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DRM: Paranoia and panic is the default setting
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Andrew Orlowski
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Seven years ago, it was an effort to get people interested in DRM issues. Today, as the internet pulsates with rumour, paranoia and conspiracy, there’s a different kind of problem. This constant background noise – and people’s willingness to jump in fear at their own shadows. Instead of information scarcity, there’s information overload. So to…
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Radiohead backs WW2-style austerity program
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Misery will be compulsory, if top rockers Radiohead have their way. The band have thrown their weight behind a “World War 2”-style programme of austerity measures: including restrictions on behaviour, and higher taxes. Last week, two newspaper columnists called for a return to the kind of social coercion only ever seen before in wartime. It’s…
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Teachers: Feel my Truthiness – Jimbo
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Yes, it’s that time of year when children eagerly gather round a kindly old man with a beard. He makes great promises to them, if only they just work hard enough. But they just get a load of obscenities back. Only it’s not Santa. Wikipedia’s Maximum Leader and peripatetic salesman Jimmy Wales breezed into London…
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Nokia radical bundling deal deserves applause
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Andrew Orlowski
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You could be forgiven for thinking that Nokia’s music announcement yesterday was yet another subscription service. The phone giant didn’t help dispel the notion by omitting some details from the official press material. However, we were able to put more flesh on the bones of the announcement last night. It’s beginning to look as if…
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How Web 2.0 concentrates power, and makes Microsoft stronger
by
Andrew Orlowski
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One IT Manager, bemoaning his lot to me, recently compared the rise of Web 2.0 enthusiasts to the problem the Police has with Freemasons. The blog and wiki evangelists within are not as secretive, of course, but they’re equally cult-like: speaking their own language, and using the populist rhetoric of “empowerment” for relentless self-advancement. He…
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I’m in privacy trouble … bitch
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Three weeks ago, Facebook unveiled a three prong strategy to monetize its active base of 50m users. (See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/09/facebook_analysis/.) It hasn’t taken long for one those prongs to go prang. Facebook’s privacy-busting referral scheme called Beacon is to be modified. If you buy something elsewhere on the web, this information is piped back into your…