Wednesday, February 20, 2008
The Register points out that life is about to get tough for ISPs. What the Reg does not quite put its finger on is this: ISPs have been merrily selling customers ‘bandwidth’ that has been all but theoretical. Now they face the horrible prospect that people other than teens sharing illegal music are going to [...]
Thursday, January 31, 2008
In an interesting choice of words, John Edwards “suspends” his bid for the Democratic nomination, so that “History can blaze its path”. That’s what history always does, of course, though it must hurt to just feel that one is in the way. Also stepping aside is “They Mayor of America”, now no longer seeking the [...]
One can usually trust Jon Stewart for insightful comment not only about American politics, but the media coverage of it. Yesterdays segment is particularly good: And if you enjoyed that, you’ll enjoy this follow-up segment well.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
I just saw this in my RSS feed from Wired.com: Israel is worried about Iran launching an all-out, “doomsday” barrage of rockets and missiles. So military leaders have begun early planning for a new, robotic defense system, armed with enough artificial intelligence that it “could take over completely” from flesh-and-blood operators. “It will be designed [...]
Whether or not you support the smoking ban that is about to come into force in England, you cannot argue that the policy was fully debated and discussed over an extended period by those institutions in the country we trust with the business of setting laws. A legal challenge is not, therefore, something which I [...]
I watched the transfer of power in the company of a few friends. It was quite clear that the journalists had little to say, and were trying to play up what was in the event quite a down-beat occasion. One BBC commentator, tasked with providing commentary as the car transporting Brown from the Palace to [...]
For a little over an hour today, the United Kingdom was governed by Her Majesty and the Civil Service. I think it went very smoothly indeed. I hear from the Today Programme that President Bush thinks that History will judge Blair kindly. Well it is possible, I suppose. Though I know some of the people [...]
For some inexplicable reason Google Earth’s maps of Oxford have been of terribly low-quality for years – so poor that one could not make out even where the roads were, let alone particular buildings. All that seems to have changed – someone has clearly flown over Oxford on a sunny day taking some nice pictures. [...]
Senior French politicians may not use the BlackBerry. We have become very used to storing data in what Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and others refer to as “the cloud“. Data stored ‘somewhere on the internet’ – on servers managed by someone else – is terribly convenient. We can access what we need, from wherever we [...]
Steve Jobs makes at least two major presentations each year, one in January and one in June. I’ve written about the January 2007 announcements before. The June ones (made on Monday) seem to have been more an effort in spin than an announcement of new technology. He made much of the fact that games are [...]