the review of AOL is only in its early stages. But Parsons himself appears especially eager to pursue a deal with Microsoft, according to a source. http://www.nypost.com/business/17300.htm

Musical Chairs With the Big Boys By STEVE LOHR Published: March 21, 2004 Is RealNetworks the next Netscape? Rob Glaser, the founder and chief executive of RealNetworks, a pioneering maker of music-playing software for the Internet, bridles at the notion. "Our situation is very different in some important ways," he said in a lengthy interview last week. (Before he founded RealNetworks, Rob Glaser worked for Bill Gates, whom he has since sued. His music service is going head-to-head against that of Steven P. Jobs.) Netscape, of course, was a path breaker in Web-browsing software and Exhibit A in a sweeping government antitrust case that resulted in a stinging legal setback for Microsoft. Yet Netscape soon faded as a force in the industry. The fate of RealNetworks is a question awaiting an answer. But the similarities between it and Netscape are uncanny, especially now that the European Commission is preparing to rule against Microsoft on Wednesday after a final round of settlement talks collapsed last week. The commission will order the company to offer a version of its dominant Windows operating system for personal computers without a digital media player, a market in which RealNetworks was the front-runner until Microsoft moved in. The ruling, if upheld on appeal, may make it easier for RealNetworks to get its software on more personal computers. But it will not undo the damage already done to the company's business. In many ways, the European case can be seen as a sequel to the American antitrust suit against Microsoft. Netscape was at the center of that case, which Microsoft lost but then settled with the Bush administration in 2001. Some of the names have changed, but the pattern is the same. In both cases, Microsoft was accused of being a nasty monopolist that bundled new software into Windows, gave it away and engaged in bullying tactics intended to stifle competition by crushing the early leader in an emerging market. Competing on those terms proved to be near fatal for Netscape, which was eventually acquired and exists today in a forlorn corner of Time Warner. And it has not been any easier for RealNetworks, which has lost money for four straight years - $245 million in red ink. As if battling Bill Gates were not enough, Mr. Glaser also finds himself pitted against perhaps the second-most-famous computer entrepreneur in the land: Steven P. Jobs ofApple Computer. Apple's iTunes music store has recently overshadowed RealNetworks' Rhapsody as the stellar brand in digital music. The RealNetworks story has the added theme of former friends turned enemies. Mr. Glaser, 42, worked for a decade at Microsoft, where he became one of Mr. Gates's trusted lieutenants, and a very rich man. He left and founded RealNetworks in 1994, parting on good terms. Microsoft took a 10 percent stake in the start-up, originally called Progressive Networks. But then Microsoft itself got into the digital media market, and the partners became adversaries. In 1998, Mr. Glaser testified before the Senate against Microsoft, describing what he said were the abusive tactics of his former employer. Later that year, Microsoft announced that it was selling its stake in RealNetworks. The most recent salvo from RealNetworks came three months ago, when it filed a private antitrust suit against Microsoft, seeking $1 billion in damages. Despite the bitter rivalry, Mr. Glaser maintains that his company is neither defined nor obsessed by its huge competitor and Seattle area neighbor. "This is not some quixotic Ahab-and-the-whale thing," he said. Mr. Glaser may be protesting too much, but there is a strong case to be made that his company's future will not be just a rerun of the Netscape script. RealNetworks seems to have the quick instincts of a survivor. Its losses are declining sharply, and it has overhauled its business. For most of its young corporate life, the main business of RealNetworks was software - the software needed to play on a personal computer the music or video received in digital streams over the Internet and the software needed by developers and companies to create and send it. Particularly in the last year, the company's digital media offerings to consumers - its Rhapsody music service, computer games and streaming video of Nascar races, N.B.A. games and news from CNN and ABC - have grown sharply. Most are sold as subscriptions, at $5 to $10 a month. In 2001, software accounted for roughly 60 percent of RealNetworks' revenue; by the fourth quarter of last year, the software share had fallen to 25 percent. Over the same period, the share of revenue from consumer services more than doubled, to 75 percent. TODAY, RealNetworks can be thought of as the Internet equivalent of the early cable television networks of decades ago, like MTV or ESPN. And it is much less dependent on software than it was before, and thus less susceptible to being run over by Microsoft. RealNetworks says it will return to profitability in the second half of this year, excluding the legal costs of suing Microsoft, estimated at $3 million a quarter. You can read the full story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/business...ney/21real.html

