This article titled “Steve Jobs obituary” was written by Jack Schofield, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 6th October 2011 00.07 UTC

Steve Jobs, who has died aged 56 following a long battle with pancreatic cancer, made an unprecedented impact on the world’s consumer electronics markets with a string of hit products, including the iPod media player, iPhone smartphone and iPad tablet computer. In little over a decade, he took Apple – the company he co-founded in 1976 – from near-bankruptcy to being the world’s second most valuable company by market capitalisation, after the oil giant Exxon, with more than $50bn in the bank.

The iPod, iPhone and iPad were all relatively late to market, were expensive, and, in their initial versions, lacked important features. But Apple’s products not only came to dominate their rivals, they redefined large areas of three whole industries: music, mobile telephony and personal computing. Through his animation studio, Pixar, and films such as Toy Story (1995), Jobs also helped change the movie industry. Few entrepreneurs – one thinks of Henry Ford, or Conrad Hilton – have had as much impact on one.

To an unusual degree, Jobs was responsible for Apple’s success. He has been described as a “control freak” and was known for rejecting hundreds of ideas in the quest for his personal idea of perfection. He launched new products himself, in carefully crafted “Stevenotes” that attracted adoring crowds and received massive press coverage. He opened hundreds of shops to sell Apple products.

Jobs’s micro-management of everything from chips to shops enabled him to go against industry conventions in his quest for ease of use and simplification. The iPhone, for example, was launched in the US with one basic model from one network operator. Apple also authorised and controlled the applications available from its online App Store, and if you wanted Adobe Flash – used on millions of websites and the standard for delivering online video – you couldn’t run it without “jailbreaking” your iPhone. Jobs could be regarded as a benevolent dictator, but he was a dictator nonetheless.

Nothing in the first 45 years of Jobs’s life suggested that he would have so much impact on the consumer electronics and media industries. Born in San Francisco, the child of two graduate students, he was adopted, and named, by Paul and Clara Jobs. He grew up in Mountain View, close to the heart of Silicon Valley. While at Homestead high school, he went to after-school lectures at Hewlett-Packard in nearby Palo Alto, and he and his friend Steve Wozniak got summer jobs there.

After finishing high school in 1972, Jobs moved north to study at Reed, an expensive liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. He dropped out after one term, but continued to go to some classes, including a course on calligraphy. He grew his hair and a beard, slept on friends’ floors, and sometimes went to a Hare Krishna temple for free meals. Like many drop-outs at that Beatles-inspired time, his ambition was to visit a guru in India, which he eventually did with a friend from Reed, Dan Kottke. When they got there, the guru had died.

At this point, Jobs had a limited education, and no obvious talents, apart from a notorious ability to talk people into things. (Later this became known as Jobs’s “reality distortion field”.) However, he did have a devoted friend who was an electronics genius. Wozniak could design circuits with fewer chips than anyone else, and he enjoyed the challenge. It was a talent that Jobs exploited in the creation of Apple Computer. However, they were a team. Without Jobs’s ambition, constant prodding, and the talents that he rapidly developed – high design standards, the ability to make deals and, soon, great marketing skills – Wozniak might well have spent a quiet life designing hardware at HP. Woz could design computers, but Jobs could create markets.

In his book about Apple, Infinite Loop (2000), Michael Malone said Jobs “had begun the summer [of 1976] almost a stranger to personal computing; he would finish it as the best businessman in the industry.” The first Apple computer was a hobbyist machine in a crude wooden box. It was assembled by hand at Jobs’s parents’ house and sold for $666.66. It made Jobs realise that, in order to compete, Apple had to be set up as a proper company, with financial backing and an experienced chief executive. That happened with an investment from a former Intel employee Mike Markkula, and the appointment of Apple’s first CEO, Mike Scott.

Woz’s follow-up, the Apple II, was beautifully designed, had a strikingly original case, and its easily accessible expansion slots meant it could be adapted for almost any purpose. Its built-in graphics and expandability were marked advantages over most early rivals, and it was a huge hit. It dominated the US market until the IBM PC was launched in August 1981, and continued to sell for years.

The resulting wealth and fame had an unexpected consequence. In February 1981, Woz had been injured after crashing his Beechcraft Bonanza while taking off from a local airport. Apple’s computer development continued without him, and Jobs took over the direction of the Macintosh project from its originator, Jef Raskin. This would be Jobs’s computer, not Wozniak’s.

Jobs had a number of ideas for the Mac, which was intended to be the first mass-market computer based on using a mouse and a graphical user interface. These ideas had been developed by Alan Kay and other computer scientists at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). They had been tried in the high-priced Xerox Star workstation and, later, in Apple’s Lisa ($9,995), without finding commercial success.

