When the Supreme Court, in a recent decision, overturned a century-old ruling that made it illegal to require distributors to adhere to minimum price agreements, most observers worried that it would hurt online commerce. But I doubt they expected that the online businesses affected would include Ebay merchants. The decision appeared to have been swayed […]
Read more...As a someone who has a good memory for numbers and therefore can’t be bothered to store data in my cell phone, this article confirms my prejudices. From the UK’s Telegraph: An over reliance on technology is leading to a dumbing down of the nation’s brain power, according a study published today. In a society […]
Read more...Readers may think we are being unfair in picking on Verizon. After all, the name of the game in business is to try to create barriers to entry, or failing that, establish some form of product differentiation that makes your offerings more attractive to some, hopefully many, customers, enabling you to charge more (the generic […]
Read more...There were enough AT&T-induced problems with the iPhone launch for it to be mentioned in the news summary on the first page of the Wall Street Journal’s website, in “Some iPhones Are Stuck on Hold,” which means it will likely be on the front page of the print edition. We reported on “AT&T Screws Up […]
Read more...When Apple announced the general outlines of the iPhone service, one of the things that the techies pounced on was that the data would run on AT&T’s EDGE technology, which is slow by modern standards. Turns out that may be the lesser part of the network worries. Because the new iPhones are sold without a […]
Read more...This is the title of what, according to Steven Shapin in the New Yorker, is a very good book by British historian David Edgerton on technology. Edgerton makes a bold argument, namely, that the way we think about technology is dominated by a heroic narrative in which a new approach sweeps aside what came before […]
Read more...An interesting shift is taking place in the economics world. Not so long ago, anyone who had anything to say against free trade was dismissed as being economically illiterate. In a surprisingly short period of time, the consensus seems to be shifting towards a willingness to admit that while free trade produces substantial benefits in […]
Read more...Martin Wolf has an excellent story today in the Financial Times, “Unfettered finance is fast reshaping the global economy,” in which he describes the change from “managerial capitalism” to “global financial capitalism.” Wolf takes pains to avoid taking sides on whether this development is a good thing or a bad thing, but one senses that […]
Read more...The blog Overcoming Bias pointed to an article in Reason Magazine, “More Information Confirms What You Already Know.“ The article cites a study by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School. “Affect, Values, and Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions: An Experimental Investigation,” which sought to assess attitudes towards new technology but has broader implications: [R]esearchers polled […]
Read more...Since Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has increasingly shifted his focus from his technology enterprise to his charity, the William and Melinda Gates Foundation, he has also had time to clarify and refine his objectives. Unlike the super-wealthy of the past, whose giving typically has been motivated by a combination of enhancing their prestige (often revealed […]
Read more...Despite it’s “Don’t Be Evil” slogan, Google rates below the oft-demonized Microsoft on its privacy practices, according to the London group Privacy International. (For the record, Microsoft and Apple were in the next-to-the-bottom tier). Now in this era of a Federal government that has been footdragging on shutting down its illegal warrantless wiretap program, the […]
Read more...Crime and war have a lot in common. The good guys and the bad guys are in a constant battle of escalation, each trying to adapt to and surpass each other’s latest techniques. On the information technology front, one of the fundamental techniques in investigating crime (both the hacker perpetrated sort and routine investigations of […]
Read more...We Americans like to think highly of our supposed freedoms, yet we have allowed privacy and civil rights to be eroded in the name of security and convenience (and yes, I mean you, how many times have you given your personal coordinates to a website?) The EU is taking the view that Google is keeping […]
Read more...A study at the University of Melbourne found that “intelligent” cars, meaning ones outfitted with telematics which enabled them to sense the cars around them and make more gradual adjustments to driving speeds than humans would make, yielded the same 15-20% fuel savings that hybrid cars offer, at considerably lower cost. The study did not […]
Read more...According Robert Cringely at PBS, IBM is cutting at least 150,000 US jobs in its Global Services Division, and each US worker is to be replaced by a new overseas hire. This headcount cut, called Project Lean, bears out the populist view that corporate executives are greedy and outsourcing damages the American economy. As we […]
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