Blues Musicians Get Help Overcoming Hard Times By ANDREW JACOBS Published: March 21, 2004 WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — No one ever said the blues was any way to make a living. Beverly (Guitar) Watkins knew that, and returned to cleaning offices in Atlanta when the Holiday Inn lounge gigs dried up. Broke even in good times, Little Freddie King survived by playing juke joints in New Orleans until old age left his body broken. Deprived of a steady income, he went without dentures or glasses, and one night, a heavy rain brought down the ceiling of his bedroom. Without an audience for his quirky style of music, Haskel (Whistling Britches) Thompson ended up in a Winston-Salem homeless shelter. From the Appalachian highlands to the Mississippi Delta, musicians who got by on drink house tips and street corner busking have found themselves living in decaying mobile homes, formerly nimble fingers twisted with age, their homespun repertoires lost with their deaths. "These people are our culture, our folk musicians, and no one is looking after them," said the bluesman Taj Mahal. "We're always putting our hands over our heart and saying the Pledge of Allegiance and honoring Davy Crockett, yet we're allowing these people and their music to fall through the cracks." In the 1980's, while recording old-time mountain musicians in North Carolina, Tim Duffy came to a similar realization. As a student studying folklore at the University of North Carolina, he grew obsessed with preserving the sounds of these unheralded musicians. But as he traveled the rural South with recording equipment, he grew even more troubled by the poverty that left many artists without instruments and too strapped for heating oil or medicine. "Their music ended up in archives but the problem is no one gets to hear it," said Mr. Duffy, who lives in Hillsborough, N.C. "And the recordings don't put food on their table, it doesn't get them a gig." Over the last two decades, Mr. Duffy, 41, has turned his passion into a nonprofit organization, the Music Maker Foundation, which is part recording company, part artist management service and part social welfare agency. For those able to perform, the foundation he and his wife, Denise, run from their converted wood shop promotes roots music and offers artists a touring career; for those too old or sickly, he sends monthly checks that average $100. When unexpected hardships strike, as in the case of Little Freddie King's collapsing ceiling, Mr. Duffy provides emergency cash. When he learned that Mr. Thompson was living in a shelter, he arranged for him to stay with another Music Maker artist, Captain Luke Mayer, a smoky-voiced baritone who lives in a Winston-Salem housing project. Mr. Duffy also helps Mr. Mayer keep the van that ferries a half-dozen musicians to the grocery store, to doctors' appointments and to gigs around the state. More than 100 musicians are served by the foundation, which has arranged whirlwind tours for musicians like Ms. Watkins, who still performs on the streets of Atlanta, and has appeared at blues festivals across the country and in Europe. The foundation also puts CD's into the hands of men like Cootie Stark, a blind guitarist from Greenville, S.C., who had never had his music recorded until he met Mr. Duffy at age 68. Mr. Stark, now 77, one of the last surviving purveyors of the Piedmont Blues, has since taken to the stages of Lincoln Center, the Rockport Rhythm and Blues Festival at Newport and other concert venues around the world. He earns about $8,000 a year selling his CD's. "It should have happened 45 years ago, but I finally got a break," he said. In the process of helping the musicians, Mr. Duffy has helped cultivate new audiences who eagerly await the next Music Maker recording. Mr. Duffy has produced 45 CD's, and many of his artists can be booked for appearances through the foundation's Web site. A dozen artists recently had their work added to Apple Computer's iTunes site, which allows customers to download songs. William Ferris, author of the "Encyclopedia of Southern Culture," said popular interest in roots music had grown in recent years, especially after the PBS series produced by Martin Scorsese, "The Blues," and films like "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "Cold Mountain." "It's an exciting time for indigenous music," said Mr. Ferris, who is the associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Still, the bulk of these musicians, he said, live in anonymity, their lives dominated by the struggle to survive. "The blues has always been the stepchild in the family of American music." Advertisement On his front porch in the morning cold, John Dee Holeman cradled his steel guitar and plucked out a mournful tune. Although slowed by a recent stroke, Mr. Holeman, 76, can still produce nearly 100 songs, many his own creations. "Fingers aren't as swift as they used to be," he complains, but they easily glide across the neck of Big Boss, the name he has given his guitar. He recalls how he taught himself to play as a child, stealthily grabbing a few moments on his half-brother's Silvertone during breaks from working the tobacco fields. "I'd come in for water and steal a tune and put it back just like it was." Mr. Holeman got his first guitar at 15, a $15 Sears, Roebuck model. As a teenager, he honed his style with Blind Boy Fuller, considered the father of the Piedmont Blues, a more buoyant version of the Mississippi Delta blues. Despite his talent, Mr. Holeman worked most of his life as a heavy machinery operator, with nights spent stripping the wood out of tobacco leaf at the Liggett Meyers factory up the street from his home in Hayti, Durham's historically black section. On weekends, he would play local drink houses, or birthday parties. In the 1970's, he began appearing at a blues festival in Durham. When Mr. Holeman met Mr. Duffy in the early 1990's, his world opened up. Mr. Duffy arranged for him to get his $1,200 guitar, made sure he had a steady supply of nutritional supplements and helped him record two CD's. Over the past decade Mr. Holeman has appeared at festivals in Washington, Turkey and Japan. He performed at the Library of Congress, and he took part in a State Department-financed cultural tour of Africa. "Sometimes people stop me on the street and say, `Aren't you famous?' " he said. "Now that's real nice." Another of Mr. Duffy's proud discoveries is Ms. Watkins, 64, whom he met a at a shopping mall in Atlanta. "She was prowling the sidewalk like Jimi Hendrix, flailing, playing the guitar behind her head, falling to her knees, as if she was performing for a packed concert hall," Mr. Duffy said. "She was on fire. I couldn't believe my eyes." Mr. Duffy gave her a $20 tip and said he wanted to help her reach a wider audience. "I'm ready," she says she told him. "Let's rock on." She was soon booked on a 42-city tour sponsored by Winston cigarettes that included a dozen other Music Maker acts. She has been to Italy, Portugal, France and Switzerland. "There are no lack of artists we could be helping," said Mr. Duffy, who said he raised about $500,000 last year in grants and donations. He pointed to a rack of digital audio tapes he said contained the raw material for 45 recordings. "I can't get them out fast enough," he said, adding that every year, three or four musicians die before he can get their music out. "I feel like I'm racing against time." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/national/21BLUE.html?8hpib

