Over 1,400 Posts and Counting

by Stephen Cobb on March 28, 2010

That's me speaking at a security conference in Iceland

Okay, as you might be able to tell from the big red button, the big news for me this July is National Hemochromatosis Awareness Month.

This inspired me to get my new site–Celtic Curse–into shape and online in time to help spread the word about this widespread and potentially fatal genetic condition.

If you don’t know what hemochromatosis is or why it is called Celtic Curse or what it can do to you if you don’t know you’ve got it, then I strongly encourage you to check out the site.

In other news, the Monetate site now has a bold new look, the result of a great team effort. I didn’t do the cool graphics but I did do a lot of the writing. Check it out.

Zero Privacy: Thoughts on McNealy and Zuckerberg and “privacy statements”

Thumbnail image for Zero Privacy: Thoughts on McNealy and Zuckerberg and “privacy statements”

In some of my recent posts about privacy, occasioned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s apparently dismissive attitude to privacy concerns, I referenced the “infamous” privacy comment that Scott McNealy made in 1999. At that time, McNealy was the CEO of Sun Microsystems, and Sun was hot. Java was cooking, so to speak. Anyway, McNealy was [...]

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Mark Zuckerberg Faces the Privacy Meter: Facebook trends open book

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Face it folks, it’s time to dust off the Privacy Meter for a quick check of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. According to an internal source, Mr. Zuckerberg has placed himself in the camp made (in)famous in 1999 by Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, who was reported to have said: “You already have zero [...]

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An Irish View of the Celtic Curse

I was browsing the Iron Disorders Institute web site last night and came across a story about hemochromatosis in an Irish newspaper. Since hemochromatosis is known as the Celtic Curse–on account of its relatively high rate of occurrence in persons of Celtic ancestry–I thought this would be an interesting perspective on my wife’s condition (and [...]

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My “Satellite is Not Broadband” Letter to the Editor, FCC Test Data, and More

I just noticed that my letter to the editor of the Daily Star about rural broadband was published (back on February 15). I have pasted the letter at the bottom of this post. The letter is part of my ongoing campaign to evangelize the need for affordable broadband connectivity in rural areas. I truly believe [...]

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Back to the Futurama: That’s the way this Hummer rolls

Congratulations to Brooklyn-based artist Jeremy Dean for realizing his vision: Creating a horse-drawn Hummer as a modern incarnation of the Hoovercart and getting it into a major art show. When Jeremy says he’s going to get something done, it usually gets done. Passengers in this rolling sculpture are treated to leather seats and flatscreens playing [...]

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3 Pleasing Things: Office software, wireless router, and boots to boot

Too often a blog post ends up as a vent or rant about stuff that annoys the blogger (been there, done that). When I started writing this post I was pretty annoyed by a head cold I caught at a trade show last week, but I figured that expressing this in a blog post was [...]

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I’ve Moved! But I’m still here…

Last night I completed the move of cobbsblog.com to a new hosting service! Moving a web site is not that hard, but moving a WordPress blog with all that SQL database stuff can be tricky. So please let me know via the comments if you see anything missing or not working right. Fortunately I found [...]

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Over 1,300 Blog Posts and Counting

Stephen Cobb has written more than 1,300 blog posts covering everything from Art to XMRV.

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Now Blogging Back to the Futurama: From 1939 to 2009 and back

My good friend Jeremy Dean is now blogging his wild and crazy Back to the Futurama art project. I have written about this project elsewhere (Jeremy Dean’s Back to the Futurama: A moving art project rolls from Hummers to horse carts). Now, as the car industry is putting on its annual show in Detroit, Jeremy [...]

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Where Does The Time Go? Is all this time-saving technology to blame?

My good intentions to research the CFS/ME/XMRV/CDC thing have fallen prey to all kinds of technology. There’s the technology I work on marketing at my day job, which requires a part of every day. Then there’s the technology that distracts me, like Kindle for the iPhone, whereon I am reading the last book in the [...]

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XMRV, ME, CFS, CDC: Thanks for the input

I just wanted to thank everyone who has commented on the previous post about XMRV, CFS/ME and hemochromatosis. I have learned a lot from you all and am still reading through the references and blog links you provided. I hope to post my thoughts this weekend. Stephen (D2EXAZ7XW96R)

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XMRV Hits #55 in the Top 100 for 2009: But what the heck is it?

XMRV! Is it a band? Is it a car? Is it a hot new computer game or a cool new radio station for fans of recreational vehicles? No, XMRV is a virus, a retrovirus that is at the heart of one of the top scientific discoveries of 2009, recently listed as number 55 on the [...]

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Opera to the Rescue? Definitely worth a listen

I just spent my evening at the Opera. Not the fat lady sings kind of opera, more of a browser with wings kind of thing that just happens to go by the name Opera. And I am really impressed (even though I’m tone deaf and can’t tell a libretti from a Lambretta). I have checked [...]

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Can You Hear Me? Radio interview at ad:tech

As you can see from the lack of recent posts on Cobbsblog, things have been particularly busy this month. My November started out with a trip to a trade show in New York called ad:tech. This event brings together a very interesting mix of companies that are in some way or another related to digital [...]

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You Can’t See My House From Here: And I’m okay with that

Having written several posts in the past about Google Street View, including one featuring the house in which I was born, I thought I would post a Street View picture of where I live now: As you can see–or rather, not see–the Google Street View camera vehicle did not get very close. In fact, it drove [...]

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A Tale of Intrigue & DNS: See HughesNet “blocking” my blog, now on YouTube

I have just uploaded my “HughesNet DNS Fail” video to YouTube but you can watch it right here. To be honest it is not my most polished video work, but I think it gets the job done. I have another one in the works that might be more effective. The plot goes like this: At [...]

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