Category: Stories
-
Ireland counts the cost of MIT Media Lab fiasco
by
Andrew Orlowski
–
$40m down the bog The Irish government invested $40m of taxpayers’ money in MIT’s Media’s Lab Europe – and has bugger all to show for it. A report by the Republic’s public auditor-general also reveals that Media Lab executives awarded themselves large severance pay-offs when the money was running out, and refused to refund public…
-
The Hollywood crisis that isn’t
by
Andrew Orlowski
–
Everyone panic – that’s an order! Analysis Barely a week has gone by without reports of Hollywood’s great box office slump of 2005. So our thanks go to screenwriter John August for pointing out that on closer examination, the ‘slump’ is as elusive as missing Weapons of Mass Destruction. “Every Monday brought new speculation about just…
-
Wi-Fi a basic human right, says SF Mayor
by
Andrew Orlowski
–
Like gay marriage, but for bloggers Newt Gingrich once proposed giving laptops to the homeless – at the same time as he was axing food and medical services for the poor. Now San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom has borrowed a page from his playbook. Wi-Fi is a ‘fundamental right’, Newsom said today at a press…
-
Microsoft: beating itself back to health?
by
Andrew Orlowski
–
It’s masochism fortnight at Redmond! Microsoft’s PR campaign of self-flagellation continues – with senior executives offering theWall Street Journal‘s Rob Guth an account of why Windows Vista will arrive so late and so incomplete. Thanks to the co-operation of Amitabh Srivastava, Brian Valentine, product manager Jim Allchin and even Gates himself – the Longhorn death…
-
The Hive Mind has spoken: ‘I need help!’
by
Andrew Orlowski
–
Bloggers blog for therapy – Official Half of American webloggers cite self-help as their primary motivation for maintaining their online diaries, a survey has discovered. 48.7 per cent of the sample say that blogging “serves as therapy”, and it’s the most popular reason for publishing an online journal. The second most popular reason, to stay…
-
Police stake out bar, hoping to catch man drunk
by
Andrew Orlowski
–
Canadian cops staked out a bar in the hope of finding a journalist drunk, a court heard today. The journalist in question, Edmonton newspaper columnist Kerry Diotte, wasn’t suspected of involvement in any crime. But Diotte had written a column criticizing the police force’s radar and camera technology as being more of a cash cow…