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More than likely, the result of these negotiations will have nothing to do with unlimited access to the iTunes store after paying a premium on hardware. If anything, Apple will probably strike a deal where consumers will be forced to pay a monthly subscription fee for unlimited downloads to be more competitive in the market.

Realizing this, why would any record label agree to a deal that would give Apple unlimited access to its library and receive only a set fee from the premium consumers pay for the devices?

All the while, the record labels have single-handedly shown the world that they don’t care about consumers and they most certainly couldn’t care less about the artists. Aside from that, these record labels have consistently gone out of their way to solidify themselves as the very lowest of the low in their inexorable drive for greater profits at the expense of you and I.

It’s a sad day for the music industry and it looks like things will only get worse.

And here’s why.

Suffice it to say, none of these plans are worthwhile and the chances of either of them happening are slim. But in the slight chance that one slips through the cracks, look for the service to be locked down to an untenable level and the record labels to be laughing all the way to the bank.

That said, Apple is currently in talks with record labels over that as well. And according to those close to the proceedings, the record labels and Apple have only come to an agreement that customers can keep 40-50 tracks per year and would be willing to pay no more than $7-$8 per month for the subscription service.

Unfortunately, we are currently limping through an era where common sense is always a second thought and record labels will do anything they can to ensure consumers are kept under their thumbs.

Sure, the idea of unlimited iTunes music downloads sounds great and it would probably ensure that Amazon and other services would die a slow and agonizing death, but common sense must prevail in this discussion and as far as I can tell, there’s no chance any such a deal can be struck between record labels and Apple.

In a report that has sent shock waves throughout the entire Apple community, the Financial Times is reporting that Steve Jobs and company may be trying to coax record labels into allowing the firm to sell an unlimited number of iTunes songs as long as consumers pay a premium on iPods and iPhones. And while that may sound great to some (myself included), it’ll never happen.

The problem here is not Apple; I truly believe the company wants what’s best for consumers as long as it can turn a profit. The real problem here is the record labels and they will continue to make our lives far more difficult than they should be because of their insatiable desire to limit our chances of getting what we want, how we want, when we want.

What a crock. If true, look for a mass upheaval from serious music lovers who look at that and say, “what if I want 51 songs?”

Of course, those close to the negotiations have said that Apple and the record labels can’t come to a deal because of the former’s worries over exactly how much it would be forced to pay for a library of songs. Gee, you think?

Simply put, the record labels hate Apple. In fact, the companies hate Apple so much, they snubbed Steve Jobs in his attempt to get DRM-free music on iTunes and followed Amazon down the path first. Aside from that, they’ve consistently rebuffed his attempts to lower song prices to a more suitable level and they’ve done all they can to ensure that Apple’s power doesn’t allow it to control their every move.

Chances are, the record labels and Apple are sitting in a room somewhere and each time Apple throws out a figure, the record labels double it. Yep, that sounds about right.

Meow.

Diller said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, “I am beginning to think these people are insane.”

The statement from IAC described Liberty Media’s actions in the whole legal feud, which has no end in sight, as “a desperate sideshow.”

IAC’s blunt press release on Tuesday echoed that. “The contention that Liberty is now in control of the Company is inexplicable. Nothing has happened yet,” the statement read. “No Board has decided anything. No shareholders have voted (or been asked to vote) on anything. No agreements have been signed. The requisite filings have not been made with the SEC. No transactions have been consummated. Even after reading the various complaints repeatedly, Liberty’s theory that it now controls IAC is incomprehensible.”

In what may shape up to be one of New York media’s most colorful feuds of 2008, IAC/InterActiveCorp Chief Executive Barry Diller and one of its most high-profile stockholders, Liberty Media head John Malone, are at each other’s throats Mean Girls-style. And they’ve brought both their legal and PR teams along for backup.

On Monday, Malone had served Diller with the latest in a series of lawsuits in a Delaware court, seeking to oust a total of seven people from IAC’s board–including Diller himself–in the wake of the sprawling company’s decision to split into five separate publicly traded entities. The cluttered nature of IAC was hurting shareholder confidence, Diller had argued when he made the original announcement in November. The company plans to keep ad-supported media brands like Evite, CollegeHumor, Excite, and Citysearch under IAC’s scope while spinning off commerce brands like Ticketmaster and retail brands like HSN.

A vicious press release from IAC on Tuesday morning said that Liberty “has gone off the deep end” in its attempt to control the company’s board and oust Diller from his role, and that Malone’s cable giant “will stop at nothing to advance their own interests at the expense of the other stockholders.”

The spinoffs, Malone argues, will be a massive blow to Liberty Media. The cable conglomerate owns about a third of IAC’s equity, but due to its ownership of all IAC Class B common stock, it has significantly broader voting power within the company. The five-way IAC split would knock that down significantly.

