Tag: satire
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Wired UK: Our readers design the cover
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Should iPods carry health warnings?
by
Andrew Orlowski
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An Australian head teacher has banned pupils from bringing their iPods into school, because they encourage social isolation. “People were not tuning into other people because they’re tuned into themselves,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald.
As we noted this week, all kinds of fascinating social possibilities elude the iPodder. Music is a social activity, but the children are only responding to corporate advertising that encourages solipsism – “to shield ourselves,” as Oscar Wilde put it, ironically, “from the … Read More
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‘We must now embrace the tele-phone’ – dotcom pundit
by
Andrew Orlowski
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A year ago Intel demonstrated a small contraption that allows people to talk to each other – even if they’re not in the same room, without using wires or string. At the time we saw no possible use for such a device. Dogs, as we know, love fetching sticks – but this seemed to be much too fragile for robust outdoor activity. Intel called this the portable ‘tele-phone’.
But now we must mend our ways, shift our gears, and … Read More
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Doonesbury savages Pepperland’s copyright utopians
by
Andrew Orlowski
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As anyone involved with the original Apple Newton project knows only too well, when Garry Trudeau’s satirical eye engages a target, there’s only one winner. The Doonesbury cartoonist has a gift for holding up a mirror to bad ideas so they collapse under the weight of their own absurdities. This week[*] Trudeau has turned his attention to the “Creative Commons” project.
Beginning with Monday’s comic, radio interviewer Mark questions aging rock star Jim Thudpucker about “free music”. Thudpucker … Read More
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Google to Wall St: our CFO couldn’t make it. So meet the Chef
by
Andrew Orlowski
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The next time Google invites Wall Street analysts to a six hour financial presentation, it may as well direct them to a point in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. Microsoft already has a wonderful MapPoint “drowning service” that will show them precisely how to get there.
That surely was the unspoken sentiment behind Google’s first ever analyst meeting in Mountain View this week, which left Wall Street’s finest perplexed. CFO George Reyes gave a brief introduction, … Read More
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Verity Stob – programming’s funniest memoir
by
Andrew Orlowski
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As anyone who’s ever done it professionally knows, programming computers isn’t as glamorous as they make out in the movies. Take for example, Independence Day, where the hero lashes together a program in 30 minutes and conjures up a piece of code that saves the world. Have you ever seen anyone do in that real life? And did you bill them for the full hour?
Or take another glamorous example of the mercurial codesmith-as-shamen. In Po Bronson’s Nudist On … Read More
