Daily Archives: October 24, 2009

So, are you sure you want to beleieve that Apple Corporation is not fundamentally evil, like the rest of the corporations?

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Earlier today a pending non-provisional utility patent application assigned to Apple Computer published. This application, US Patent Application 20090265214, is titled Advertisement in Operating System, and covers exactly what the title implies; namely an operating system that is capable of displaying a variety of advertisements to users. You are likely to have heard of the first listed inventor, Steven Jobs, the CEO and co-founder of Apple Computer, Inc. While it is difficult to know the purpose and strategy behind a patent application, the attorneys at Fish & Richardson in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who drafted and filed the patent application certainly did a very good job describing just about every conceivable feature and alternative that could coincide with the displaying of advertisements to users of an operating system. …

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This could never happen in the OpenSource world.

UFO’s on Quiche Moraine

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Among a certain class of people, the term “Rumsfeldian” is used to describe a style of leadership that prizes bureaucratic turf-protecting, dissent-quashing through barely concealed intimidation, an inflated sense of self-importance, and the inability to incorporate possible long-term consequences into the decision making process. This class consists primarily of policy wonks, especially the left-leaning ones I interact with daily at the Humphrey Institute, and we are referring to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. There is, however, another context where you will hear “Rumsfeldian” being bandied about, and that is in conjunction with his famous quote during a press conference on Feb. 12th, 2002:


The Latest Guest Post on Quiche Moraine.

Happy Birthday Genie Scott!

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Today is Genie Scott’s birthday. Genie is loved by all in the community of biological scientists because of her central role, as director of the National Center for Science Education, in fighting the good fight against irrational efforts to teach creationism in our public schools and elsewhere. Genie is the author of several books, articles, and book chapters, including Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction and Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools.