The Chicago Tribune’s Michael McGuire returns from Moscow’s flea market with tangible proof that the Russian software black market now offers CD-ROMS for $3 each loaded with the absolutely newest high cost software like Microsoft Office Professional, Windows NT and Adobe Photoshop 5.0.
These titles cost between $300 and $700 in the USA but go for $3 (complete with a working password) on the back streets and byways of the former Communist capital.
Bill Gates doesn’t like this one bit and U.S. diplomats are scrambling to shut down clandestine CD stamping mills in Bulgaria where the binary boodle apparently is burned into plastic and shipped to the Kremlin’s shadow.
HAIL TO THEE
DOW JONES UNIVERSITY
Seven reporters and editors at the Wall Street Journal now have added duties to act as on-line teachers for classes in investing that will be sold for $49 per course at the Journal’s Web site.
Dow Jones University (dju.wsj.com) classes will include six lessons from the ink stained wretch of your choice and students will get 8 weeks of access to the company’s huge Web resources to do their homework.
Tom Baker, general manager of Wall Street Interactive, promised the trade press that he will make Journal employees tapped as profs field e-mail questions from enrollees and post the answers on the site.
CUBESPACE CAPERS
EM America’s board game Goliath, Hasbro Inc., sets its sights on the office gold bricking set with a new software line called Em@il that will let people use office e-mail to play such gamer golden oldies as Battleship, Scrabble, Golf, Poker and GrandMaster Chess.
To play, you and an opponent load Hasbro software from a CD-ROM onto each computer and then trade moves by sending them as e-mail. Free samples at www.hasbro.com starting Feb. 5.
STRAWBERRY FLOPS FOREVER
COLORS FROM CUPERTINO
Computer retailers fret that Apple Computer Inc.’s interim CEO for life, Steve Jobs, demands that each store must buy equal numbers of each color as the new iMacs ship in grape, blueberry, lime, tangerine and strawberry (ugh!).
Early studies by California distributors found adults like blueberry and grape while kids clamor for tangerine and lime. The downside: store rooms filled with unmoved strawberry Macs all over the landscape?
Y2 KORNER
Call down the guard!
The Wisconsin legislature has yanked a widely reported measure to call up the National Guard for New Year’s 2000 duty. “It was impossible to get the media to cover anything else (about state Y2K issues),” said Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen.
