No official link between those two events has been made; we cite them as they happened chronologically. However, we have noticed CBS pulling a little sleight of hand with this unhappy change.

On December 14th, the former production team posted this message on StarTrek.com’s News section:

Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team

Sadly, we must report that CBS Interactive organization is being restructured, and the production team that brings you the STARTREK.COM site has been eliminated. Effective immediately.

We don’t know the ultimate fate of this site, which has served millions of Star Trek fans for the last thirteen years.

If you have comments, please send them to editor @ startrek.com – we hope someone at CBS will read them.

Thank you for your loyal fandom over the years. It has been a pleasure to serve you.

When we contacted CBS for a comment about this change, we received a statement about the changes being planned within StarTrek.com by CBS Interactive. The text of the statement also appears on StarTrek.com at this link.

The URL from that link is the same URL that contained the farewell message from the production team, the message we reproduced earlier. That earlier post has been cached in Yahoo’s search engine, and we have kept a copy too.

CBS Interactive has full rights to do as it wishes with its site and its employees. The right to do something doesn’t always fully consider the wisdom of doing so.

It’s obvious from the earlier post the entire team had been fired on short notice. Was Strike Trek the catalyst for this change?

People tend to not burn bridges in Hollywood, so we’ll likely never know. Unless they post something in the comments below (hint hint).

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The writers who craft screenplays for studios may be seeing today as the time to explore the Internet’s potential. Los Angeles Times scribe Patrick Goldstein called this dawning future the time of the writer-entrepreneur.

He cited some of the biggest names in film – George Lucas, Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg, John Lasseter – as people who built filmmaking companies around themselves and their visions. Hollywood screenwriters could be the people who follow in those footsteps, as their strike continues.

One of those writers, Tony Gilroy, may be at the vanguard of those progressing from walking the picket lines to working as Writer Studio Inc. Goldstein cited Gilroy’s nod to the Internet as a way for writers to free themselves:

Gilroy is now a convert. “The studios have got to be hoping that this idea about being entrepreneurs doesn’t sweep over the TV show runners, because once you start seeing really good production values on the Internet, I mean, what does Larry David really need HBO for? This is all everybody is talking about on the line. They’re not talking about healthcare. They’re going, ‘Wow, is there a different way to get our movies and TV shows made?’ “

Before you, the aspiring screenwriter, go to your boss’s office and tell him you’re off to pursue your cinema dreams, keep in mind Gilroy has what you probably don’t: family contacts, a string of big name film credits (Gilroy penned the Bourne movies that star Matt Damon), and George Clooney’s phone number.

It could be the big names like Gilroy, writers who make six-figures for scripts, who crack Hollywood open like a steamed clam with the help of the Internet. Once they do it, and deliver suitable returns for their investors as Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton” seems likely to do, that’s when more investors will look for writers with ideas that will light up Cannes and Sundance like a marquee.

Then it will be ok to tell the boss to take a hike. Just don’t do it until the financing has been delivered.

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I especially enjoyed the detail Stephen Falk is providing:

Chet came by for a spell and joined us, and at one point we got in trouble with the cops for working the Walk button too hard, which is a pretty silly offense; no matter how much Michael Tabb wanted to go for the guy’s gun and tell him to get back in his car and drive away, Michael complied and laid off the button. (Hey, that last sentence fragment could have been a stage direction from an episode of Lost! They’re rubbing off on me.)

If this were fiction, you’d commend him for some excellent metaphors: "working the Walk button"; the apt use of "laid off."

Anyway, back to the topics in the lede, where I’m supposed to be (WARNING: The rest of this will be very stream-of-consciousness). It’s hard not to sympathize – I’m a writer myself, existing on a plane where the majority of writers exist, providing the content for a (hopefully fair) slice of the pie.

But the pie is converging to make a much bigger pie, and this band of writers is quite aware of that. Our own David Utter already pointed out Viacom’s hypocrisy, suing YouTube for an astronomical billion dollars while saying there’s no money to be made on the Internet. It’s either one or the other, right?

