I remember the old days when BSA stood for the Boy Scouts of America - incorporated on February 8, 1910 - rather than the Business Software Alliance - founded in 1988.

Hey, if the World Wildlife Fund can win exclusive rights to their acronym WWF, (as reported in an this Associated Press Article) from the World Wrestling Federation then surely the Boy Scouts have the right to the acronym BSA and the domain name BSA.org.

I think the Boy Scouts should pursue this. They have a legitimate claim here. For reference here's their Trademark Filing. Go Boy Scouts! Stick it to the software publishers!

But then again, that's just my opinion.

--CTH

Granted there were special circumstances - a 1994 agreement between the two parties, relating to the use of the acronym - that contributed to the WWF decision, but it'd still be fun to see the Software Publishers fighting the Boy Scouts.

In recent months I've been searching for confirmation of something I once read in a newspaper article durring the summer of 1995. It was a quote from Steve Ballmer or one of the original Microsoft crew, that appeared in an article in either the Willimantic Chronicle or the Hartford Courant (of course it was probably an Associated Press article).

The substance of the quote was:

Software piracy is an important part of Microsoft's business plan. Piracy in developing regions allows Microsoft market entry where such entry would be otherwise prohibitively expensive. Microsoft will regain any losses from such piracy when users in these areas eventually elect to purchase upgrades, since Microsoft products will then have served to make him/her more productive and will have allowed him/her to afford to purchase Microsoft products.

It would be at least entertaining if not valuable to have confirmation and the exact words of this quote, when addressing the software piracy concerns of Microsoft and the BSA.

If anyone knows where confirmation of this quote may be found, please let me know.

--CTH

PS: Thanks to the AC who has taken an interest in my quest. It's nice to know there are still other people in the world who question what they read... If anyone can help us out...

Well, I'm one of those who pointed and laughed at people who kept web journals. I looked at people using Blogger - which I discounted because I had no intention of providing write access to my website, to a remotely hosted tool like that - and LiveJournal.com where I saw the cartoonish graphics that looked like they were drawn by kindergarden students. I looked at K5 but only recently have I really become a fan of the scoop engine. I've been a /. junkie for quite a while and I've implemented a couple of sites with the early releases of SlashCode and I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. As I mentioned, I've recently become a fan of the Scoop Engine and considered starting a journal there. I have a couple sites in the planning stages which will probably make use of the scoop engine, including my personal site where I expect to use it for publication of the articles I've been writing recently. Anyway, I chose /. for my journal mostly out of loyalty, although K5 was a close runner-up. Thanks Rob for getting the site migrated to /code 2.2. Great Job!

I've spent a lot of time recently, thinking and writing about the state of the internet and intelectual property. It really is a vary interesting subject. I recently took my first vacation in three years, and took my laptop to the beach and wrote a number of essays on various sibjects along these lines. I felt like I was living one of those laptop commercials where the guy sits on a desk overlooking the ocean, at sunset, typing away on a laptop computer. On this subject, I have a few pointers for others:

• Sand in keyboards is a vary bad thing.
• Salt air doesn't work and play nicely with motherboards
• Vary few laptops have screens which can be read in direct sunlight

Hopefully I'll have some time to publish some of these essays eventually and when that happens I'll be sure to mention their locations here. In the meantime, a friend of min and I have resurected a piece of internet nostalgia from the old days (circa 1995). Many /. readers will remember the Keeprs of Lists , that humble order of monks who have taken as their holy mission, the keeping of lists, which, with joy, they make available to to all on the internet. Visitors may add to and vote lists - a new one made available each day - and may submit new lists to the Keepers for consideration.

OK. Well, I'm done pimping the website and I'm rinning out of other things to mention so this installment draws to a close...

--CTH