27th December 2004 Archive

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• Vaulting into a Rapturous techno-future with Jaron Lanier

  Interview VR inventor on memes, and the blandness of digital culture

  To Stanford, where the annual gathering of extropians, futurists and other techno optimists swarms each year - in a self-organizing, bottom-up style - to the annual Accelerating Change conference. Most of us look to the future with large doses of trepidation and grim resignation tempering the love - but not these people. They …

  Media 27 Dec 2004, 16:12

• Spam punishment doesn't fit the crime

  Opinion We need a common sense approach

  I hate spam as much as the next person, but recent decisions by courts in Iowa and Virginia demonstrate how fear of technology (and justifiable annoyance) can force the legal system to impose fines and sentences that are grossly disproportionate to the harm caused by spammers. This is not to defend or justify spammers, whose …

  Security 27 Dec 2004, 16:12

• Worldwide Warez hunt nets first conviction

  Operation Fastlink gets its man

  The US government has secured the first conviction in its ambitious Operation Fastlink program designed to nab software pirates. The Iowa City Press-Citizen reported that Jathan Desir, 26, has admitted to distributing pirated software worth up to $200,000. The University of Iowa student is said to have had 13,000 software …

  Media 27 Dec 2004, 20:34

• Amazon thanks Santa for shopping record

  Secretive seller wows itself

  Amazon.com congratulated itself for a banner holiday shopping season, saying more than 2.8m items were ordered on a single, record-breaking day. The online seller endured a series of glitches during the main holiday shopping stretch from the end of November to Christmas. Amazon's technology problems, however, did not stop it …

  Financial News 27 Dec 2004, 21:50

• Official orders probe of airlines that stole Christmas

  The weather ate our flight plans

  A US government official has called for an investigation into the problems that grounded over 1,000 US Airways and Comair flights last weekend. US Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta today ordered his department's Inspector General to probe the flight cancellations that left thousands of passengers stranded as they tried to …

  Business 27 Dec 2004, 22:58