Looking westwards along the Dingle Peninsula last evening. No time to PhotoShop the telegraph pole out of the picture, alas.
Still life with fire hydrant
The beauty of Plain English
This morning’s Observer column…
‘Political language’, observed George Orwell in his great essay on ‘Politics and the English Language’, ‘is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’ Much the same applies to the output of the public relations industry. One of the most important public services that mainstream journalism can provide, therefore, consists of decoding PR-speak: translating its half-truths, unsupported assertions and evasions into plain English…
This column is really a celebration of John Gruber’s lovely translation of Macrovision CEO Fred Amoroso’s Response to Steve Jobs’s ‘Thoughts on Music’.
Orwell would have loved it.
Did you Know 2.0?
Intriguing, thought-provoking video about the world for which our kids are (not being) educated.
Thanks to Tony Hirst for the link.
A new form of user-generated content
Yep — Roll your own video games. From Tech Review.
Damn Spam
Lovely New Yorker essay by Michael Specter on the pestilence that is junk email.
Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for spotting it.
Ndiyo in the Guardian!
Hooray! Nice piece by Andrew Brown in today’s Guardian Technology supplement. Note engaging picture of Quentin in triplicate. Must clip it out and send it to his parents. The boy done good!
Who needs Al Jazeera…
… when they can have this?
Thanks for Gerard for finding it.
Sun rises again
From today’s New York Times…
Sun Microsystems solidly beat Wall Street’s estimates yesterday when it reported a profit for the fourth quarter, providing evidence that the company’s turnaround plan was working.
The report sent shares of Sun up nearly 10 percent in after-hours trading, after they declined 3 cents to close at $4.89 earlier in the day.
Profit at Sun, which makes computer servers, was $329 million, or 9 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier net loss of $301 million, or a loss of 9 cents a share. Revenue rose to $3.84 billion from $3.83 billion. Analysts had expected, on average, earnings of 5 cents a share on $3.84 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Financial.
It was the third consecutive quarter of profit for the company, which had endured a lengthy downturn and five consecutive quarters of losses….
Time to eat my hat, then. Two years ago, I thought the company was doomed.
When was the decision to attack Iraq made?
According to General Wesley Clark, on September 20, 2001.
Here’s the interview clip: