Memex 1.1

John Murrell, writing in Good Morning Silicon Valley

An outfit called Psystar finds itself in the spotlight today after advertising what it claims is a Leopard compatible Mac built from standard PC-parts for $399, but it probably feels less like a stage star than an escaping convict in the prison yard. See, the license for the Mac operating system bans its installation on non-Apple hardware. Apple, as we know, does not take kindly to trespassers on its turf, and in instances like this, here’s what I like to think happens: A loud bell goes off in the sleeping quarters of Apple Legal, and a squad of attorneys, already dressed in their three-piece suits, jump out of their cots, slip on their tassel loafers, slide down a pole, pile into a fleet of Priuses and roar off (or hum off, I guess) to the scene of the conflagration. So if you have your heart set on an ugly box that might work sort of like an Apple, at least until you try to update it, jump now.

Hard on the heels of the Phorm business (to which Virgin has signed up), here’s the view of the Virgin media CEO on the issue of net neutrality.

In an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine, far from covering up their intentions, Virgin Media’s new incoming CEO Neil Berkett – who joined the Virgin Media Board just a few days ago – has launched an attack on the ideas and principles behind net neutrality.

“This net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks,” he said, adding that Virgin is already in the process of doing deals to speed up the traffic of certain media providers.

With around 3.5 million customers in the UK, and already traffic shaping due to lack of capacity, it’s a sobering thought that at the behest of “content providers” with deep pockets, Virgin is prepared to speed up their traffic, which would presumably have a negative impact on those at the bottom of the ISP’s priority list, namely bandwidth hungry file-sharers…

From BBC NEWS…

The BBC’s head of future media and technology Ashley Highfield is leaving to launch an on-demand video service for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

Known as Project Kangaroo, the joint venture has been described as “Freeview for the internet” and plans to offer more than 10,000 hours of programmes…