In recent years, Spain has won itself the dubious honour of being labelled a haven for illegal downloading, to such an extent that international distributors have voiced doubts about continuing to supply the country with material such as DVDs. The government has attempted to tackle this issue with a raft of anti-piracy measures. Known as the Sinde Law, after Culture Minister Ángeles González Sinde, they were confusingly tacked onto an Economic Sustainability Law unveiled last year. The specific details of the legislation were not approved until March and Congress is expected to put the act into effect over the next couple of months. Production companies, content providers and the … [Read more...] about Lost at sea in the fight against digital piracy
Time to end Spain’s labour market apartheid
Take a look at a crowded street in any Spanish city and you will see two classes of workers. You won’t be able to distinguish them by their clothes, their skin colour or their schooling. But when they show up for work, receive their payslips at the end of the month or think about their future, they are very different. One group, let’s call them the fijos, feel more secure and more confident. With fixed contracts from their employers, they know they can’t be laid off easily - or cheaply - even in the current recession-bound economy. They don’t have to worry about their bosses renewing their contracts every month, every six months or every year. They may get training to advance their … [Read more...] about Time to end Spain’s labour market apartheid
History repeats in Portugal
Walk the streets of any Portuguese city and sooner or later you will come across a scene that seems unchanged for decades: shoe-shiners on Lisbon’s Avenida da Libertade, elderly ladies hanging laundry from tumbledown balconies in old Porto or fish sun-drying on the beach in Nazaré. One of Europe’s most unassuming and introverted countries, Portugal is a place where the past is gazed upon with a sense of melancholy – until, of course, the past comes back with a bite. Since late January, Portugal has taken a battering on international markets, as its bond prices have plunged and ratings agencies have threatened to cut the country’s credit grade amid fears over rising budget deficits and … [Read more...] about History repeats in Portugal
Chickens, eggs, Telefónica and the internet pie
As the wireless world’s biggest bash got underway in Barcelona this week, the words of Telefónica Chairman César Alierta loomed ominously over web content providers, search engine operators and internet users alike. Ten days before the start of the three-day Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry, Alierta had announced plans to make internet search engines pay for using the telecommunication company’s mobile networks. "Internet search engines use our network without paying anything at all, which is good for them but bad for us. It’s obvious that this situation must change, our strategy is to change this," declared the boss of Spain’s largest … [Read more...] about Chickens, eggs, Telefónica and the internet pie
Saving the pension system
For many years politicians, economists and demographers have been nervously watching a slowly ticking economic and social time-bomb. It is set to detonate – depending on your calculations – sometime after 2025 as an aging population and shrinking workforce combine with explosive effect, undermining the financial foundations of the Spanish pension system and rupturing the welfare state. Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who might like to imagine himself as a Hollywood action hero putting his life on the line to cut the red wire and defuse the bomb, has decided to risk his political future to reform the pension system and soften the retirement blow to today's and tomorrow's … [Read more...] about Saving the pension system
Running on Ẽmpty
A year after Spain’s centre-left government officially launched a massive stimulus package known as the Plan Ẽ, workers are still losing their jobs, public debt levels are scaring markets, and the economy is not likely to emerge from recession until 2011 at the earliest. Plan Ẽ, with its billions for public works projects, tax breaks and subsidies, was never intended to be more than a temporary bandage to get Spain through the worst of the fallout from the international financial crisis and the collapse of the domestic real estate and construction sector. But the wounds inflicted on Spain’s once booming economy have turned out to be slow to heal, and tearing the plaster off - as, for … [Read more...] about Running on Ẽmpty
Naked but (probably) no safer
Ever since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day with explosives hidden in his underwear authorities in the United States and Europe have been touting the benefits of installing body scanners at airports. It may be a new technology, but it is just the latest embodiment of an old debate pitting security against privacy - one in which Spain, as the current EU term president, has chosen to sit on the fence. The privacy concerns raised by these machines are understandable: if they can be used to spot a bomb in someone’s boxer shorts they can also detect prostheses, the results of plastic surgery and evidence of transgender. But while the thought of … [Read more...] about Naked but (probably) no safer
If language be the food of understanding, talk on
"Why are you interested in learning Arabic?” the teacher probed. It was a question intended to get us talking, to introduce ourselves and explain why we had chosen to give up two hours of our lives twice a week to sit in a drab high school classroom in Palma de Mallorca. For travel, said some of my classmates; an interest in Arabic culture and music, answered others. A few wanted to learn the mother tongue of a husband or wife. The first two of those reasons were also in part my own. But I also had other motives: “Because of the world we live in,” I said. As a journalist writing about Spanish and European politics and social issues for the last decade, I have borne witness to the … [Read more...] about If language be the food of understanding, talk on
A real feel for virtual reality
Computer graphics have come a long way since the painfully pixelated days of Pac-Man, yet few people would think virtual characters or objects are real. Place someone in a virtual reality environment, however, and they will almost certainly interact with their digital surroundings as if they were physically there. In trying to understand presence – defined, in this case, as the propensity of humans to respond to fake stimuli as if they are real – researchers are not just gaining insights into how the human brain functions. They are also learning how to create more intense and realistic virtual experiences, opening the door to myriad applications for healthcare, training, social research … [Read more...] about A real feel for virtual reality