Culture and Society

So war it is. Despite all the protests, Security Council machinations, negotiations and pundit clucking, predictions from six months ago that the US and Britain would invade Iraq in March will have been borne out within about 48 hours. Given the intractable arrogance of Saddam, and the mission George W. …

Arik Hesseldahl, the e-business columnist for Forbes.com is doing a a killer series on the best blogs out there in the land of blogatry. If Google’s recent acquisition of Pyra Labs, creator of the Blogger.com service, didn’t drive the point home, then we’ll spell it out. Blogging–the term is a …

Much has happened since the last Gulf War: Hurtling over hostile, unfamiliar landscapes at speeds exceeding 500 miles per hour, today’s combat pilots have just seconds to identify their targets. “When you’re going a mile every six seconds you don’t really have a lot of time. You need to rapidly …

Simpsons go wireless: you’ve ever wanted your cell phone to say “D’oh!” when someone calls, you’ll soon have the chance. Twentieth Century Fox on Monday said it has licensed “The Simpsons” to the wireless division of video game publisher THQ Inc. to be developed into games, ring tones, screensavers and …

mi2g reports: The American Academy of Diplomacy was hacked yesterday at 18:15 GMT while the US, UK and Spanish leaders met at the Azores summit. It still remains vandalised at the time of this alert 14 hours later [it’s up now]. US Secretary of State Colin Powell had received the …

Nashville is NOT Hollywood. Do we need any more proof of that than two concurrent stories out of the Music City: the Charlie Daniels pro-war rant, producer for country TV channel replies, gets fired story; and the Dixie Chick Natalie Maines busts loose with an anti-Bush statement at a concert …

Tossing digital video around like a beanbag: Terratec will be presenting its latest modular digital video recorder system at CeBIT this week. Designed for the living room, the Lancaster AV 701 is a multi-station system that consists of an analogue or digital TV receiver, an 80GB hard disk (enough to …

From James Grimmelmann in the indispensible LawMeme, a comprehensive report from the Berkeley Digital Rights Management conference: something has gone missing here. One of the great strengths of the copyright critique these days is that it’s so comprehensive: the story of the copyright balance being tipped too far in favor …

Yahoo to announce a subscription video/audio streaming service: Internet media company Yahoo Inc. will launch its most substantial subscription video service yet next week, an offering that will combine streaming coverage of news, entertainment and live sporting events, sources close to the company said on Friday. The new service takes …

There seems to be an announcement every few days now from AOL about some new service or convenience. I am pleased and wish them well (my sister works there), but I can’t help but wonder at the timing: why couldn’t they improve the sevice and value to customers BEFORE the …