Technology is often only as good as the human using it 🙂
More funny “fail” pictures at FAIL Blog
Filed under: Society, Technology | Tagged: Fail, humor, hunting, joke, media, news, newspaper, newspapers, software, spellcheck, tech, Technology | Leave a comment »
FACT: Today’s Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News has a great elegy for a pilot who died forty years ago: “Jack Weeks, University of Alabama graduate and Birmingham native, died in service to his country [on June 4, 1968]. Reports from his most famous mission wound up on the president’s desk during one of the flashpoints of the Cold War. His widow accepted his medal for valor shortly after his death. But for 40 years, nobody knew what he’d done. Only his wife knew he was a hero…. Weeks was a pilot in the Central Intelligence Agency flying the super-secret A-12 high-level surveillance aircraft from 1963 until his death in 1968. A couple of weeks before his death, he became the pilot who located the USS Pueblo, the American intelligence-gathering ship, after it was captured by North Korean patrol boats…. Next month, Weeks will finally get the public recognition he was denied for so long. Battleship Park, home of the USS Alabama, will commemorate the 40th anniversary of his death on June 4 with a ceremony that will include an Alabama Air National Guard fly-over.”
ANALYSIS: Friday I was over at CIA headquarters at Langley meeting with a friend, and once inside the compound I parked by the Agency’s newest historical exhibit. Situated on a new traffic island between two parking lots behind the original headquarters building, looming over rows of parked cars, is a massive, gorgeous, sleek black aircraft perched on shiny steel struts as if in flight, twenty feet off the ground.
Filed under: Technology | Tagged: A-12, A12, Air Force, aircraft, Alabama, Area 51, Birmingham, Blackbird, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, CNN, Dulles, F-117, Indiana Jones, Jack Weeks, Langley, Lockheed, media, National Air & Space Museum, news, obituary, OXCART, pilot, pilots, secrecy, Skunk Works, spacecraft, SR-71, stealth, T-38, Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa News, Udvar-Hazy, USAF, USS Pueblo, Washington DC | 3 Comments »
FACT: According to a Sunday Washington Post front-page story today recounting the events leading up to May 4, a “day of strike” called for by social-networkers as a protest against government policies, “By late afternoon, of the 74,000 people who had registered on the Facebook protest page, only 15 – three men and 12 women – were still eager to gather for a protest.” [Note: the Facebook page had only been launched in late March.]
ANALYSIS: Last week I wrote about media coverage of Egypt’s Facebook affair, and noted that the Post and others had only covered it on media blogs, not in the actual newspaper.
This morning I picked up my Sunday-morning Post and saw the story, “Fledgling Rebellion on Facebook Is Struck Down by Force in Egypt,” right on the front page, which means that across Washington this morning, and other capital cities through clipping services, many in the foreign policy elite and punditocracy may be reading for the first time about the Web 2.0 facet of these events.
Reporter Ellen Knickmeyer also posted today a related online “Field Notes” column about the challenges of covering the Facebook activists.
Filed under: Government, innovation, Society, Technology | Tagged: blog, bloggers, blogging, blogs, Cairo, computer, computers, democracy, Egypt, Egyptian, Egyptians, Ellen Knickmeyer, Facebook, free speech, Government, internet, media, news, newspaper, newspapers, politics, reporter, reporters, social, social network, social networks, Society, Washington Post, web, Web 2.0, youth | 1 Comment »
FACT: In the past two days, reporters for the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have each written accounts of the ongoing confrontation in Egypt between the government and online activists – the “Facebook Revolution” as the Post reporter terms it, hyperbolically. One interesting aspect: the two accounts are not carried as actual news stories in the “newspaper” (real or virtual), but as blog posts by the reporters on dedicated foreign-correspondent blogs. The Washington Post account is on the “PostGlobal” uber-blogsite, under Jack Fairweather’s “Islam’s Advance” blog, while the L.A. Times account is on the “Babylon & Beyond” blog, which carries a sub-head of “Observations from Iraq, Iran, Israel, the Arab World and Beyond.”
