orlow

Murdoch and Mythology

by


Keyser Sose

If children didn’t believe in Santa, thousands of grown men wouldn’t dress up in fur-trimmed red jumpsuits, put on false beards, and give children unwanted gifts in tents every year. Perhaps some would, but they’d probably be arrested.

For the past fortnight, TV and newspaper editors in the UK have pushed aside stories of famine and the European financial crisis – which is greater now than the credit crunch three years ago – in favour of saturation coverage of the troubles of a rival media company.

This rival has real troubles, to be sure, which I will not attempt to diminish. But the volume and intensity of coverage is defined by the real size and reach of News Corporation. And this is not reality, but a myth. Just as children want a Santa, so too do editors and Prime Ministers want a “Murdoch” that resembles the omniscient movie villain/myth Keyser Soze. They’ve defined themselves by this myth.

Read more

Len Sassaman

by

Len Sassaman, a cryptographer and security researcher of high repute, has died aged 31. Sassaman maintained the Mixmaster remailer and he contributed to various other privacy projects, including OpenPGP. He also co-founded the annual CodeCon conference with Bram Cohen. He was security researcher and doctoral student at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven. Len was a … Read more

The Cube: Apple’s daftest, strangest romance

by

Ten years ago on Sunday, Apple called it quits on one of its oddest products ever, the G4 Cube. The Cube was a strange and wonderful machine that continues to fascinate today – but it was widely perceived to have failed. Some people thoroughly enjoyed the failure, thinking it served Apple right.

Dull people will always cheer a bold experiment that goes wrong. After July 2001, Apple’s design team never again attempted anything as daring or distinctive. It has produced beautiful designs, and unarguably influenced consumer technology design more than any one else.

But essentially, its computer designs are variations on the same theme. The professional laptops have continued in their rectangular, razor-like way. Even the iPad looks very much like how you’d expect a media slate to look like, for example.

But the Cube was different. The Cube looked like Buckminster Fuller talked; the Cube looked like it might have fallen to earth from an advanced civilisation, eager to escape orbit and looking to throw some ballast overboard. Or like a millionaire had given a mad bloke on a bus an unlimited budget.

“Hello. You look like you’ve done a lot of LSD. Well, here’s several million dollars – go and design a computer, any shape you want. Just make sure it hangs upside down.”

Read more

Captain Cyborg: Computers are alive, like bats or cows

by

Self-harming attention-seeker Kevin Warwick has admitted to snooping on the public in a previous life. Warwick made the creepy confession on Radio 4, recalling an earlier job as a GPO engineer:

“I remember taking ten different calls and plugging them all together; one call would continue, the other nine would listen in. Then I’d patch everything back again.”

In a 30-minute interview with Michael Buerk, Warwick compared his cat-chipping operation a decade ago to Yuri Gagarin’s first space flight. They were both scientific pioneers.

Read more

HP vs Oracle: IT’s nastiest ever row?

by

It has never been smooth sailing on the good ship Itanic, but now the processor is at the centre of a poisonous row, one that’s as nasty as any I can recall in years of tech reporting Read more at The Register

Button it, Bob

by

More hysterical shrieking reaches us about Apple’s new music feature, I’m afraid.

Earlier this week a lone lawyer said that iTunes Match, which populates an online store with songs you already have, encourages infringement. Well, this one is even nuttier.

It’s actually so spectacularly muddle-headed, I thought it might be is a good time to examine what did and didn’t happen this week, briefly – so we can see through the hype to the reality.

Bob Lefsetz, the shouty publisher of the eponymous industry newsletter, is normally very critical of record labels – often for the right reasons.

“His intense brilliance captivates readers from Steven Tyler to Rick Nielsen to Bryan Adams to Quincy Jones to EVERYBODY who’s in the music business,” he says modestly, on his own site.

This week finds Bob barking furiously up the wrong tree. He thinks the labels have sold out the future record industry, in return for a one-off payment of a few dollars from Apple.

Read more

Google hands millions to ‘independent’ watchdogs

by

What do you do when a global corporation pays out millions to the watchdogs that we expect to protect us against it? It’s a fair question to ask in light of the Chocolate Factory’s legal settlement this week, over Google Buzz. The privacy class action suit has landed a windfall of millions of dollars to “privacy” groups – but not a cent to ordinary citizens, users of Google Gmail’s service whose privacy was compromised.

Read more

€1bn handout from the EU targets ambient nagware and robot pets

by

The EU is throwing an eye-watering €1bn of public funds to bankroll some of the most whimsical technology projects ever envisaged – for a decade. A shortlist of six applicants includes talking pet robots, and ambient low-power sensors that provide health tips and “emotional” advice.

The program is called FET, and is funded by the European Commission (which means it is funded by member states – although they can also fritter contribute even more money through matching funds) Lucky beneficiaries will be forgiven for thinking Christmas has come early: €1bn to be doled out over 10 years is earmarked for the winner: that’s €100m a year.

The final six nominees were unveiled by Digital Czar Neelie Kroes earlier this month. One project, “Robots Companions for Citizens”, from robotics expert Paolo Dario, promises us lifelong cyborg chums.

Read more