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The News – 12/13/00
Unknown, Failed Search Engine Assets Worth $9M
Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard of
Scour. Anyone? Anyone? Class? I didn’t think so. Well, now that lots of dot-coms
with shaky business propositions are going belly up, Mike Doonesbury’s
business plan is becoming more and more viable. (The cartoon tycoon runs a
company that buys distressed dotcom inventory.)
Scour was a search engine.
One of umpty-umpty search engines. Oh wait. It was also a file-sharing
company. How cutting edge. Anyway, CenterSpan Communications (Class?) had the
winning bid of $9 million. Included in the assets was Scour’s P2P
file-sharing technology. Turns out this is what killed the company, which
was driven into bankruptcy by recording industry lawsuits.
Centerspan, I’d be careful
out there!
Wired
News
Greatest Japanese Invention of the 20th Century?
Let’s see. The VCR? The musical toilet?
Hello Kitty?
According to a recent poll, the Japanese
feel their greatest 20th century invention was . . . instant
noodles. The delicacy, invented in 1958, edged out karaoke and the Walkman.
My favorite, the films of Akira Kurosawa, placed a very appropriate number
seven. (Kurosawa’s best known work is The Seven Samurai.
Who says the Japanese lack a sense of
irony?
BBC
News
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