Category: Stories
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How the digital revolution screwed songwriters. Twice.
by
Andrew Orlowski
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This may not be news to most of you, but in light of DiMA’s Jonathan Potter blaming music publishers for the sorry state of digital downloads, it’s a topical reminder. Music companies – and we blur the distinction deliberately for the moment, for the sake of simplicity – paid songwriters in two ways. For what…
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Fon: a billionaire Wi-Fi Utopian and his Blog Chorus
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Few start-ups encapsulate the desperate utopianism of the times so much as Fon Technology. Created by the Argentinian dot.com billionaire Martin Varsavsky, who built and sold the Spanish portal Ya.com and ISP Jazztel before the bubble burst, at the heart of Fon is a soulful of hope.… Read More
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77% of Google users don’t know it records personal data
by
Andrew Orlowski
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More than three quarters of web surfers don’t realize Google records and stores information that may identify them, results of a new opinion poll show. The phone poll, which sampled over 1000 internet users, was conducted by the Ponemon Institute following the DoJ subpoenas last week. This suggests that the battle for internet privacy is…
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The cost of an “Always On lifestyle”
by
Andrew Orlowski
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About a year ago, a man I’d never met before showed me pictures of a dramatic episode in his life. These showed him driving his wife to the hospital, where she was about to give birth. There were dozens and dozens of these pictures, and in each one his wife was looking progressively more grumpy.…
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‘Take out a subscription to The Register. Then cancel it, and sign it Disgusted Wikipedian’
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Andrew Orlowski
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An early taxonomy of excuses. Mostly variations of “It’s the user’s fault.” “He who feels punctured must have been a bubble – Lao Tsu A funny thing happened last week. Author and broadcaster – and veteran OpenOffice user – Andrew Brown wrote a piece in The Guardian a fortnight ago demolishing some of the more…
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Mobile data too complex, too flakey – poll
by
Andrew Orlowski
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But still we do it. Actually, we don’t – even with 3.5G networks it’s almost always quicker to ask a stranger than it is to look something up on a mobile phone. And more fun. Punters are giving flaky mobile data services the cold shoulder, a survey has revealed. 64 per cent of those surveyed…