But how did this happen? Is Apple’s success in the computing market a by-product of Steve Jobs’ insight and uncanny knowledge of what people want? Or is it pure luck, thanks to questionable moves by competitors and being in the right place at the right time?

From there, Steve Jobs led his company out of the doldrums to the position it’s in right now. He understood and used hype as a means of promoting a product and reintroduced a shroud of secrecy that kept the press licking its chops.

But because the press has fallen in love with Macs, everything is easier for Apple. It’s a strange phenomenon, but people that start using Apple products have a sense of loyalty to them unlike any other computer brand. And it’s that phenomenon that Apple uses to its advantage and what keeps the press coming back for more. And in turn, Apple’s customers keep coming back for more too.

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Apple zealots would undoubtedly contend that Apple’s success has nothing to do with luck, while Microsoft fanboys would argue against that point. In reality, Apple’s success in the computing market is the by-product of both skillful positioning and a healthy dose of luck.

To say otherwise is foolhardy.

Here’s why:

Skill
There’s no debating the fact that Steve Jobs knows what he’s doing. With each passing “Stevenote,” I become more aware of just how sound his business sense is. I also get a sense of his uncanny ability to give customers what they want before any other company can.

When Jobs returned to Apple in the late ’90s, he changed the company’s focus to hardware and used software as the key driving factor behind selling that hardware. He made sure that Apple didn’t license its operating system and abandoned its plans of copying competitors.

Luck
But all the credit can’t be given to Steve Jobs. It should also be given to the poor management at Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and others. Those companies were complacent, focused on the wrong markets, and generally failed to realize that Apple was starting a movement that wasn’t waiting for them to catch up.

Thanks for waking up, HP. Where have you been for the past five years?

Microsoft’s biggest downfall since the return of Apple is Windows and its willingness to let it slip into the mud. Sure, it faced problems with XP, and eventually people came around, but do you really think that Vista would have been such a disaster a decade ago?

It was a well-calculated risk that paid off.

Globally, Apple’s market share is reportedly hovering at just about 3.3 percent–a far cry from its success in the United States–according to one report, but Net Applications places it closer to 5.5 percent. Which estimate is correct? You decide.

But a discussion about luck wouldn’t be anything without mentioning the media. Go to any conference–major or otherwise–and count the number of Macs being used compared to the number of Windows-based machines. I’m willing to bet that 90 percent of journalists are using Macs.

Granted, computer choice shouldn’t have an impact on coverage, but if the vast majority of press members are using Macs, doesn’t that work in Apple’s favor? Of course, some would surely say the only reason they use Macs is because “Apple computers are better for what they do,” but I don’t tend to agree. I can do this on my Asus Eee PC 1000H without a problem.

Either way, it illustrates an important point: Apple is successful, and its popularity is growing each day. Years ago, no one thought that Apple would survive another year, let alone capture 10 percent of any market. But today, it’s sitting atop the technology industry, and companies in every major market are looking up.

According to Forrester, Apple has finally reached the single milestone that could change the dynamic of the computing business for good: its U.S. laptop market share has reached 10.6 percent during the second quarter of 2008. Just one year ago, it captured just 6.6 percent of the same market.

He realized that the industry was filled with derivative products that failed to address consumer desire. Armed with that knowledge, Jobs set out to improve Apple’s operating system and create a different experience that would make people take notice. And because the company was so inconsequential at the time, Jobs knew all too well that few competitors would pay attention–a fortuitous by-product of failure.

It’s easy to say that Steve Jobs knows it all, if you’re an Apple zealot, and even easier to say he knows nothing, when you hate Apple. But in reality, Apple’s success is due to significant skill and a healthy portion of good luck.

In Microsoft, I see a company that’s deathly afraid of Google and even more scared of being cornered out of the online space. And so in its desire to capture more search market share and gain a foothold in the advertising market, it forgot about Windows. It also forgot about Apple.

In other words, Steve Jobs pressed all the right buttons and made everyone happy: shareholders, customers, the press, and his employees.

He also understood the power of convergence and branched out into other areas to make Apple more than a computer company, while still maintaining its drive to sell computers. After all, if people liked other Apple products like the
iPod, wouldn’t they want to own a
Mac?

Worse, HP is just waking up to another fact: tying a business model to Windows isn’t always the best move. In fact, the company is reportedly trying to get in on the operating-system business by developing a Linux-based system to offer its customers an alternative to Windows.

Apple has always understood that and does its best to make its computers more elegant than its competitors. HP and Dell are just waking up to that fact.

But Hewlett-Packard and Dell are just as guilty. Both companies were under the impression that Windows would be the savior, no matter what, and that computer design didn’t matter. Sure, that may have been true years ago, when laptops were a pie-in-the-sky idea, but today, laptops are quickly becoming the toast of the town, and people are looking for devices that say something about them. And for quite some time, those consumers have been looking for beauty.

