The examined life
The Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) bill has civil liberties lawyer Michael Bott concerned that the police could search your data with your ISP's consent but not your own. Indeed, according to Bott, you might not even be aware that your personal files are being viewed by unauthorised authorised personal (so to speak).
Then there is the Search and Surveillance Bill, whereby the police could covertly install a video camera or audio device inside your home and leave it there for up to three days.
Bott says that if the cops arrive at your house and want a nosey they have to produce a search warrant. So why shouldn’t you be notified when your electronic data is being looked at, your house is being filmed and your conversations taped?
File-sharing bill could extend surveillance culture - Bott
No life
If you fear technologies recording every detail of your life, then imagine if technology completely erased it? In this short clip, the website Gawker.TV re-imagines the 1995 film The Net as The Google – where the main character’s online identity is erased, bringing into question whether she actually exists at all. What would Descartes make of that conundrum, I wonder?
If The Net had been made in 2010 instead of 1995
What was that high-pitched whistling noise?
The sound of Alcatel Lucent getting pinged for the XT outages.
Telecom result helped by $27m compensation payment
Read it on the web – or is it the internet?
Oh how we grapple in the media world with new ways to deliver content and still get paid. So when Wired magazine published an article co-authored by Chris Anderson (he of The Long Tail fame) in which he argued that the free web is dying and customers are actually willing to pay for content if its delivered seamlessly via an app (think iTunes), it was tweeted to the universe.
But, hard on its heels is a riposte from The Atlantic, in which former Wired writer Alexis Madrigal argues that, actually folks, reports of the web’s demise are being greatly exaggerated.
Madrigal’s point is well-argued but tweeter @ironicsans put it better and more succinctly: “Just got my Web Is Dead issue of Wired. It came several days after I read all about it plus pro and con arguments and analyses. On the web.”
The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet
Enough with the iPhone already
Seasoned telco watchers know that although the industry may be reeling with uncertainty due to the government’s fibre plan, there is one thing you can always count on. At every Telecom financial briefing an analyst will ask why the company doesn’t have an official deal with Apple to distribute the iPhone in New Zealand.
To which CEO Paul Reynolds will blather on about Telecom’s great handset range before pointing out that customers can buy an iPhone from the Apple online store and use an XT Network SIM card.
So why, oh why, do they persist in torturing the poor man with this question?
Partly it's because iPhones gobble up data and data raises Average Revenue Per User and in a market of more than 100 percent penetration that is where the profits lie.
However, Telecom Retail CEO Alan Gourdie reckons that Telecom has more than 50 percent of the mobile broadband market between its CDMA and WCDMA networks. He also told Computerworld, post briefing, that the main driver for mobile broadband is data sticks, not devices. Which is partly why the company intends to switch all its EVDO data stick users (around 90,000 customers) onto the XT Network by Christmas, after which time the data capability on the CDMA network will be switched off. Also destined for the dustbin this year is the World Mode roaming service. All this in preparation for the big CDMA shut down, which Gourdie is predicting will occur in March 2012.
By the way, Telecom lost 120,000 mobile connections in the last quarter. Vodafone NZ lost 25,000 in its last financial quarter and 2degrees isn't saying how many it lost or gained.
Telecom revenue down, but some improvement seen
Free energy
Jack White shows Meg White his Tesla coil