I think we had one..but we should resurrect it

Submitting Articles To Newsletters & Websites by James D. Brausch http://www.QuitThatJob.com Submitting articles to newsletters and websites is an extremely powerful method of promotion. To do this you will need articles with your name as the author. Can you write? Good; get to it. You need to write one 500 word article on the topic of your site every week. Can't write? No problem. Do you have $250 to spend to have 15 articles ghost written for you? That's only $16 per article and will get you by for the next 15 weeks (almost 4 months). If so, Elance is your answer: http://www.Elance.com Place a project up for bid asking for 15 ghostwritten articles on the topic of your site. You can suggest the titles of the articles if you want. Dozens of people WILL place bids (they always do) and 3 or 4 will bid the minimum which is $250 in that category. Choose from the best by looking at their credentials and sample work (most bidders will be happy to show you samples). Great; now you own 15 articles that you can legitimately put your name on... Or you can use a pseudonym (a pen name). OK; so you have either written some articles or you have had them ghostwritten for you. Now you just add a small three line bio at the end of your article. It can say something like this: John Smith is the webmaster for http://yourdomain.com which is the #1 resource for widgets on the Internet. Be sure to visit his complete archive of articles here: http://www.yourdomain.com/articles/ Of course you will want to put your name where John Smith is in the above byline and your domain... and your topic instead of "widgets". But you get the idea. This byline will be printed with your article. It has become a custom on the Internet. You really don't even have to demand that webmasters and ezine publishers include it. They just will. Now, you need to submit them to as many newsletters as you can every week. Send one new article like clockwork to your entire list of newsletters on the same day of the week every single week. How do you get a list of newsletters? First, put a form on your site for ezine editors or webmasters to request article submissions. You will eventually start getting 5 or 10 submissions every week to add to your list. Here are some ways to get your list going right away: Pay $10 to get your article distributed to thousands of ezines right now: http://thephantomwriters.com/purchase/distribution.shtml You will receive confirmations from ezines that have published your articles. Add those ezines to your own distribution list. Want even more? Pay $20/article (in quantity) to submit to 500 highly responsive ezines here: http://www.ezinetrendz.com/articlesubmission.htm Once again, be sure to add the confirmations you receive to your own list. You eventually want to stop submitting through pay services and submit only to your own list (which is free). Buy a list of 1200 newsletter editors for $47 here: http://www.ezine-editors-list.com/ Remember that the real goal is to build up your own list. This is a VERY powerful method of promotion. I highly recommend it. The author, James D. Brausch, is the coach and webmaster of QuitThatJob.com, a site dedicated to providing step-by- step instructions to start your own profitable Internet business and Quit That Job! For more info, please visit: http://www.QuitThatJob.com

