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At last,
the contents of Aardvark's "million-dollar ideas" notebook
are revealed for all to see!
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Maybe I'm just getting jaded but it strikes me that we're seeing a lot of
recycled stories on the Net-industry news wires these days.
As mentioned yesterday, the NZ Herald made a lot of noise about the existence
of "sinister" files on Windows PCs -- but this has been widely known for
a long time and there are some people who are doubtless making a small
fortune by selling software to erase those files -- just check any usenet
newsgroup for the spam promoting such.
Then TV One news alerted us all to the shocking revelation that our computers
might contain "spyware" -- something widely known to have been a trend for
over two years now. Regular readers of this column will know that I've
reported a number of the major spyware cases such as those involving
the RealPlayer and Netscape's software download system in the dim distant
past.
So what's the problem? Why all this recycling?
Perhaps it's because the industry is suffering a bit of a hangover after
the dot-com boom and bust.
When new, well-funded, and exciting (if not just plain crazy) ventures were
appearing on an almost hourly basis, there was plenty of interesting news
to report.
Then came the bursting of the dot-com bubble...
Even this was newsworthy however, and the media spent its time counting
dead-heads and failed dot-com companies ad nauseam.
But now most of the smoke has cleared and the Net industry is really no
different to forestry, farming, consumer electronics, or any other industry.
In short -- there's not a lot of news out there any more. Writers, like myself,
(and even the good ones) are finding increasingly hard to regularly come up
with stories that are interesting, informative and worthy of air, print or web-space.
In fact, you have to wonder whether some of the recent crop of worms and
viruses haven't been engineered by the media just so that there's something
to write about.
Even that perennial favourite headline: "Major Security Flaw In Microsoft
Product/Service" is becoming so oft-repeated that it holds little allure
for writer or reader alike.
From time to time we can poke a stick at the recording industry for trying
to protect their intellectual property but we all know the procedure: people
infringe copyright, RIAA sues; people infringe copyright, RIAA sues.... etc,etc.
And, of course, we're now becoming desensitized to stories that keep reminding
us that governments all over the world (including NZ) want to pry into our
private online lives and activities -- even to the extent of giving themselves
powerful privileges, by way of special legislation, to ensure that they can.
So -- instead of me telling you what's (not) going on -- why don't you tell me the
type of subject material you'd like to see covered in this column?
What would you like to read about on the increasing number of slow-news days?
Drop me a line and if you want to
share your comments with Aardvark's readers, don't forget to select
"For Publication" or your comments will be regarded as private.
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