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For ambulance-chasing bloggers, tragedy equals opportunity
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Andrew Orlowski
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No human disaster these days is complete without two things, both of which can be guaranteed to surface within 24 hours of the event. First, virus writers will release a topical new piece of malware. And then weblog evangelists proclaim how terrific the catastrophe is for the internet. It doesn’t seem to matter how high the…
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Lawrence Lessig’s other court case
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Andrew Orlowski
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A dramatic update on Professor Lawrence Lessig’s other court case written by his friend John Heilemann appears in New York Metro magazine this week. And this is a battle that critics as well as supporters are praying will end in victory for the lawyer and scholar this time. Lessig is representing John Hardwicke, who like himself is a former…
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Valley execs’ greed returns to dotcom levels
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Andrew Orlowski
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While record numbers of tech jobs were shipped offshore last year, Silicon Valley’s tech execs gorged themselves at levels unseen since the dot com boom. Tech executives pocketed an astonishing $2.1bn in compensation last year, every cent at the shareholders’ expense. That’s the highest level since $2.1bn recorded in 1999, the San Jose Mercury reports in its…
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Lookout, France! Google hires neo-con headbanger
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Andrew Orlowski
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Axis of Do No Evil The company that prides itself on “Doing No Evil” isn’t taking any chances with its latest executive appointment. Dan Senor, the company’s new Global Communications and Strategy VP, has a CV guaranteed to have Register columnist Otto Z Stern firing a celebratory fusillade skywards from his compound in New Mexico. A former Senior Associate…
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Captain Cyborg to write UK science funding guidelines
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Andrew Orlowski
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Uncowed by public ridicule, attention-seeker Professor Kevin Warwick has been appointed to a panel that will determine the basis for public research funding decisions for the UK’s higher education institutions. Captain Cyborg is one of twelve panelists chosen to set the criteria for public research funding in the UK’s Electrical and Electronic Engineering departments. It’s…
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GoogleNet – the ultimate embrace and extend?
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Andrew Orlowski
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We’ve been reading stories about the “end of the internet” ever since the internet was exposed to the public more than a decade ago. Telcos, media companies, infrastructure hardware providers, and operating systems monopolists have all taken their turn as the villain in this particular drama. So far not one has succeeded. But the really…