LOL do you think I've heard of Copyright law? Whatcha think Urban.? You've
read my legal refs before. Yep. It's the law that has forced MSFT to pay
nearly a billion in setllements after they stole software from small
companies over the past ten years after their crack legal team litigated
it--the same clowns who are hemorrhaging stockholder money to the European
Union in fines for being arrogant and slow.
That's a very sarcastic and insulting question Richard. You knew the answer
before you asked it. We have had tons of articles reprinted in this
newsgroup. How about MSFT's web site?
How about material from tons of web sites? They're all copyrighted. I'm
not charging for the material and what I reprinted is available all over the
web. But this is the most important point vis a vis the onpont copywright
law you invoked: The NYTimes is on the web although Frank Rich is Time
Select.
1)He is reprinted on Saturday night and he submits his columns to other
sites for their posting. How about that he of the sarcastic questions who
knows the answer but not the particulars of this column. Gotcha there
didn't I Mr. Urban? His choice. He's the author and it's in his contract.
LOL
Here's so more in the continuing education course for Richard the Urban.
It's also on the web free posted by NYT:
And NYT could care less that Frank Rich has been reprinted. Psssst it's to
educate people like you so you know what's really happening that's important
in Iraq. I want you to get up off your butt and tell them to pull out now.
There are only 23% of troops there that are combat, and hundreds of
thousands of guns we gave the Iraqi army were immediately sold on the black
market and are killing Americans and other soldiers as well as 3500 Iraqis a
month.
I'd like to congratulate Louisana's new representative to Congress who has
become the first Congressman to be elected after the FBI obtained a search
warrant and found $90.000 in cold cash in his freezer. He has said for 6
moths he has a solid explanation--ice is solid--but hasn't offered it--I
think it's that he wanted to live the dream of "cold cash."
His indictment and trial during the spring will make for some fun reading as
he both makes the laws and defends himself from prison. But hey he's a
democratic vote in a democratically controlled House until they take him
away.
Despite a federal corruption investigation, Representative William J.
Jefferson was re-elected with a decisive runoff victory.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/index.html
____________________________
December 10, 2006
Black-Market Weapon Prices Surge in Iraq Chaos
By C. J. CHIVERS
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Dec. 8 - The Kurdish security contractor placed the black
plastic box on the table. Inside was a new Glock 19, one of the 9-millimeter
pistols that the United States issued by the tens of thousands to the Iraqi
Army and police.
This pistol was no longer in the custody of the Iraqi Army or police. It had
been stolen or sold, and it found its way to an open-air grocery stand that
does a lively black-market business in police and infantry arms. The
contractor bought it there.
He displayed other purchases, including a short-barreled Kalashnikov assault
rifle with a collapsible stock that makes it easy to conceal under a coat or
fire from a car. "I bought this for $450 last year," he said of the rifle.
"Now it costs $650. The prices keep going up."
The market for this American-issued pistol and the ubiquitous assault rifle
illustrated how fear, mismanagement and malfeasance are shaping the
small-arms market in Iraq.
Weapon prices are soaring along with an expanding sectarian war, as more
buyers push prices several times higher than those that existed at the time
of the American-led invasion nearly four years ago. Rising prices, in turn,
have encouraged an insidious form of Iraqi corruption - the migration of
army and police weapons from Iraqi state armories to black-market sales.
All manner of infantry arms, from rocket-propelled grenade launchers to
weathered and dented Kalashnikovs, have circulated within Iraq for decades.
But three types of American-issued weapons are now readily visible in shops
and bazaars here as well: Glock and Walther 9-millimeter pistols, and
pristine, unused Kalashnikovs from post-Soviet Eastern European countries.
These are three of the principal types of the 370,000 weapons purchased by
the United States for Iraq's security forces, a program that was criticized
by a special inspector general this fall for, among other things, failing to
properly account for the arms.
The weapons are easy to find, resting among others in the semihidden street
markets here, where weapons are sold in tea houses, the back rooms of
grocery kiosks, cosmetics stores and rug shops, or from the trunks of cars.
Proprietors show samples for immediate purchase and offer to take orders -
10 guns can be had in two hours, they say, and 100 or more the next day.
"Every type of gun that the Americans give comes to the market," said Brig.
