SF Gate 2002

  Tech Futures Where workers and investors will find opportunities in the years ahead Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, November 7, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/11/07/techfut.DTL As the holidays approach, Silicon Valley is brimming with jobless workers and tapped-out investors. Happy chatter about vesting stock options has long since morphed into a cacophony of woe. Today...

  Picture This Government Web sites are for the people not incumbent office-holders   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, October 24, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/10/24/govtsites.DTL Quick, what do the Web sites of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors have in common? The answer: Both have been designed with a similar...

  Silicon Valley Fights Back Hollywood has a worthy adversary in South Bay Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Wednesday, October 9, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/10/09/zoelof.DTL In Silicon Valley, where crack computer programmers and networking aces are now competing for jobs waiting tables and tending bar, the connection between government policies that are...

  Free Mickey Stanford Law Professor seeks to overturn the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, September 26, 2002   URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/09/26/bonoact.DTL Opening arguments are set to begin early next month in Eldred vs. Ashcroft, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that will decide the future of copyright law, including...

  Berman-Coble Goes Too Far Legalizing hacking of P2P networks hurts start-ups, not thieves   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, September 12, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/09/12/p2pleg.DTL Longtime congressional veterans Howard Berman (D-Hollywood) and Howard Coble (R-North Carolina) recently coughed up an incredibly vivid example of how easily government officials can unintentionally screw up the economy....

  Open-Source Government Free-software guru Bruce Perens has a new information-technology solution   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, August 29, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/08/29/osgovt.DTL One thing most technology experts can agree on is that California's state government has squandered billions on ill-conceived information-technology (IT) projects in recent years. Whether it was the more than $100...

  Take The Medicine By not expensing stock options now, tech firms are just prolonging the pain   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, August 15, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/08/15/stckopt.DTL The tech sector's head-in-the-sand reaction to the need to reform stock-option accounting practices is surprising for an industry that likes to pride itself on its supposed...

  Not a Moment Too Soon Digiportal's innovative challenge response ChoiceMail program means the end of spam   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Tuesday, July 30, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/07/30/choicem.DTL For the first time in years, my e-mail inbox is totally and completely spam-free. There are no more ads for penile-enlargement services and no more appeals from...

  The Disintermediation Blues On the sad state of online car- and mortgage-buying services     Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, July 18, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/07/18/disintermed.DTL Back when the dot-com boom was peaking, there was a lot of talk about how online services would blow away their anachronistic bricks-and-mortar competitors. Some of that has happened....

  Taxing Workers Cutting capital gains taxes could hurt Silicon Valley in the long run   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Wednesday, July 3, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/07/03/capgain.DTL There is an old saying that sometimes a cure can be worse than the disease. Tech investors might be about to get a dose of just that type of...

  Fuel Cell Hold-up Government's go-slow approach promises to keep the technology on the shelf   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, June 20, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/06/20/fuelcel.DTL The Bush administration's January announcement of the federal government's new $150 million annual FreedomCAR initiative to support fuel-cell research sounded like good news to many casual observers. After...

  Nanotechnology's First Fruits Products nearing market promise to lead the budding industry from hype to reality   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, June 6, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/06/06/nanotch.DTL When most people think about nanotechnology, they usually conjure images of microscopically tiny contraptions such as the invisibly small submarine that was injected into a character's...

  Ocean Rescue Planktos Foundation hopes to reduce global warming by fertilizing the seas     Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Wednesday, May 22, 2002   URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/05/22/plnktos.DTL A group of scientists say it may be possible to simultaneously reduce global warming and increase dwindling supplies of fish around the world by adding relatively tiny amounts...

  Hollywood's Way Out New distribution platform is solution for copyright theft   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, May 9, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/05/09/hrdwresol.DTL The debate about what to do about intellectual-property rights in the digital age usually revolves around two starkly different views about how the world should work. One side, led mostly by big...

  Shooting Blanks Growing digital rights movement needs to put some political heads on stakes -- fast   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Monday, April 22, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/04/22/geekp.DTL Earlier this month, two prominent members of the open-source-software community, Jeff Gerhardt, host of the online "Linux Show," and Doc Searls, senior editor of The Linux...

  Sharing The Airwaves Spread spectrum technology could bring a new dawn for broadcasting   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, April 11, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/04/11/sprdspctrm.DTL Consumer watchdog groups cried foul last February after the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., struck down federal regulations that limited the number of television stations a single...

  Cold Fusion Rides Again Science magazine publishes more evidence of tabletop nuclear reactions   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Monday, March 25, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/03/25/tbltpfusion.DTL Science magazine dropped a bombshell earlier this month: The prestigious journal published a paper by a team of researchers at Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory who say they have...

  Vexing Options Accounting scandal fallout could mean positive changes for workers and investors   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Monday, February 25, 2002   URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/02/25/stckopt.DTL The golden era of virtually unlimited stock options for top executives may finally be drawing to a close, thanks to the recent accounting scandals at firms such as Enron...

  All Hail Creative Commons Stanford professor and author Lawrence Lessig plans a legal insurrection   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Monday, February 11, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/02/11/creatcom.DTL Stanford law professor and author Lawrence Lessig and a small band of collaborators at MIT, Duke, Harvard and Villanova are about to embark on a new endeavor that...

  Search Me Doom ahead for search engines that charge listing fees   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Monday, January 28, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/01/28/srcheng.DTL In a regrettable move, Internet pioneer Yahoo! recently joined competitors such as MSN.com, LookSmart and AltaVista in seeking payments from Web sites that want to be included in their online directories. Many...

  Political Weapons The missile defense shield will help neutralize the tech sector   Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, January 17, 2002 URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/01/17/missiledef.DTL President Bush's problem-plagued missile-defense initiative promises to dramatically shift the balance of power between the technology community and the federal government. The controversial program has two key ingredients that make that...