ANALYSIS: Up to now there’s been little coverage in traditional American media outlets of the emerging political tenor of some social networks in Egypt over the past several months. Major newspapers and the cable-news channels have not explored the topic, but I just returned from some time in Egypt and I learned that of course it is a widely covered and discussed topic there. One young woman in her 30s, an urban professional, told me “I’m on Facebook all day long!”
Every morning outside my hotel room I would find an English-language newspaper, and for many days in a row it was a different paper – often because they were weekly editions. That gave me the opportunity to read a variety of opinions from a somewhat broad band, as measured in “distance to/from the government position.”
Helpfully, on May 6 2008 the Egyptian Mail included a summary of the raging controversy over Facebook, noting that “In Egypt, Facebook is the stage for the latest twist in the generation gap, playing host to politically hungry young Egyptians eager to take on their ageing leader.” Only at the end of the article did I notice that it was reprinted from a New-York-based Egyptian blogger, the respected Mona Eltahawwy.
Filed under: Government, innovation, Society, Technology | Tagged: Al-Ahram, Barack Obama, bloggers, blogging, blogs, Cairo, campaign, computer, computers, Democratic, Egypt, Egyptian Gazette, Egyptian Mail, Egyptians, Facebook, George Saunders, Government, Howard Dean, internet, Jack Fairweather, jail, Los Angeles Times, media, Meetup, Mona Eltahawwy, MySpace, Nabil Abdel-Fattah, news, Obama, police, politics, Republican, Roy Medvedev, Russia, samizdat, social, social network, social networks, socialist, Society, Soviet Union, tamizdat, Twitter, Washington Post, web, Web 2.0, World Politics Review, youth | 2 Comments »
Got a technical briefing on Live Mesh today in Redmond, and I’m impressed – particularly by the demonstrated commitment to interoperability through adhering to web standards – and the very cool Live Desktop giving you remote access to all your files and folders from any device (work computer, home laptop, mobile phone) with the new Microsoft Device Connectivity Service.
This is what will bring Cloud Computing down to earth.
Filed under: innovation, Microsoft, R&D, Society, Technology | Tagged: Amazon Web Services, atom, AWS, bloggers, blogging, blogosphere, blogs, cloud computing, computer, computers, Google App Engine, google cloud, grid computing, innovation, InternetNews, IT, Live Labs, live mesh, LiveSide, Microsoft, Microsoft Live, Microsoft Mesh, network, networks, news, R&D, ReadWriteWeb, saas, SOA, social networks, software, ssl, tech, Technology, utility computing, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 conference, Web 3.0, web services, windows live | 3 Comments »
FACT: U.S. military use of airborne drones (UAVs) dawned at the turn of the millenium, with nearly 100 vehicles in use before the Sept. 11 2001 attacks. By the end of that year the number had doubled, with the majority in use in Afghanistan. Today, according to a speech today by Sec. of Defense Bob Gates, “We now have more than 5,000 UAVs, a 25-fold increase since 2001.”
ANALYSIS: The Gates speech today, to an Air Force audience, is being covered mostly with a focus on his “harsh criticism” of that service. For example, CNN’s headline was “Defense Secretary Scolds Air Force for War Effort,” or Fox News “Gates Says Air Force Must Step Up Efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan.” And there was plenty of raw material for the tough stories, including CNN’s inclusion of the Gates soundbite that getting the Air Force to send more surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft to Iraq and Afghanistan has been “like pulling teeth.”
Others (like a Reuters story) struck a less frenzied tone, including more depth about his proposals going forward, and the Defense Department’s actual plans for improved acquisition and use of Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or ISR. I’d encourage you to read the full transcript (get it here). (By the way, here’s some background on ISR and its variants.)
Filed under: Government, Intelligence, R&D, Technology | Tagged: 9/11, Afghanistan, Air Force, Bob Gates, CNN, defense intelligence, defense intelligence agency, Defense Separtment, DIA, DoD, drone, drones, Fox News, GWOT, IC, Intelligence, iraq, ISR, JFCC-ISR, Mike Maples, military, news, peace, Pentagon, reconnaissance, SecDef, secretary of Defense, STRATCOM, Strategic Command, surveillance, terrorism, terrorists, UAV, UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicle, unmanned aerial vehicles, US Air Force, USAF, war, war on terror | 2 Comments »
Shepherd's Pi 