Jobs wanted the Mac to be an appliance that would appeal to ordinary consumers rather than hobbyists, scientists and businesses. As he pointed out, there were no user groups for Maytag washing machines. It led to a simplified, closed-box design that was cute but didn’t take you very far. Kay criticised it in a memo: “Have I got a deal for you: a Honda with a one-quart gas tank.”

The Mac was launched with one of the most famous TV adverts in history, titled 1984 and given a single showing during the Super Bowl, though there were also 20-page adverts in the major US magazines. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, appeared on stage with Jobs at the Mac’s launch, praising the machine and promising Microsoft’s software support. The graphical versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint were all written for the Mac, as was the first Microsoft Office. But the Mac flopped.

In 1985, Apple closed half its six factories, shed 1,200 employees (a fifth of its staff) and declared its first quarterly loss. Jobs lost a boardroom battle against John Sculley – the man he had hired from Pepsi as chief executive officer with the immortal line “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?” – and was forced out of the company. The Mac was redesigned as a conventional three-piece system with expansion slots, and Macintosh II was launched in 1987. It was particularly successful in the design and publishing industries. In a Playboy interview, Jobs said: “I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old and I want to have a chance to continue creating things. I know I’ve got at least one more great computer in me. And Apple is not going to give me a chance to do that.”

Jobs set up a new company, NeXT, to produce a powerful, futuristic Unix workstation for business and higher education users. He took several Apple employees with him, including brilliant members of the Mac team. Although the company attracted a lot of financial backing, and Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web on a NeXT Cube, sales were dismal. The company ditched the hardware and switched to selling the operating system, but it was still failing. By this stage, Jobs had been transformed. When he launched the NeXT in the UK – not at some boring hotel but from the stage of the London Palladium – he was beautifully groomed and a very polished performer. He was a superstar, albeit an irrelevant one.

Everything changed after Microsoft launched Windows 95, which finally took the mouse and graphical user interface to the mass market. Apple’s annual turnover slumped from $11.1bn in 1994 to $5.9bn in 1998, it lost money, and there were several attempts to sell the company. Apple’s board installed one of its members, Gil Amelio, to turn things around, but that didn’t work either. As Jobs said later: “The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!”

Mac OS software development had stalled, and Amelio knew he had to buy in a new operating system to replace it. The early betting was on Jean-Louis Gassée’s BeOS. (Gassée had replaced Jobs as head of Macintosh development, then left to develop the BeBox as a Mac replacement.) However, at the end of 1996, Amelio bought NeXT instead. Jobs, the super-salesman, had struck again. Apple paid $429m for NeXT after telling Gassée that his $275m price was too high.

Jobs was now back at Apple as Amelio’s advisor, though it was something of a reverse takeover, with former NeXT staff such as Avie Tevanian and Jon Rubinstein taking charge of Apple’s software and hardware respectively. Whatever his official status, no one had any doubt who was running the show. This time, Jobs staged the boardroom coup, and he became “interim CEO” in September 1997.

There had long been a pseudo-religious element to Apple’s following, and Jobs’s return was akin to the Second Coming for the “Mac faithful”. It was an amazing example of the American dream: the adopted son who spent time in the wilderness (Oregon, India), started a company in a garage, achieved fame and fortune, was booted out of his own company then returned in triumph. It would have been a terrific story, but it was true.

Turning Apple around was not easy, even for Jobs. He killed off weak products such as the Apple Newton, dramatically simplified the product line, and started a process of creating eye-catching designs. More than a dozen Mac models were replaced by the iMac, followed by the portable iBook and a NeXT-like G4 Cube. NeXT’s NextStep was adapted to provide the new operating system, Mac OS X.

Jobs even secured an investment from Microsoft and a promise to keep Microsoft Office available for the Mac, though Seattle-based Gates only attended the Boston press event via a video link. Whether it was deliberate or not, Gates’s face on the big screen reminded all of us in the audience of the 1984 advert.

Curiously, Jobs kept repeating the process that he had used with the original Macintosh. Products were developed in secret under Jobs’s intense supervision, before being given a big-bang public launch, followed by massive TV advertising support. He also kept to the idea of making things more and more like household appliances, removing expansion slots, and even sealing in batteries. However, the world had changed since 1984 and technology was no longer the domain of hobbyists and businesses. Most consumers now use computers or, increasingly, smartphones.

Even saving the Mac would have left Apple with limited prospects in a Windows world. As Jobs had said before the NeXT takeover: “If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth – and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”

True to his word, Jobs went in a different direction, launching the iPod in October 2001, and the iTunes music store in April 2003. These put Apple on a growth path. When Jobs followed up with the iPhone in January 2007, he was confident enough to drop the Computer part of Apple’s name. Annual sales soared from $8bn in 2000 to $65bn in 2010.