Hassan Nouri, chief of the political investigations bureau for the
Sulaimaniya district. "They go from the U.S. Army to the Iraqi Army to the
smugglers. I have captured many of these guns that the terrorists bought."
The forces propelling the trade can be seen in the price fluctuations of the
country's most abundant firearm, the Kalashnikov.
In early 2003, a Kalashnikov in northern Iraq typically cost from $75 to
$150, depending on its condition, origin and style. Immediately after the
invasion, as fleeing soldiers abandoned their rifles and armories were
looted, prices fell, pushed down by a glut and a brief sense of optimism.
Today, the same weapons typically cost $210 to $650, according to interviews
with seven arms dealers, two senior Kurdish security officials and several
customers. In other areas of Iraq, prices have climbed as high as $800,
according to Phillip Killicoat, a researcher who has been assembling data on
Kalashnikov prices worldwide for the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based
organization.
The price ranges reflect not only a weapon's condition but its model. A
Kalashnikov made in a former Soviet-bloc factory costs more than a
Kalashnikov made in China, North Korea or Iraq. Collapsible-stock models
have become disproportionately expensive. The price ranges do not include
the most compact Kalashnikovs, like those Osama bin Laden has been
photographed with, which now have a collector's value in Iraq and can cost
as much as $2,000.
In many ways, weapon prices provide a condensed history of Iraq's slide into
chaos.
Prices began moving upward in the summer of 2003 as several classes of
customers entered the market together, Iraqi security officials and the arms
dealers said. Western security contractors, Sunni insurgent groups, Shiite
paramilitary units and criminals who were released from prison by Saddam
Hussein before the war all sought the same weapons at once.
Kalashnikov prices quickly reached $200, they said. Since late last year,
prices have been moving up again, as sectarian war has spread. Militias have
been growing at the same time that more civilians have been seeking weapons
for self-defense - twin demand pressures that pushed prices to new heights
this fall.
"Now the Sunni want the weapons because they fear the Shia, and the Shia
want the weapons because they fear the Sunni," said Brig. Sarkawt Hassan
Jalal, the chief of security in the Sulaimaniya district. "So prices go up."
Mr. Killicoat put it another way. "When households start entering the
market, that's a free-for-all," he said.
The surge is evident across a spectrum of arms. Pistol prices have nearly
tripled since 2003. Western 9-millimeter pistols now sell for $1,100 to
$1,800 in the bazaars of this city. Sniper rifles cost $1,100 to $2,000, the
dealers said. In the West, similar pistols sell for $400 to $600.
Arms dealers say that rising prices have led to more extensive pilfering
from state armories, including the widespread theft of weapons the United
States had issued to Iraq's police officers and soldiers.
"In the south, if the Americans give the Iraqis weapons, the next day you
can buy them here," said one dealer, who sold groceries in the front of his
kiosk and offered weapons in the back. "The Iraqi Army, the Iraqi police -
they all sell them right away."
No weapons were displayed when two visitors arrived. But when asked, the
owner and a friend swiftly retrieved six pistols, a rocket-propelled grenade
launcher and three Kalashnikovs from a car and another room.
The rifles and the grenade launcher were wrapped in rice sacks. He slipped
two of the rifles out of the cloth. They were spotless and unworn, inside
and out, and appeared never to have been used. They had folding stocks and
were priced at $560 each.
The dealer said they had recently been taken from an Iraqi armory. "Almost
all of the weapons come from the Iraqi police and army," he said. "They are
our best suppliers."
One pistol was a new Walther P99, a 9-millimeter pistol that the dealer said
had been issued by the Americans to the Iraqi police. It was still in its
box.
Glock pistols were also easy to find. One young Iraqi man, Rebwar Mustafa,
showed a Glock 19 he had bought at the bazaar in Kirkuk last year for $900.
Five of his friends have bought identical models, he said.
When asked if he was surprised that the Iraqi police and soldiers sold their
own guns, he scoffed.
"Everything goes to the bazaar," he said.
He added: "It is not only pistols. A lot of police cars are being sold. The
smugglers brought us three cars and asked if we wanted to buy them. Their
doors were still blue, and police labels were on them. The lights were still
on top."
Although the scale of weapons sales is unmistakably large, it is impossible
to measure precisely. Sales are almost always hidden and unrecorded.
