eBay buys Skype for ..WHAT???! ($2.6 BILLION!)

eBay recently purchased Skype for $2.6 billion, and the final price tag might go as high as $4.1 billion. Skype is a voice over IP (VoIP) telephone which allows you to call another Skype user (with your computer and high speed internet connection). Skype is not the only VoIP phone service around. There is also Firefly (an Australian company), AOL's Instant Messenger has one, and Google is reportedly has one in beta testing. There are over currently over 1,000 providers of VoIP service. And VoIP is not new. Back in 1997, I tried the free PGPfone, which was an VoIP phone that encrypted your voice using the RSA encryption scheme (to this day still ahead of its time). So why would eBay buy a product which is hardly unique, for such a absurd amount of money?

Your guess is as good as mine. The net is full of people trying to make sense of it. Several people defend eBay with the logic that "Hey... they have to be up to something big". Others come up with imagined tie-ins to eBay's current business model like:

1. Skype will allow eBay sellers and buyers to talk to each other (Oh...how we all miss haggling via telephone. Answering e-mails and taking calls. that's what we're looking for!)
2. Skype will allow Craigslist users to talk to each other.
3. eBay will offer VoIP telephone servce cheaply. Along with the 1,000's of other vendors who didn't drop $2.6 billion for their software.

But to me, none of these explanations make sense. eBay/Craigslist users could use Skype before the eBay purchase if they had wanted. Your Skype phone number is essentially anonymous. The truth is this: Most people don't want strangers calling them either by telephone or VoIP phone. I don't know about you, but I like the distance that e-mail, etc puts between me and the other psychos out there.

Maybe eBay has something up their sleeve we haven't thought of yet. But the question sill remains, why spend $2.6 billion on something you could have easily built yourself for $100 million (and bought yourself a new Boeing 737 along the way - hey, start eBay Airline!)? You would still have $2,500,000,000 to spend on advertising, buying up small nations, etc. You could have even written a check to the existing 54 million Skype users (who, by the way,provide zero net profit for Skype) to switch over to your product.

It just makes no sense. Skype had projected revenues this year of $60 million but has YET to make a profit. The best answer I can come up with is that Skype has perfected mind control and is about to take over the world. Either that or someone at eBay made a huge mistake with the zeros.

US Govt says: Don't invent anything....or else we'll steal it.

This month the US Federal Government told inventors around the world that they need not bother inventing anything that could be useful in fighting the war on terrorism or protecting national security. If you do it anyway and the US government wants your invention, they will just steal it from you. They don't need to pay you. Oh, did I mention that a federal contractor might make a bundle of dough off your invention as well? All without your approval or compensating you one cent.
This is just the sort of encouragement governments are so good at. And I'm sure the US government will be fine with India doing the same thing. India, which has a long history of violating US drug patents, could conceivably begin using this same common law technique anytime the US criticizes them for drug patent infringement : "Oh yeah, we're stealing those drugs. x% our population dying of AIDS would clearly be a national security issue you know." That should pretty much put an end to any US complaints about the knock off HIV/AIDS drugs they're manufacturing. After all, if the US government can steal at will (just by claiming "national security"), why shouldn't every other nation? China is probably churning out knock-off Lipitor right now.

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,68894,00.html

What happened to good old fashioned sugared gum???

Would someone in the chewing gum industry make a mint gum with SUGAR in it already? What the ****!? Why do the ingredients of chewing gum read like a Chemcraft chemistry set contents these days?

I just want my old Doublemint gum back....

Libraries: The Original File Sharing Networks

It's a given that:

1. Theft is bad.
2. Benefiting from someone else's labor without compensating them, when they require compensation to enjoy the fruits of their labor, is theft.
3. File sharing copyrighted material is theft/wrong because the creators of the content are not compensated for their labor.

File sharing is a big topic these days. It's clearly illegal and morally repugnant to steal, and file sharing is stealing. But is there a fine line between borrowing and stealing? Let's look at Libraries. Libraries let people borrow things...books, videos, dvd's, CD's. The library typically buys a book, and then loans it out to many people. Lets take a look at a hypothetical example:

Library buys (10) copies of Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code". They compensate the author/publisher $199.50 ($19.95 X 10 copies).
They loan the book out for 2 week time periods.
Over the course of the year, the book could be loaned out 260 times (52 weeks, 2 week loan periods, 10 books).
Thus, each book is loaned out 26 times. If we assume at 80% of the loans are to different people (some will renew their loan), then 208 people enjoyed Dan Brown's book, without paying him a cent.
This means Dan Brown has lost an estimated $3,950 in potential sales ($4,149.60 - $199.50).
And this is just one library in one year. The book will undoubtedly last several years, and continue to siphon off Dan Brown's potential profits. Where is the outcry? Where are the lawsuits? And why isn't anyone moving to shut these file sharing networks down?

Some may claim that music is different. It's different because a person might enjoy it for years, rather than a book, which someone might enjoy for only a week or two. But is that really a valid claim? Is the duration of the enjoyment somehow relevant in making the determination of what is and isn't permissible? Consider an album that costs $20 and it's one that will be enjoyed for years. Is it more of a crime to walk into the store and steal the $20 cd than it is for me to sneak out of a restaurant on a $20 tab? I enjoyed the restaurant's food for only a few minutes. The CD will be enjoyed for years. Which is the greater crime? The answer is clearly that they are equal crimes. The reason is that the creator of the product was not compensated for my use/enjoyment, regardless of how long it was enjoyed. Imagine a car thief claiming that their crime is mitigated because they only drove the car 'for a few hours’.

Consider the example of the travel guide. Travel guides are useful, usually for a short duration (that of your trip). So the two week check-out period is usually more than enough for your purposes. I check out travel guides from the library as opposed to buying them. Why would I buy a $20 travel guide, when I can borrow it from the library and use it to it's fullest potential FOR FREE! Fodor's/Frommers/Etc have lost lots of money from me over the years, and the library has enabled this to happen. Are they happy about it? It's unclear. Have they been harmed economically? Clearly. I have also used language courses from the library. I have consumed every last drop of intellectual property they had to offer. I retain the information they imparted to me to this very day. Courses costing hundreds of dollars. And I compensated them nothing.

Should I feel guilty?

I'm wondering why someone like Netflix hasn't started NetTunes yet (somone's already registered it). They would be able to let people borrow CD's just like they do DVD's indefinitely for a monthly fee. Wonder if that would upset anyone....

Coffee is still good for you

....despite what the anti-coffee people will tell you. A study from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania shows that coffee has more antioxidants than any other food or drink (including fruit and vegetable drinks). Have another cup. No, seriously.

Read the story here

Maybe this will be active now

I intend to post my own rants-to-no-one, just like everyone else. Also, however, I will offer the world some of the Grand Master Prophet's (AKA, Daddy'o) predictions for their digestion. Have at it people!