And it’s definitely the other. NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, they all know that, or they wouldn’t bother establishing presences on the Web. Hulu, anyone? It’s been coming for a while now, and Internet sales are becoming meaningful.

But soon (I don’t know, five or ten years down the line), TV and Internet will be one. AT&T’s U-Verse is the first step on the early road to this. Verizon’s fiber-to-the-premises connections is the next. Soon, just as everyone finishing complaining about how slow their DSL and FiOS are compared to the blistering speeds and available in Hong Kong and Japan and Norway, the floodgates will be opened up and no one will have to worry about bandwidth or the prioritization of data packets.

Those things will join the Model T, the Victrola, and the pliers we used to turn the dial on the TV. So don’t let the Verizons and the Comcasts of the world act like they’re in a real pickle when it comes to capacity.

Truth be told, those arguments are as BS as the arguments the networks are using to screw their writers out of fair compensation, because there is greed at the center of them.

And how does the homogenization of American culture fit in with this overarching chorus of greed? Easy, the telecommunications and cable industries want to do the same thing they’ve done with television and mobile phone service to the Internet. It’s all about standardization, predictability, and profitability.

How do you do that? Make it all the same. Make it scalable. Make it a commodity. Remember when there used to be something good on A&E and Bravo? Stuff you couldn’t find on other channels? Now what’s there? The same homogenized crap the other channels are selling, with a side of dumbing-down for everybody.

So where we are with the Internet right now is exactly chaotic enough that the big players want to settle it down to its most predictable and profitable. Right now there are millions of voices in all different forms of media, reachable by search engine.

That’s because we have a neutral network, where everybody is treated the same. Internet service providers are aware there’s less profitability in chaos. Take all that content, squeeze into nice digestible chunks via channels or portals, and charge for every step along the way.

Charge to connect. Charge to visit. Charge to deliver content. Charge for premium packages on both sides of the pipe. Charge, charge, charge, charge, charge. And then redirect so that everybody’s less fragmented, until everybody’s watching the same thing again, just like the good old days.

Fewer writers to pay, and many, many more ways to get people to pay you.

Net Neutrality, therefore, becomes more than a complex concept only understood and desired by a few geeks that know what’s going on. It affects everybody, especially everybody that’s quite tired of 300 channels of the same crap. 

Writers have been rebuffed in their negotiations. Michael Eisner has claimed it’s too soon to demand revenue from an unproven business model.

“For a writer to give up today’s money for a nonexistent piece of the future — they should do it in three years, shouldn’t be doing it now — they are misguided they should not have gone on the strike. I’ve seen stupid strikes, I’ve seen less stupid strikes, and this strike is just a stupid strike,” chided the former Disney honcho.

However, as Boing Boing noted in a post by Cory Doctorow, Viacom patriarch Sumner Redstone has a pretty good idea. A video of Daily Show writer Jason Rothman pointing out Viacom’s billion-dollar lawsuit against Google for alleged copyright infringement on YouTube painted Redstone as a hypocrite on the issue.

The video also zinged Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman over a statement he made this summer: “Viacom will exceed $500 million in digital revenue this year.” Web media is part of that revenue projection.

Either digital content has an identified value, or it does not. Viacom, at least, thinks both conditions can be true. The writers disagree.

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The contract between the 12,000-member Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers lapsed on October 31. Negotiations that started this summer did not make much progress on the writer’s request for a larger portion of DVD profits and revenue from the distribution of films and TV shows on the Internet.

Writers and producers met for negotiations Sunday at the request of a federal mediator. The two parties were in talks for close to 11 hours before East Coast members of the writers union said via their Web site that the strike had started for their 4,000 members. Producers said writers turned down a request to "stop the clock" on the strike while negotiations continued. Producers called the writer’s decision to strike unfortunate and irresponsible.