Do Frames Affect Ranking? by Jon Ricerca http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com Almost all SEO's agree that using frames will have devasting results on your search engine rankings. Is it true? We decided to answer this extremely simple question for the two leading search engines using a simple statistical analysis. The methodology: I gathered the results of the queries that were naturally performed last month by myself and three associates using the two leading search engines and analyzed them. I had to visit each page and check the HTML source code to see if frames were in use. I counted the number of pages found that utilized frames for the first 8 rankings. The results for each of the two leading search engines were kept separate so that we could discover any differences between the two leading search engines for this factor. The resulting graphs show the number of pages utilizing frames for each ranking. The Y-axis shows the number of pages found utilizing frames, while the X-axis shows rankings 1 through 8. Here are the graphs for each of the two leading search engines: http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/dcy03.jpg http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/dcg03.jpg (Note to webmasters: You have permission to hotlink, text link or even copy the above images to your own site. And you have permission to remove this note. :) The result is very conclusive and very surprising. Frames had no effect on ranking with both of the leading search engines! The SEO gurus are wrong again! Notes: 1. There was no exercise to attempt to isolate different keywords. I merely took a random sampling of the queries performed by myself and three associates during the month. Conclusion: Pages which utilize frames rank no higher nor lower than pages that do not utilize frames on both of the leading search engines. This is merely a correlation study, so it cannot be determined from this study whether the leading search engines purposefully entertain this factor or not. The actual factors used may be far distant from the factor we studied, but the end result is that these search engines do, in fact, rank pages with frames the same as pages without frames in the study. Jon Ricerca is one of the leading researchers and authors of the Search Engine Ranking Factor (SERF) reports at SearchEngineGeek.com. For access to the other SERF reports, please visit: http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com

Welcome to Beatking, Airforce1. Hope you had a good flight. Enjoy your landing... :jammin: at BK...

Welcome to Beatking, Airforce1 :strumma:

Thanx, NH. The focus of the site is all types of music. Feel free to turn the community on to what you like ...

Welcome to Beatking, NH :thumpin: :read this:

Welcome to Beatking, Nukehella :jammintwo:

Yeah...the democrats movie isnt as good...it was on the site and thanx! http://www.democrats.org/deficit/flash.html I prefer the moveon.org movies--now they pack a punch *** Here's an excerpt from Bush's first campaign speech today in Florida, where he viciously tore into Kerry. One of our young aol reporters was there to translate: "H3 ALSO SUPORT3D A 50-CANT-A-GALON TAX ON GASOLIEN MR111!!! LOL OMG WTF LOL (Mr. Bush added, referring to a proposed increase in the federal gasoline tax that Mr. Kerry backed in 1994) HA WANTAD U 2 PAY AL TAHT MONEY AT TEH PUMP AND WUDNT AVEN THROW IN A FRE CAR WASH1!!1!! OMG WTF"

It was pretty clever, but there's not much substance there.. Have you found the democratic one yet?

WUT U CANT SE IT??!!!? OMG LOL ITS RIGHT IN MAH PRIKLY HANDS.!!1!1!!1111!!!!11!1! OMG )

HOW COM3 U WONT L3T MA S3RANAED U UMA AND PLAY WIT U 23S??!!!?! LOL UR BNG A DIK TAAES

Dont mind Rainbow, Janet--let him chill. He's still jealous about you keeping Kooper's socks

OK, Ive posted PCTEchTalk in our Tech Forums and our recommended links. If you want to add information, feel free to comment in the new thread!

PCTT is a site to go and chill out, get tech support, and visit the brand-spanking new and expanding P2P section! There's more concrete applications and simple to use infomation than you could ever hope to ask for. Our good friends The Hunter and Janet999 from ZP are the mods there, and as always willing to lend a helping hand. You can find it here: http://www.pctechtalk.com

Blumonkey sure has a cool website, nice music, and a nice message, too. Thanx 1487 for dropping by and turning us on... :thumpin: (PS-- I couldnt get your other link to work..maybe the server is down..but i will check it again later)

Welcome 1 - 4 - 8 - 7. Glad to have your here :scratchin:

Welcome to Beatking,1487 - a very good year for beer, I hear :Here's to you:

Cool!

