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Tag me stupid, baby!
by
Andrew Orlowski
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This postbag contains small pieces of irony or humor which may choke small children or law professors Perhaps we should call them The New Literalists. Or is Nitpickers a better word? Or how about Pixel Pedants? The Road to Hell looks like it’s going to be Tagged With Good Intentions, if you pardon the twisted…
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On Computers, Creativity and Copyright
by
Andrew Orlowski
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“We’d run out of ironic things to say” Neil Tennant Creative Commons is an intriguing experiment to granulize the rights a creator has over his or her work, and to formalize what today is largely spontaneous and informal. What we rarely see when it is discussed, is a genuine attempt to answer the question “Why…
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Are you trying to be funny? If so check [ ] this box
by
Andrew Orlowski
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The return of the irony tag After ten years of the net, few amongst us have yet to realize that computer networks can be a lousy communication medium. Against all the good things that we’ve gained – such as the disappearance of physical distance, traversed by very slow moving postal workers – we must stack…
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‘Sims school’ abandons books for laptops
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Andrew Orlowski
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Technology vendors have long viewed the state of Arizona as rich pickings. In addition to the Federal pork barrel, state tax payers have found over $60m dollars for IT investment. Now a high school in Tuscon is abandoning textbooks entirely, at the urging of the school district’s technology evangelist, who appears to have caught the…
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For ambulance-chasing bloggers, tragedy equals opportunity
by
Andrew Orlowski
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No human disaster these days is complete without two things, both of which can be guaranteed to surface within 24 hours of the event. First, virus writers will release a topical new piece of malware. And then weblog evangelists proclaim how terrific the catastrophe is for the internet. It doesn’t seem to matter how high the…
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Lawrence Lessig’s other court case
by
Andrew Orlowski
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A dramatic update on Professor Lawrence Lessig’s other court case written by his friend John Heilemann appears in New York Metro magazine this week. And this is a battle that critics as well as supporters are praying will end in victory for the lawyer and scholar this time. Lessig is representing John Hardwicke, who like himself is a former…