Monthly Archives: July 2012

Another excellent piece by +Farhad Manjoo that refutes all of the outright lies that…

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Another excellent piece by +Farhad Manjoo that refutes all of the outright lies that Gordon Crovitz tells about the creation of the internet. This really sums it up:

In other words, creating something as grand and untested as the Internet was something that a private company simply couldn’t do. The project was too big, and the payoff too uncertain. That’s true of most technologies in their infancy.

Who invented the Internet?: The outrageous conservative claim that every tech innovation came from private enterprise.
Earlier this month, President Obama argued that wealthy business people owe some of their success to the government’s investment in education and basic infrastructure. He cited roads, bridges, and sch…


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Over the years the Wall Street Journal has received plenty of often well deservered…

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Over the years the Wall Street Journal has received plenty of often well deservered praise for the journalism on its news pages. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of its editorial pages which have been steadfastly slanted to the far right of the political spectrum and frequently show a startling disregard for the truth.

A prime example was a column penned recently by Gordon Crovitz. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577539063008406518.html

It seems that Crovitz's sole motivation was to try to refute the recent comments by President Obama about the need for governement spending on public infrastructure.

In Crovitz's twisted version of reality, the US government had nothing to do with the creation of what is now known as the Internet. Thankfully we still have renowned computer scientist Vint Cerf to remind us of what actually happened back in the 1970s.

Cerf and his collaborator Robert Kahn created one of the most fundamental technical underpinnings of the 'net known as TCP/IP. Kahn was on the Defence Department payroll and Cerf got government funding for his research.

For Crovitz to try and claim that the government had nothing to do with the development of the net is blatantly untrue and his claims are nothing more than political posturing.

No credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees
A legendary figure in the invention of the Internet weighs into a new debate about the U.S. government’s role during that heady era. Read this blog post by Charles Cooper on Internet & Media.


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7 years old today!

This entry was posted in this and that writing and tagged blogiversary on by (updated 4485 days ago)

Seven years ago today I published the very first post on this blog. Since then I’ve become a full-time professional writer working at various times as a journalist and a PR flack. These days I publish most of my stuff through Google Plus because I have a bigger audience over there.

Fortunately Google doesn’t mind users pulling their data out so I use Daniel Treadwell’s Google+ plugin for WordPress to automatically pull all of the content from G+ and cross-post it here. It’s been a fun ride and I’ll continue to use this venue to share my random thoughts for the foreseeable future.

More pointless skeuomorphism from Apple, Android has had the ability to collapse/expand… 4

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More pointless skeuomorphism from Apple, Android has had the ability to collapse/expand quoted text in emails for years

Something in iOS 6 you haven’t seen yet…
Here’s a nice touch from Apple (AAPL) that you might not have seen: When email threads get too long in iOS 6, just pull to expand the crumpled up email to show the entire thing. A photo showing Apple’s implementation of this great feature follows below.

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Yet another reason to avoid the Olympics 6

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The International Olympic Committee is not about sports, it's about making as much money as possible and athletics is just a side effect. 

Reshared post from +Engadget

London's trying to ban 3G access points from the Olympics…

London bans wireless access points, joy, kittens from the Olympics
If you thought the list of banned items at the Olympic Games couldn’t get any longer, now the IOC is gunning for that


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+Audi International has revealed the refreshed 2013 R8 and along with the subtle… 2

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+Audi International has revealed the refreshed 2013 R8 and along with the subtle styling changes, they have finally ditched the wretched R-Tronic automated gearbox.

Both the V8 and V10 engines are now available with either the existing 6-speed manual with its beautifully slick shift action or the new 7-speed S-Tronic. S-Tronic is Audi's nomenclature for a dual-clutch automatic gearbox.

While the R-Tronic worked well when driving hard on the track, it was absolutely ridiculous on the street at anything less than 9/10. If the R8's S-Tronic is anything like the unit in the S5 http://www.autoblog.com/2010/04/12/2010-audi-s5-cabriolet-review/ it should be a dream in this machine.

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Read it all the way through before you get too outraged

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Read it all the way through before you get too outraged

Reshared post from +C.C. Chapman

Once again +Matthew Inman says it like only he can. I think  +Kevin Smith would be proud 🙂

How to suck at your religion – The Oatmeal
A map showing the density of Starbucks retail stores in the U.S. · Why I didn’t like riding the bus as a kid · The Terrible C-Word · Cat vs Internet · Dear public toilets of the world · Why I love and…

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This is just so wrong

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I hope the jury in this case sees sense and tosses all of the claims on both sides of this fight.
#boycottapple  

Apple demands $2.02, plus $3.10… equals a total of $2.5 billion in Samsung damages
How big is $2.525 billion when you’re Apple? It won’t affect living standards in Cupertino, that’s for sure, but it’s evidently enough to be worth hauling a rival through the US courts. The figure is revealed in Apple’s damages claim, submitted in the run-up to its battle with Samsung in California, and is quite separate to other claims in Europe and Australia. If you’re not already sick and tired of this feud, then the sums behind that big amorp…

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My first quick drive of the precursor to the new +Ford Motor Company C-Max Energi… 10

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My first quick drive of the precursor to the new +Ford Motor Company C-Max Energi back at the 2008 New York Auto Show. At the time then chief engineer Greg Frenette projected that a full production PHEV could be on sale within five years and Ford has beat that by nearly a year. 

New York 2008: Autoblog drives the Escape Plug-In
New York 2008: Autoblog drives the Escape Plug-In Hybrid II

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