THE ARRIVAL of autumn weather signals the awards season in the computer industry. The new entrant to the usual round of Very Useful but Rather Boring database awards is the “New Media Oscar”, otherwise known as the Bafta Interactive Entertainment Awards. For a fledgling industry, this new award is being executed in a terribly grand …[ read more ]
The art of censorship is sometimes practised by the most unlikely authorities. Recently, a student at a prestigious British university put up a home page on Janet (Joint Academic Network) promoting the Kurdish Freedom Movement. This didn’t go down very well with his Turkish adversaries, who immediately threatened the university with an e-mail bomb campaign, …[ read more ]
LIKE MANY of the unfortunates who live outside the delivery area for Tesco’s online supermarket, I still have to buy my groceries the old- fashioned way. The new EC legislation on labelling for all genetically modified foods has made my shopping trips a lot more entertaining – albeit longer – since it seems to take …[ read more ]
ONE OF the best parties of the summer season in Silicon Valley must be the annual knees-up of the Women in Technology Association, where beautiful Pamela Anderson lookalikes get together to celebrate their love for technology and their wise career choice. This year, some 5,000 women programmers and computer scientists gathered in San Jose, California, …[ read more ]
BEING A STUDENT is hard work, but at least you get free Internet access. Right? Wrong. As of last Monday, many UK universities implemented the mass blocking of the international Web sites, claiming that students’ quests for information costs them more money than they managed to suck out of the Funding Councils. So from 1 …[ read more ]
ON A recent visit to Cambridge, I bumped into a famous academic friend who was marching purposefully down the street, talking loudly to himself. A psychologist, Peter has always been considered somewhat eccentric. However, talking to oneself in public is not an accepted behaviour, even amongst our top dons. On a closer inspection, it transpired …[ read more ]
LIKE A comet preceding the end of the world, the belated roll- out of the digital BSkyB was preceded by many frightening sightings of Elisabeth Murdoch, the newly promoted head of programming. Elisabeth, aka Baby Murdoch, is known as the acceptable face of Daddy Rupert’s empire, and is being deployed to confuse and disarm the …[ read more ]
THERE IS a worrying trend emerging in Internet development. An increasing number of new Internet products are being rejected at the funding stage before the online customer even gets a chance to play with them. “The Internet is now a mass medium so we must dumb it down for the masses” appears to be the …[ read more ]
Last week, a surprising announcement from Tokyo got all the television folk in Britain hot and bothered. No, it wasn’t that long-awaited apology to British POWs. It was an official decision to delay the launch of digital TV until 2003, issued by the Japanese Ministry of Telecommunications, which spread horror in the British broadcasters’ canteens. …[ read more ]
More than 3 million Europeans are now officially classified as “telecommuters”. This is a small number compared with America’s 11 million telecommuters. However, according to the UK’s top Internet service providers, since September the rise in the number of newly wired households for the first time has surpassed the number of new connections for offices. …[ read more ]
