Category: Stories
-
Tim Berners-Lee says some really stupid things, then goes mad
by
Andrew Orlowski
–
In which the Greatest Living Briton says some very silly things, and then loses his temper So there we were. In a room devoted to Engineering, the man voted the Greatest Living Briton had exploded in front of me. Sir Tim Berners Lee, co-inventor of the World Wide Web, was at Southampton University to deliver…
-
Web 2.0 firms lobby for £100m gravy train
by
Andrew Orlowski
–
If the Web 2.0 hype is running out of steam, a healthy injection of public funds should kick it back into life. New media companies in the UK are lobbying for the establishment of an institution which could spend what critics call a £100m “jackpot” of public money each year. The new agency, which Ofcom…
-
Google snubs UK’s first Net Neutrality debate
by
Andrew Orlowski
–
The first significant Net Neutrality debate to take place in the UK was held today at Westminster. Chaired by former trade minister Alun Michael and the Conservative shadow trade minister Charles Hendry, the event attracted the chief Telecoms regulator and ministry policy chief, a clutch of industry representatives, and a sprinkling of members of both…
-
PacketExchange’s counterpoint to Neutrality hysteria
by
Andrew Orlowski
–
Networks need to get smarter, says PacketExchange’s Kieron O’Brien, in a sharp counterpoint to the “Net Neutrality” hysteria. PacketExchange bypasses the congestion of the internet by offering its customers a private end-to-end network. Some of its customers, such as Nokia, Microsoft, and cable ISP Telewest (now owned by Virgin) aren’t so surprising. But last week…
-
Babelgum: another new, new TV thing
by
Andrew Orlowski
–
“Frankly the business plan is subjective”- Babelgum chairman Silvio Scaglia So P2P TV services really do conform to the proverbial bus cliche: you wait ages for one, then loads of cliches come along at once. If you know Joost, then you’ll know Babelgum, which unveiled its service in London today. Both are PC-based upstarts to…
-
Spontaneous human combustion: Skype to blame
by
Andrew Orlowski
–
A Voice over IP service was to blame for a man in Massachusetts bursting into flames at the weekend. The man, David Reed, held an executive position at Lotus in the early 1980s, and was a Fellow at HP Labs. He is said to be recovering from the spontaneous human combustion at MIT Media Lab,…