Tracing American-issued weapons back to Iraqi units that sell them is
especially difficult because the United States did not register serial
numbers for almost all of the 370,000 small arms purchased for Iraqi
security forces, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for
Iraq Reconstruction.
The weapons were paid for with $133 million from the Iraq Relief and
Reconstruction Fund. Among them were at least 138,000 new Glock pistols and
at least 165,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles that had not previously been
used, according to the report.
Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the Multi-National Security
Transition Command-Iraq, agreed that weapons provided by the United States
had slipped from custody.
"I certainly concede that there are weapons that have been lost, stolen and
misappropriated," General Dempsey said. He noted that the inspector general
had estimated that 4 percent, or about 14,000 weapons, were lost between
arriving in Iraq and being transferred to Iraqi forces. Most of the weapons
were pistols.
The general said that he thought the estimate was high and that
accountability was improving. A weapons registry was being created, he said.
"Serial numbers are being registered," he said.
But the estimate of a 4 percent loss did not include weapons that were lost
or stolen after being issued to Iraqi units. The arms dealers said this was
the main source of their goods.
The arms dealers described several factors that kept weapons flowing from
state custody.
Some have been taken by insurgents in ambushes or raids. Defections and
resignations have also been common in Iraqi police and army units, they
said, and often departing soldiers and officers leave with their weapons,
which are worth more than several months of pay.
Aaron Karp, a small-arms researcher at Old Dominion University, said Iraq
resembled African countries that had had extraordinary difficulties with the
police selling off their guns. "The gun becomes the most valuable thing in
the household," he said.
"If anything happens to a police officer's family and he needs money, he
walks into work the next day and says, 'Hey, my gun got stolen.' "
Another weapons dealer, who Kurdish officials said had been providing them
with weapons since 1991, said the latest black-market sales followed an old
pattern precisely.
Throughout Mr. Hussein's rule, Iraqi Army officers were in the arms trade,
he said, selling weapons to smugglers. This was how the Kurdish guerrillas
kept themselves supplied.
Now, he said, the smugglers remain in business, and their trade is made
easier because the units often do not have inventories. "I am surprised
sometimes by the numbers," he said. "Sometimes they come by the hundreds."
James Glanz contributed reporting from Baghdad.
"Richard Urban" <richardurbanREMOVETHIS@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23fIL3gKHHHA.420@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Does the New York Times know that you reprinted their entire article, word
> for word. Ever hear of copy rights?
>
> --
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Urban
> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
>
> Quote from George Ankner:
> If you knew as much as you think you know,
> You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
>
>
>
> "Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
> news:uXmFFJJHHHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> December 9, 2006
>> New York Times
>> Biz Section Above Da Fold
>>
>> Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
>> By SAUL HANSELL
>>
>> There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business that
>> Steve Berkowitz wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting such
>> a behemoth is slow going.
>>
>> "I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an
>> oar in the water to change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the
>> Ask Jeeves search engine until Microsoft hired him away in April to run
>> its online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I have to call
>> down, 'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice.
>> "Sometimes the connections to the engine room aren't there."
>>
>> The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's
>> online unit, which by most measures has drifted dangerously off course.
>> Over the last year, its online properties have lost users in the United
>> States. The billions of dollars the company has spent building its own
>> search engine have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market,
>> Microsoft's online unit is losing money.
>>
>> Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto
>> Microsoft's turf.
>>
>> Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too
>> enamored with software wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map
>> service, and failed to make a search engine people liked to use.
>>
>> "A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by
>> the consumer," he said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins.
>> It is the best experience."
>>
>> It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast,
>> be as popular and make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo
>> announced this week that its chief operating officer was leaving, and why
>> the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)
>>
>> But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft is
>> also counting on its Internet operations to breathe new life into its
>> gargantuan but aging Windows and Office franchises.
>>
>> In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill
>> Gates as the company's chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to
>> create online services that are the equivalent of an operating system - a
>> platform that other companies can use to develop their own Web sites
>> using Microsoft's powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising
>> that will appear on these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own
>> software and video games, as well as its own Web site. And it wants to
>> use its online services to freshen up its own software.
>>
>> This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to
>> incorporate the online extensions of Word, Excel and other business
>> services. And it repackaged its e-mail, instant message, blogging and Web
>> search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting the venerable
>> if musty MSN.
