A colleague of mine was on an Easyjet flight the other day, and found that the head of the cabin staff seemed to be planning a new career as a stand-up comedian. My colleague took notes. Here they are:

“In a moment we will dim the cabin lights for take off, a routine procedure. It also helps to make me look more attractive.”

“Easyjet employ some of the most professioanl and efficient of staff. Unfortunately none of them are flying with you today.”

“We recommend that you read the safety card. It could save your life. The magazines and newspapers will not.”

“We will shortly be giving out inflight magazines. It’s the only thing you’re going to get free from Easyjet so I do suggest you hang onto it.”

“We’ve arrived 20minutes early which completely ruins our reputation but there we are.”

“Don’t undo your seatbelts until we’ve stopped and the sign goes off. We don’t want you to arrive at the terminal building ahead of the aircraft.”

“Please don’t leave babies and children behind. I have quite enough of those.”

NY Times: “The record industry’s legal victory over Napster last year has neither stopped the trading of free music online nor halted a slide in music sales.”  [Scripting News]

Well, whaddya know?

According to this BBC story, a leading firm of snake oil… er, consultants has concluded that business use of the Web “is about to get serious”.

“The next two years will see businesses start to remake the software they use to run their organisations as they start to put the net at the heart of everything they do, says a report by consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers. ”

BT will give broadband access to rural users — for between £3,000 and £5,000 a year!
BBC News Online story. Wow! Some breakthrough, eh. It’s a service called BT Netstart, apparently. That’s ‘start’ as in the Windows Start button — the one you press to turn off.

What’s the difference between the Danes and the Spaniards?

Well, basically, the Danes are great online communicators (sending 10 emails and one SMS message per day), while the Spaniards are crazy about , er, online gaming.

Bad news for TV moguls — kids rather like the Net!

A new study from Statistical Research indicates that one third of children in the US would choose the Internet over other media, if they were restricted to one choice. This would worry me if I owned a TV network. Interesting also that, overall, boys preferred Internet and television, while girls preferred the telephone and radio.

Cybercrime doubles with increased Internet usage
FT story

“A survey of 1,000 UK companies showed that 44 per cent suffered a significant security breach last year – up from 24 per cent in 2000. ” But according to this survey, most online fraud (46%) in the US occurs on auction sites.

Signs of intelligent life in BT – contd.

According to the Financial Times, BT is planning to plug the gap in its broadband offerings for us poor rural consumers (who cannot get ADSL) with a satellite service. But it only offers 256 kbps download and POTS 56k upload and requires a £400 satellite dish. Roll on WiFi!

More AOL Time Warner woes
NYT story.

“Investors took Mr. Pittman’s return as confirmation of their worst fears about the America Online division, and AOL Time Warner’s shares fell last week to a low of $19.60 on Thursday, before rebounding slightly on Friday, with unusually high trading volume. Reports surfaced that the Janus fund group, which specializes in rapidly growing companies and AOL Time Warner’s largest shareholder, was selling tens of millions of shares, presumably because it had lost confidence in the company’s growth prospects.

Investors are most worried that technology and the market are passing AOL by. It remains the undisputed king of dial-up Internet access over phone-line modems, called narrowband. But it does not seem to have yet mastered the next generation of high-speed, or broadband, service, which has been dominated by cable systems and phone companies.

Broadband services were supposed to be one of the biggest benefits from the combination with Time Warner, which owns the nation’s second-largest cable company. Lots of Time Warner’s data and entertainment could be offered up over fast digital pipes, according to the deal’s rationale. But there is little to show for this supposed synergy so far. ”

The new imperialism

For most of us, the notion of a sovereign state free to do whatever it likes within its own borders has become a ‘given’. It’s what paralyses the international community when faced with humanitarian crises. But, post September 11, influential voices in the UK and US administrations are beginning to think the unthinkable. In Britain, Robert Cooper is a senior diplomat who has helped to shape Tony Blair’s calls for a new internationalism and a new doctrine of humanitarian intervention which would place limits on state sovereignty. This article contains the full text of Cooper’s essay on “the postmodern state”, which seems to be the clearest articulation of this emerging geopolitical philosophy. Its significance derives from the fact that Cooper’s is the brain behind Blair’s policy. This is what Blair and Dubya would think if they were smart enough.