Writers said they dropped a proposal requesting a larger share of revenue from the sale of DVDs that had been an issue for producers. They added that proposals by producers about the Internet reuse of TV episodes and films were not acceptable. "The AMPTP made no response to any of the other proposals that the WGA has made since July," writers said.

This is the first strike by writers since 1988. That strike lasted 22 weeks and cost the industry over $500 million.

Programming that will be immediately affected are talk shows like "Late Night with David Letterman" and "The Tonight Show Starring Jay Leno" which will begin airing reruns today. Next to feel the impact would be sitcoms and soap operas, followed by dramas.

Movies will not feel the impact of the strike for several months, but the strike could stall production for movies that are scheduled to be released in 2008.

The agreement will allow LGE to use Microsoft patented products, including Linux-based embedded devices. Microsoft will be able to use LGE’s patents and will license other patents by LGE that are owned by MicroConnect Group. Financial terms have not been disclosed.

Microsoft will be making a net balancing payment to LGE and MicroConnect for patents involving operating systems and computer systems. LGE will be making payments to Microsoft for Microsoft patents that deal with Linux- based embedded devices that LGE makes.

"This agreement and our good relationship with Microsoft enable LGE to provide improved telecommunications solutions to our customers," said Jeong Hwan Lee, executive vice president of the Intellectual Property Center at LGE.

"We believe that the license arrangement with Microsoft provides appropriate recognition of the value of LGE’s computer system-related patents, which includes patents directed to computer architecture utilized in game consoles and other products."

Microsoft has made similar agreements with Xandros, Fuji Xerox Co. Ltd., NEC Corp., Nortel Networls, Novell Inc., Samsung and Seiko Epson Corp.

There’s no question that Dell has come a long way since the early days of the Dell blog, when Jeff Jarvis ripped them a new one (mostly for not mentioning him and all the blog coverage he got after having a bad experience with Dell support). They responded to that openly and honestly on the Dell blog, and they followed it up with lots of posts about what they were doing to fix various user problems such as faulty batteries, etc. And best of all, they admitted that they still had lots of learning to do.

The big question now, of course, is: How much of this community input will Dell actually put into practice? In other words, the walk must eventually be walked, rather than just having the talk be talked. The top user suggestion as of this writing is the “No Extra Software Option” — in other words, the option to buy a Dell with no extra software. It had about 2.000 votes on Saturday afternoon. Will Dell listen? No doubt the company has agreements with software companies to include their products for a fee. Will it be willing to give that up because the community wants it to?

Mark Evans has more on Dell and IdeaStorm here and Richard MacManus at Read/Write Web has a post about that and Dell’s other Web 2.0-style innovation, which is a user-generated video site called StudioDell. And Richard points out that more companies should be trying to listen to their customers the way that Dell is. What does it cost? Barely anything. But the payoff — even just in goodwill — is enormous.

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About the Author

Mathew Ingram is a technology writer and blogger for the Globe and Mail, a national newspaper based in Toronto, and also writes about the Web and media at www.mathewingram.com/work and www.mathewingram.com/media.

Avnet will add Sun’s SPARC servers as well as the company’s dual-core AMD-based servers, upgrades to which were announced last week. Avnet hopes that the expansion of storage offerings to include disk and tape hardware, software and services will make it easier for partners to accelerate growth.

Products included in the expanded distribution relationship include disk systems, Network-Attached Storage (NAS) systems, storage management software, storage networking and tape storage, in addition to select Sun Fire servers in support of the storage business. The products will be offered through Avnet’s Partner Solutions division in the United States.

“We expect the addition of Sun’s complete line of Sun StorageTek products to Avnet’s offerings will help increase partner opportunities to capitalize on the strength of Sun’s products and Avnet’s enterprise storage expertise and technical knowledge,” said Jeff Barteld, director, U.S. channel sales at Sun Microsystems.