>>
>> "There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC
>> users are running Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the
>> 20,000-employee division responsible for the Windows operating system as
>> well as the online unit.
>>
>> Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online,
>> he said, "it's a pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've
>> got Windows and here's a set of Windows Live things that extend those
>> services."
>>
>> Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most
>> of the advertising and search industry.
>>
>> Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said
>> neither MSN nor Windows Live would appeal to consumers in a market where
>> Google has become a synonym for Web search. "People don't see Microsoft
>> as the place you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a verb, and neither
>> is Windows Live."
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.
>>
>> "I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not
>> decided what to do about it. But before he gets around to deciding
>> whether to change the brand, he wants to make Microsoft's search engine
>> itself more appealing to consumers.
>>
>> What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well
>> known and its various services have 430 million users around the world.
>> He promoted Joanne K. Bradford, Microsoft's head of advertising sales, to
>> oversee and revive the MSN portal.
>>
>> "I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them
>> use our search," he said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people from
>> leaking."
>>
>> So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at
>> least two Internet services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a
>> conventional portal with links to programming on various topics that
>> competes with Yahoo and AOL. Windows Live, which uses the Live.com site,
>> is meant to look much like Google, a spare-looking page that can be
>> customized with modules from various services and news feeds.
>>
>> Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit has
>> been slowed by the same sort of organizational drag that caused the
>> latest upgrade of Windows to fall years behind schedule. And of course,
>> the competitive pace of the Internet is far faster than that of operating
>> systems.
>>
>> "Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief
>> executive of Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while its
>> archrival Google moves much more quickly.
>>
>> At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products,
>> like multiple ways to share photos, listen to music or search computer
>> files, as well as multiple toolbars for Internet browsers.
>>
>> "We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing,"
>> said Gary Flake, the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research
>> unit. "If I have a hard time articulating to a friend of mine which one
>> they should be using, imagine the typical user."
>>
>> Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google, the
>> staff was hampered by conflicting priorities and overlapping
>> organizations, employees said. Moreover, last summer, when Microsoft's
>> stock fell after it disclosed a sharp increase in research spending,
>> directions changed again.
>>
>> "They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate,"
>> said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft
>> last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in August. After
>> the stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to hire anybody for my group."
>>
>> Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
>>
>> "Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he said.
>> "If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed, Google
>> has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft's
>> headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)
>>
>> Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail service,
>> built on its Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo. Its
>> instant-messaging service, while well behind AOL and Yahoo in the United
>> States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And its blog service,
>> born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is growing
>> rapidly.
>>
>> Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends
>> less time on Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according to
>> comScore MediaMetrix, even as Yahoo and Google increase the engagement of
>> their users.
>>
>> One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less promotion
>> from its Internet Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent years,
>> computer makers have started changing the default settings on their
>> browsers to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for the
>> traffic) instead of MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are
>> promoting toolbars and other software that help attract traffic.
>>
>> Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but
>> under pressure from antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista
>> will hardly promote Windows Live at all. The new version of Internet
>> Explorer, for example, offers users a long list of search engines, with
>> Windows Live listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.
>>
>> So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business,
>> the biggest challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that
>> people will choose over Google and Yahoo.
>>
>> Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog,
>> building its own search engine from scratch. It thought it could match
>> Google in the relevancy of search results - the crucial measure of a
>> search engine - in two years.
>>
>> So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search
>> experts. Danny Sullivan, a longtime search expert who writes the blog
>> SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of results, Microsoft ranks
>> behind Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has
>> narrowed some.
>>
>> "They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search
>> engine," Mr. Sullivan said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they are
>> still a little behind."
>>
>> And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm,
>> found that even people who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search
>> engine actually found what they were looking for faster when they used
>> Google.
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is
>> getting the basics right." But he says this advantage will not last.
>>
>> "Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has
>> forgotten is how to take it to the next level of differentiation."
>>
>> This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like the
>> 3-D maps and more about changes to the way basic search results are
>> presented. This strategy helped him build a small but loyal audience at
>> Ask Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the ability to see
>> a preview of Web pages found by the search engine.
>>
>> "You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game," he
>> said. "What matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think that's
>> the last 10 percent."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>