Meanwhile, Apple kept plugging away at creating a better experience and captured significant market share under Microsoft’s nose. Yeah, I know, 3 percent to 5 percent isn’t huge, but let’s face it: given the number of computers in the wild, and considering Microsoft’s dominance over vendors and retailers alike, gaining that much share is no small feat.

I don’t. Bill Gates would have never let that happen back then.

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During the talk, they plan to disclose a zero-day vulnerability in Google Gadgets that will make Gmalware (Gmodules-based malware) a significant threat.

By design, Google Gadgets allow scripted code to be uploaded by the end user, creating interesting new attack vectors for those with malicious intent.

CNET’s Robert Vamosi talked with Robert Hansen (aka Rsnake), chief executive of SecTheory, and Tom Stracener (aka Strace) of Cenzic. Both will be presenting a talk called “Xploiting Google Gadgets: Gmalware and Beyond” at the annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas next week.

From gadgets that slide-show pictures of vacations past to calendars that show events in the future, Google Gadgets look cool. But they also have the potential to contain vulnerabilities like anything else within Web 2.0.

After more than a year of kicking the tires on a proposed merger between XM Satellite Radio Holdings and Sirius Satellite Radio, the Federal Communications Commission has reached a tentative deal with the companies, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The report, however, notes that FCC commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, seen as the swing vote, has yet to vote on the proposed merger, but is expected to take the plunge shortly.

If she signs off on the deal, Tate will join two other commissioners, also Republicans, who have already given their blessing to the deal. The two remaining commissioners, both Democrats, from the five-member board oppose the deal.

According to the Journal, Tate is expected to vote to approve the deal, provided that a consent decree is drafted that would call for a fine of roughly $20 million and address several enforcement issues, such as complaints revolving around satellite radio receivers surpassing the FCC power limit.

What’s interesting is that the report says demand for the traditional magnetic drives is still strong despite the advancement of flash-based solid-state drives. iSuppli says vendors are on track to ship 573 million drives by the end of this year, which represents 11 percent growth over last year’s final tally.

Vendors like Seagate can charge more for HDDs for notebooks than they can for desktops, and though desktop PCs shipments are down, notebook sales are doing very well. The PC industry got a good report last week when IDC and Gartner revealed data showing the worldwide PC industry growing at a healthy clip, despite economic uncertainty in the U.S.

(Credit:
Hitachi)

Despite industry leader Seagate’s poor showing earlier this year, analysts say there’s still plenty of demand for hard disk drives.

In the first quarter of 2008, HDD vendors shipped 137 million drives, which is 21 percent higher than the same quarter the year before, according to iSuppli, a market research company which keeps track of the industry. Those drives are primarily being snapped inside notebook PCs, other portable devices, desktops, and external drives.

Lower prices and bigger capacities are keeping HDDs competitive in the face of the increasing popularity of solid-state drives. Though NAND flash memory will also continue to get more affordable, iSuppli says traditional hard drives will stay ahead for now.

Things weren’t looking so good when Seagate reported its earnings in April, and revenue was below what analysts were expecting. But the demand for HDDs wasn’t the issue, according to iSuppli.

“Seagate’s second-quarter net income did come in lower than expected, but this was not because of any decline in demand, but rather due to lower prices for its products,” according to Krishna Chander, iSuppli’s senior analyst for storage systems.

The Photo Finder also includes a screen that’s can display the time, a feature designed to help nip geotagging time zone complications in the bud.

The device should go on sale for $99 in the next couple weeks, said marketing manager Jeffray Hsieh. It also includes a USB port that lets you plug in a flash card reader if your camera uses CompactFlash memory cards or some other format. It’s based on the highly regarded SiRF Star III GPS chip.

The company also plans on adding the ability to export track logs as a KML route file, a record of a person’s trip that can be imported into Google Earth software. The company also is planning on adding altitude and direction data that some GPS devices can supply.

Sadly, the device supports only JPEG files at this stage. Most photographers shoot only JPEG–indeed, most cameras have no other option–but higher-end models such as SLRs also support raw files, which record the image sensor data with no in-camera processing. And the kind of enthusiasts who shoot raw sometimes are the kinds of enthusiasts who like to geotag photos.

(Credit:
ATP Electronics)

The ATP GPS Photo Finder is designed to ease the geotagging chore.

ATP Electronics has announced a device called the GPS Photo Finder that’s designed to take some of the trouble out of geotagging your photos.

“We’ll definitely continue to develop additional support for raw formats,” Hsieh said, “but because of the fragmentation between camera manufacturers, it will be a challenge.”

The device, like many GPS receivers, keeps track of its location based on signals from satellites. What’s different is that instead of marrying that location data with your photos on a computer using special software, the Photo Finder has an SD card slot and handles the tagging by itself, the company said. When you copy photos to your computer, the location data is embedded in the JPEG files.