As part of the arrangement, Avent will provide Sun reseller partners with sales support, marketing services, and training and business development programs. Avnet says Sun’s storage portfolio will allow simpler and more efficient data management while cutting the costs of data utilization and retrieval.

Included in the deal is the distribution of three new x64 server lines introduced by Sun last week. Sun unveiled the Sun Fire X4600, which the company claims to be the “industry’s fastest” 4-16 way server, and the only one operating n a 4U chassis.

The X4500 data server includes 24 terabytes of storage, bolstering Sun’s claim of breaking the $2 per gigabyte storage barrier.

“The concept of a data server is a boon to companies that have been searching for an efficient way to deploy high-bandwidth applications from a local server,” said John Fowler, executive vice president of the Systems Group, Sun Microsystems.

“We really believe the introduction of the Sun Fire X4500 server will kick off a new wave of integrated storage and server solutions, making it easier for customers in these industries to lower their total cost of ownership and increase their revenue streams.”

Sun also unveiled the Blade 8000 Modular System, a new enterprise-class modular computing platform for the datacenter, based on Sun’s “Galaxy” x64 (x86, 64-bit) server architecture. Sun says the Blade 8000 uses 20 percent less power and takes up half the space of rackmount servers.

“Turn off BellSouth!” Pulver posted in his recent blog entry. He recommends that, instead of sitting back and paying off service providers like BellSouth and SBC who demand more cash to ensure better connections, Google and others need to show them the door, a solidly closed door, that is.

Pulver’s suggestion called for Google to cut off BellSouth first:

In his post, Pulver noted how help from Washington DC lawmakers will be slow in arriving: “(W)e don’t have the time to wait for this to get on the national agenda of Congress and then weigh in with their approach.”

A Google boycott wouldn’t just get a rise out of BellSouth customers. If it were implemented to deny delivery of advertisements in AdSense blocks displayed by site publishers when requested by a BellSouth DSL user, there would be a huge outcry. Small advertisers would complain, but the real big companies could make even more effective complaints, like placing full-page ads in papers like USA Today or the Wall Street Journal.

That scenario, enjoyable though it may be to consider, isn’t going to happen. AdWords is the double-edged sword that would cut Google even as Google cut off BellSouth. Google is first and foremost an advertising company. It makes far more money from search ads than it does from AdSense placements on sites that use it.

For Google to show BellSouth the door, they have to accept the loss of search ad revenue while they wait for either the customers to switch providers or BellSouth to back down. That’s a bet Google won’t be willing to make, no matter how much IPO cash they still have on their side of the table.

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“We cannot say the economy is booming when we have unemployment at around 40 percent,” COSATU spokesman Patrick Craven said. “We want a completely different mindset from business — saving jobs instead of cutting them for short term commercial gain.”

As many as 500,000 workers may be taking part in the strike. Another demand that the strike hopes to achieve is the weakening of the rand. The currency’s strength has hit mine profitability, leading to many job losses. According to Bloomberg News,

Johannesburg-based Harmony Gold Mining Co., the country’s third largest gold miner, has cut 11,000 jobs in the past 12 months, as the rand’s 78 percent gain against the dollar since the end of 2001 slashed profit. About 40,000 jobs have been lost in the textile and footwear industries since 2003 amid a flood of cheap imports from China, in an economy with a 26 percent unemployment rate…

De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer, Kumba Resources Ltd., the world’s fourth-largest iron ore producer, and Anglo American Platinum Corp., the largest platinum producer, all plan to cut jobs this year.

“I’ve got three kids to feed and I can’t provide for them,” said Tanya Smiles, a worker who lost her job. “It’s heartbreaking. The government must do more to create jobs. There isn’t any work out there.”

I’m sure there are many more among the thousands of people on strike that would tell similar stories, and express similar views to those of Ms. Smiles. The government doesn’t think that the strike will do much good.

“We need to look beyond the level of the currency for competitiveness,” said Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa. “We need to look at all the other areas that have also been affected. The strike won’t do anything to avert job losses.”

Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.