Cringley had a post on this today as well:
http://www.cringely.com/2011/06/iclouds-real-purpose-is-to-kill-windows/

He looks at it as an intentional strategy to harm Microsoft, and he has a good point about the business aspects of the announcement.

I don't care one way or the other if they use a paywall or not, but the characterization of the company as starting to charge for its "product" is ludicrous.

The New York Times is a newspaper company. Newspaper companies do not sell newspapers--those aren't the "products" that they charge for. Newspaper companies sell eyeballs. They use various techniques to attract readers, but most especially to attract subscribers. Then they sell the eyeballs of their subscribers to advertisers. That was the business model for newspapers that got them profit margins of over 20% in the 1970s and 80s.

Many internet sites essentially use the same business model. However, the profit margins aren't quite the same, and advertising can't keep up with expenses.

Making people pay to read or buy the newspaper has always just been a cost-defraying measure, not a profit-creation measure.

I've often used the brontosaurus/apatosaurus story to explain how often popular ideas lag behind scientific discoveries. Literally over 100 years after it was discovered that the apatosaurus was what we had been calling the brontosaurus, there are books, movies, t-shirts, cups, and all sorts of things *at science museums* which continue the false naming convention. This is why science needs "activists" to continue to represent to the public their most recent discoveries.

I've read his other books, and I loved the Baroque Cycle. I actually started "late" with Cryptonomicon, then read Snow Crash (and re-read it a couple of times, and listened to the audio version in a car trip) followed by everything but "The Big U", which isn't exactly ubiquitous.

In the other comments, I notice a certain self-identification that I don't think I have. I think the issue is that I'm more of a "literary geek" than a "technical geek". I enjoy the worlds Stephenson builds, I enjoy his sense of play, I enjoy his imagination and his characterizations, and, apparently in contrast to most Slashdot readers, I love all the endings of his books.