Blogging History: Gezi crackdown; EFF kills stupid Internet patent; Daily Show on Ashcroft v Congress

One year ago today

Brutal crackdown on Turkish protests: People are gassed here non stop, in all central Istanbul areas. Tens of thousands of people are out in the streets.

Five years ago today

EFF kills another stupid internet patent: EFF's patent-busting project has put another notch in its belt: today they killed a truly outrageous patent on the use of subdomains for navigation and content management, as with jwz.livejournal.com. Can you believe that the patent office granted that patent in 2004, based on a 1999 application? Can you believe that the people who filed the patent claimed (with a straight face) that they didn't know of any other prior art that made this invalid?

Ten years ago today
Daily Show on Ashcroft's Contempt of Congress: Lisa Rein has posted some Daily Show clips from June including the stunning segment on Ashcroft's weaselling on torture before Congress. Watching Ashcroft spin and dodge and weave around Contempt of Congress is astonishing — why isn't this man in jail RIGHT NOW?

timemachine