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
Business
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
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