Do you guys have a paragraph/write up that describes pctechtalk? I'd like to post something in the Beatking Recommends forum for our members and visitors.

Thanx, Janet, we appreciate it :D By the way, I checked out your and Hunter's new site http://www.pctechtalk.com and its got a lot of useful information. Check it out folks! Hunter and Janet are the creme de la creme of mods and the site is pack full of great stuff for PC users...and this is coming from a Mac lover

Protests continue on the war in Iraq around the world. (The Drudge Report is developing an accompanying story accusing the British government of spying on protesting students for terror links..more details to come). Sunday March 21, 6:27 AM Worldwide protests demand Iraq pullout By Grant McCool NEW YORK (Reuters) - More than a million antiwar protesters have poured into the streets of cities around the globe on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq to demand the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops. From Sydney to Tokyo, from Santiago, Chile, to Madrid, London, New York and San Francisco, demonstrators on Saturday condemned U.S. policy in Iraq and said they did not believe Iraqis were better off or the world safer because of the war. Journalists estimated that at least a million people streamed through Rome, in probably the biggest single protest. In London, two anti-war protesters evaded security to climb the landmark Big Ben clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, unfurling a banner reading "Time for Truth." About 25,000 demonstrators gathered in central London, many carrying "Wanted" posters bearing images of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, his main war ally. In most places, the demonstrators numbered in the tens of thousands, compared with hundreds of thousands who marched in big cities on February 15, 2003, to try and prevent the conflict. The peaceful protests began in Asia and moved to Europe and the Americas in what organisers billed "a global day of action." In New York, scene of the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane strikes by Islamic militants, tens of thousands created a sea of signs in midtown Manhattan, many of them criticising Bush, who is running for re-election in November. Among the signs spotted in the crowd were, "Money For Jobs and Education not for War and Occupation" and "Bush Lies" and "End Occupation of Iraq." TEXAS PROTEST Anti-war activists gathered at a park in the small central Texas town of Crawford but out of sight of Bush's ranch there. Others gathered in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of Fort Bragg, one of the biggest U.S. military basis. Soldiers, veterans and local residents staged two counter-demonstrations, but there were military veterans and families among the anti-war groups. "I hate George Bush and everything he stands for and this war of vanity," said Don Marshburn, 72, a disabled Navy veteran from Newton Grove North Carolina. "I'm sick of bombs. It didn't do anything over there and it didn't do anything over here." About 2,000 protested at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and several hundred in Chicago. New York's crowd was the largest in the United States on the day, with organisers estimating up to 100,000 protesters. Police did not give an official estimate. "Hey Hey, Ho Ho, George Bush has got to go," marchers chanted at the rally organised by the United For Peace and Justice coalition of left-leaning groups. "The thing they all object to is Bush," said demonstrator, Reeves Hamilton, 30. "It doesn't make sense to bomb countries that have nothing to do with September 11." He said he supported troops going into Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda militants responsible for the attacks, but not the invasion of Iraq, which Bush ordered to rid the country of its purported weapons of mass destruction. At a campaign rally in Florida, Bush touted Iraq as an "essential victory" in Washington's war on terror and hit back at criticism of his decision to invade without more international support. BUSH ON THE DEFENSIVE "I'm all for united action, and so are our 34 coalition partners in Iraq right now," he said. "Yet America must never outsource America's national security decisions to the leaders of other countries." A year after the start of the Iraq war, Saddam Hussein has been overthrown and captured, but no weapons stockpiles have been found. Concern over the war has been most evident in Spain, where thousands demonstrated a week after voting out the conservative government that sent troops to Iraq. Many Spaniards blamed Madrid's support for the war for the March 11 train bombs, blamed on Islamic militants, which killed 202 people. Spanish Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq. He has called the war a "disaster" and a "fiasco." Many in Iraq said their lives had improved since Saddam was toppled, but others said guerrilla attacks and lawlessness left them fearful. Guerrillas killed a U.S. Marine near the town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, on Saturday, raising to 393 the number of U.S. troops killed in combat or in attacks in Iraq in the past year. The number of non-combat deaths is 183. http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040320/3/3ix9o.html