Personally, I geotag photos for personal archival reasons: which church/mountain/beach was that photo? Various Web sites also can take advantage geotagged photos.

On Tuesday Websense reported seeing distinct similarities between attacks staged earlier this month and over the weekend. Specifically, they cite the use of the same tool to execute the attack being resident on the malicious server. Last summer various groups used the MPACK toolkit to propagate a similar series of Javascript injections.

A quick review by CNET News.com found that travel and academic sites continue to host the injected Javascript code.

As of Tuesday, two other files named McAfee.htm and Yahoo,php were no longer active.

Comparisons between two mass Javascript injection attacks suggest they may be related, according to a security company. The latest attack has compromised various sites including one United Nations and several UK government sites with links to malicious servers.

A CNET Google search reveals sites still infected as of Tuesday noon.

Javascript injections are browser attacks and require no more effort than appending a script tag to the end of the URL. If a legitimate site is vulnerable to script injection, an attacker can add a script tag to the Web-facing page of the site so that subsequent views will automatically download whatever content is within the script tag. Often the script tag contains calls out to a malicious server.

A user need only stumble upon a compromised site to become infected. In this case, when viewing a compromised site, the injected Javascript loads a file named 1,js. The file is located on a malicious server, which then attempts to execute eight different exploits targeting Microsoft applications.

• Page 39: an advertisement from BP (NYSE: BP), illustrating their investments in domestic energy opportunities, especially highlighting biofuels and solar. • Page 56: an advertisement by SKF (Stockholm: SKF) — one of the largest suppliers of bearings for wind turbines.

Richard T. Stuebi is the BP Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement at The Cleveland Foundation, and is also the Founder and President of NextWave Energy, Inc.

• Pages 38 and 40: an article on Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), profiling their (relatively) progressive stance on carbon legislation.

• Page 71: an advertisement by XL Capital (NYSE: XL) featuring an illustrated solar farm, promoting their “strength to cover the world’s largest energy and environmental risks”.

• Page 24: an advertisement announcing the winners of the 2008 Eni Awards, sponsored by the Italian energy giant Eni (NYSE: E), “aimed to promote research and technology innovation in the field of energy and its concersion, with particular focus on renewable sources.”

Then I went back to reading the magazine, and realized we still have a ways to go: on p. 19, Steve Forbes writes yet another editorial continuing to stoutly deny climate change. I laugh and shake my head: some things never change.

I have subscribed to Forbes for over a decade because, unlike many other popular business journals, it seems to have a genuine voice — even if I sometimes disagree with it.

Maybe Mr. Forbes should take better note of what the major corporations showing up in the pages of his magazine are actually doing to make money. After all, isn’t Forbes the paragon of capitalism? If companies are rushing to cleantech in droves, shouldn’t Forbes take heed of what the market is leading these companies to do to increase their profitable growth?

• Page 85: an advertisement by Siemens (NYSE: SI) depicting their offshore wind turbines.

It was the SKF ad that really floored me, making me take notice just how ubiquitous cleantech is truly becoming. I’ve never seen SFK advertise anywhere before. Just which decision-makers is SKF trying to reach with this placement in a mass-market magazine?

Cleantech is seemingly everywhere. True, some of it may be “greenwash”, but a lot of it is real, and it is growing.

• Pages 4-5: an advertisement from General Electric (NYSE: GE) touting their solar efforts.

On a plane flight from Cleveland to L.A. last Thursday night, I read the March 10, 2008 issue, and was amazed at how pervasive cleantech has become — even in its stoutly conservative pages:

A federal district court in New York ruled Wednesday that the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is owed “reasonable license fees” by online media powerhouses AOL, RealNetworks, and Yahoo for the music streamed and distributed on their sites.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York will now determine appropriate fees for AOL, RealNetworks, and Yahoo, all of which have applied for ASCAP licenses but have not been able to agree upon fees. The total payments to the group, which represents over 320,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers–not record labels–could reach $100 million. (Click here for a PDF of the court’s decision.)

ASCAP President Marilyn Bergman wrote in a statement following the decision:

The license fees would cover music distributed as early as July 1, 2002, and then up through the end of 2009. Because songwriters and composers often aren’t affiliated with record labels that distribute their music as performed by another artist, they presently are left without licensing fees from digital distribution on the three companies named in the court decision.

It is critical that these organizations share a reasonable portion of their sizable revenues with those of us whose content attracts audiences and, ultimately, helps to make their businesses viable. This decision will go a long way toward protecting the ability of songwriters and composers to be compensated fairly as the use of musical works online continues to grow.”

More details to follow.

The court’s finding represents a major step toward proper valuation of the music contributions of songwriters, composers and publishers to these types of online businesses.

Currently, music streamed by sites owned by the three companies is advertising-supported and no dividends are paid to ASCAP.