This is a world-wide show this week with British programmer and blogger John Graham-Cumming and French blogger Patrick Beja are guests this week with the usual John C Dvorak. John Graham-Cumming has been in the news recently with his altruistic effort to get an apology from the British government over the persecution of early computer visionary Alan Turing for being gay. It’s a great story and shows how one person really can bring light to important issues.
Google’s efforts to digitize books is again the target of attack from the Department of Justice on issues of copyright. While TWiT group feels that these issues are somewhat understandable, governments have not stepped in to perform the necessary action in this increasingly digital world. The real problem ends up being the issue of rights which Google maintains for the scan of the digitized versions which Dvorak explains quite aptly here.
The U.S. health care system has been a topic of intense debate recently and some of the innate problems of the current system are exemplified here by a story involving famed movie reviewer Roger Ebert. After having throat surgery to treat his cancer, he was forced to find something to facilitate his communication and his insurance would only cover an $8000 specialized device which doesn’t work nearly as well as a Mac with text-to-speech technology.
The last big piece of news this week is Intuit, the makers of popular finance management software Quicken, have acquired Mint. Mint has been the talk of the technology world for over a year now with a service that is similar to what Intuit offers, only more robust and user friendly. While this was undoubtedly a smart move for Intuit, many are crying that Mint should not have “sold out.”
Turing apology, Google books, Medicare Macs, WIPO, Twitter verification, editorial ethics, and more.
Runtime – 2:05:51
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