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Charlie Nesson’s trip
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Andrew Orlowski
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Has Charlie Nesson been at the magic mushrooms again? The hippy head of the Berkman Center, the influential New Age techno-utopian think tank that’s attached to Harvard Law School, wants to enlist Radiohead in his fight against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Nesson, a long-time opponent of creator’s digital rights, is contesting the…
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Apple and the Gentlemen from the Networks (or, why it pays to turn up Really, Really Late)
by
Andrew Orlowski
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This week Apple threw the kitchen sink at its iPhone/Touch software stack, removing most of the most irritating nuisances at a stroke. It’s a stunning achievement. So Apple now finds itself where everyone else in the mobile handset business wanted to be 15 years ago. Large companies full of clever people devoted years of planning…
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Lights out, Britons told – we’re running out of power
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Andrew Orlowski
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Carbon quango The Energy Saving Trust has come up with a new reason for Britons to save energy in the home. Our power stations will soon close, and you’ll need to do your bit. That’s what one Reg reader discovered, after enquiring about the Trust’s calculations on the effectiveness of new low-energy bulbs.… Read More
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Pirate Bay’s neo-Nazi sugar daddy
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Andrew Orlowski
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The trial of the Pirate Bay operators in Sweden has generated huge amounts of media coverage. But one of the most interesting things about Pirate Bay hasn’t got a mention. In his daily dispatches for WiReD, court correspondent Oscar Schwartz swoons over the boyish charm of “likeable” and “winning” Pirate Bay PR guy Peter Sunde.…
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Web 2.0 and feedback loops: a conversation with James Harkin
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Andrew Orlowski
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Don’t judge a book by the title. Especially if the title is something like Cyburbia. James Harkin, who worked with Adam Curtis on The Trap, has produced the first proper full-length critique of Web 2.0 – tracing the daftness back to the cybernetics pioneers of the 1940s. It’s odd that something with so much hype…
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The BBC, Thermageddon, and a Giant Snake
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Listeners to BBC World Service’s Science in Action program got a nasty surprise last week. In the midst of a discussion about the large snake fossil, a scientist dropped this bombshell: “The Planet has heated and cooled repeatedly throughout its history. What we’re doing is the rate at which we’re heating the planet is many…