The Economics of Spam
| by Sam Vaknin | August 13, 2003 | |
Tennessee resident K. C."Khan" Smith owes the internet service provider EarthLink $24 million. According to the CNN, last August he was slapped with a lawsuit accusing him of violating federal and state Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes, the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984, the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 and numerous other state laws. |
Maps of Cyberspace
| by Sam Vaknin | August 13, 2003 | |
"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts...
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The Case of the Compressed Image
| by Sam Vaknin | August 12, 2003 | |
Forgent Networks from Texas wants to collect a royalty every time someone compresses an image using the JPEG algorithm. It urges third parties to negotiate with it separate licensing agreements.
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The Universal Intuitive Interface
| by Sam Vaknin | August 12, 2003 | |
The history of technology is the history of interfaces - their successes and failures. The GUI (the Graphic User Interface) - which replaced cumbersome and unwieldy text-based interfaces (DOS) - became an integral part of the astounding success of the PC. |
The Future of the Book
| by Sam Vaknin | August 11, 2003 | |
One of the first acts of the French National Assembly in 1789 was to issue this declaration:"The free communication of thought and opinion is one of the most precious rights of man; every citizen may therefore speak, write and print freely.
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Wham! Bam! Thank You Spam!
Once upon a time, e-mail messages flowed freely through cyberspace and the congenial smell of e-mails was everywhere. |
Internet Advertising - What Went Wrong?
| by Sam Vaknin | |
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Spielberg's new blockbuster, "Minority Report", is set in the year 2054. The future - at least according to a team of MIT futurologists, hired by the cinematic genius - is the captive of embarrassingly personalized and disturbingly intrusive, mostly outdoor, interactive advertising. |
