The just get it from IBM attitude is bad and lazy - let’s shop local
A POPULAR working definition of an expert is “someone who lives 5000 miles away”. When I ran a software company with headquarters in...
The vision of freedom has become one of repression
IN 1994 I invited Tim Berners-Lee, then a fairly obscure technical geek, to deliver the closing keynote speech at an international...
For richer or poorer, property rights transform lives
I HAVE OFTEN wondered if there is some kind of systemic difference between the western world, where wealth creation seems to be able to...
Famous faces can’t guarantee sales – they’re only human
TRICKY THINGS — celebrities. Being flesh and blood and having minds of their own can have drawbacks, particularly if you have hired them...
Fear of the download: it’s here to stay so exploit it
WHEN will they ever learn? Leading publishers are criticising Amazon for putting the full content of hundreds of thousands of...
How MSPs are wasting time, food and the democratic process
NOW THAT THE MSPs are fully installed in their shiny new parliament building at the bottom of the Royal Mile there is a sense that they...
Risk-all Rupert doesn’t do free, but could learn from his rivals
FEW businessmen in the world are as willing to take the really big risks as Rupert Murdoch. He bought the failing Sun newspaper from the...
Nice v nasty IT company. It’s not that black and white
EVERYBODY KNOWS what to make of the two superheroes of the IT industry: Bill Gates, the captain of the giant Microsoft ‘evil empire’,...
Funding the ‘soft’ options may be the ‘Smart’ option
THE GOVERNMENT has set a target of getting 50 per cent of the UK’s young people into higher education; a goal already achieved in...
Creatives aren’t the icing, but a slice of the cake itself
TIMES SEEM TO BE pretty tough right now for Scotland’s cultural sector. The difficulties at Scottish Opera have been well publicised —...
Scottish companies must adopt a new survival strategy
DESPITE THE HUGE success of the latest version of Grand Theft Auto — San Andreas, times have been pretty tough for the computer games...
Devolved Scotland needs devolved broadcasting
IT SEEMS the devolution settlement is not yet quite fixed in concrete, maybe it never will be. However, the fact that responsibility for...
Twilight for a Maxwell publishing scam?
ROBERT MAXWELL, the media tycoon who dropped off his yacht in 1991 after raiding his company’s pension funds, has had an influence well...
Second-rate management skills let many boffins down
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH funding was one of the big winners in Chancellor Brown's spending statement this year. UK Government spend on science...
Dream team brings back hard experience
THE INSTALLATION of Michael Grade and Mark Thompson as chairman and director general respectively of the BBC has attracted a lot of...
Give us back our in-boxes
ANNIVERSARIES of technological breakthroughs are regularly celebrated, but some developments are less welcome than others. One...
Finish the job - and make it fast
IT WAS ALL GOING to be so wonderful by now. In the late 90s we were told that broadband would arrive soon and we would be able to put an...
We’ve missed our connections
Compare it to – well, almost anywhere. Why does Scotland still suffer such poor transport infrastructure? SOUTH KOREA'S news that its...