Where most computer companies had fought against IBM – the dominant IT supplier attacked in the 1984 advert – Jobs wanted to emulate the consumer electronics company he most admired: Sony. Apple had enjoined users ungrammatically to Think Different, a riff on IBM’s slogan, Think. Jobs certainly did that. Although Jobs was idolised, he was not universally admired, partly because of his tyrannical management style. A Wired magazine article quoted Apple’s hardware guru Jon Rubinstein saying “We have cells, like a terrorist organisation,” with the company’s former chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki adding: “Steve proves that it’s OK to be an asshole”.

Some never forgave Jobs for cheating his best friend, Wozniak, out of a few thousand dollars – a bonus payment from Atari for reducing the chip count of its Breakout game. Wozniak, while working for HP, had done most of the work. Jobs also refused for some time to acknowledge a daughter, Lisa, born in 1978 to Chrisann Brennan. He bought a historic 14-bedroom mansion in the Woodside area of California, then left it to decay when he moved to Palo Alto. Local preservationists took Jobs to court to try to save it, but lost on appeal, and it was demolished in February 2011.

Jobs is survived by his wife, Laurene Powell, whom he married in a Buddhist ceremony in 1991, and their three children, Reed, Erin and Eve; by his daughter, Lisa; and a sister, the novelist Mona Simpson.

• Steven Paul Jobs, businessman, born 24 February 1955; died 5 October 2011

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “US military to launch fastest-ever plane” was written by Alok Jha, science correspondent, for The Guardian on Wednesday 10th August 2011 18.53 UTC

By the time you finish reading this sentence, the Falcon HTV-2, the fastest plane ever built, could have flown 18 miles. It would get from London to Sydney in less than an hour, while withstanding temperatures of almost 2,000C, hotter than the melting point of steel.

At 3pm BST on Thursday , the US Defence Advance Research Projects Agency will launch the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 on the back of a rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. If all goes to plan, engineers will launch the Falcon HTV-2 to the edge of space, before detaching the plane and guiding it on a hypersonic flight that will reach speeds of 13,000mph (about 20 times the speed of sound) on its return to Earth.

The Falcon started life in 2003, part of a US military research project to build a plane that could reach (and potentially deliver bombs to) any part of the world in less than an hour.

The plane has been tested in computer models and wind tunnels, but they can only simulate speeds up to Mach 15 (11,400mph). A real test is the only way to determine if the plane will remain flying at high speeds.

Thursday’s flight will also test the carbon composite materials designed to withstand the extreme temperatures the plane will experience on its skin and also the navigation systems that will control its trajectory as it moves at almost four miles per second.

The design and flight pattern of the plane has been tweaked since an aborted test flight in April last year. Nine minutes into that mission, which succeeded in flying for 139 seconds at Mach 22 (16,700mph), the onboard computer detected an anomaly and ordered the plane to ditch into the ocean for safety reasons.

Unlike most other rocket launches, this one will not be shown live online, though it will be possible to follow the plane’s progress via tweets from @DARPA_News.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

It saddens me that Republicans are behind something like this. I hope ‘Dingy’ Harry Reid kills it in the Senate.

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers’ activities for one year–in case police want to review them in the future–under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today.

The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall’s elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.

A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored.

It represents “a data bank of every digital act by every American” that would “let us find out where every single American visited Web sites,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who led Democratic opposition to the bill.

I think that bill is pretty damn outrageous. Internet providers have no business logging every move a user makes and then storing it. The potential for abuse is huge. Republicans have gone too far on this one. Privacy has to count for something.

But here’s where it gets really infuriating. And it’s so predictable for the GOP to pull something like this:

To make it politically difficult to oppose, proponents of the data retention requirements dubbed the bill the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, even though the mandatory logs would be accessible to police investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well.

“The bill is mislabeled,” said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the panel. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”

To be fair, both parties use that tactic but it’s still sick no matter who does it. Whenever the government wants to take away one of our rights or invade our privacy they say it’s for the kids. They just want to protect kids. What about the rest of us? Who the f*ck is protecting us? This bill doesn’t have a damn thing to do with protecting kids. It’s about giving the federal government and law enforcement more power.

I’ve been on board with the Patriot Act and even the warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, but this is a bridge too far. Enough is enough.

This article titled “China boosts internet surveillance” was written by Tania Branigan in Beijing, for The Guardian on Tuesday 26th July 2011 10.27 UTC

Police have told cafes, hotels and other businesses in central Beijing to install surveillance technology for Wi-Fi users or face fines and possible closure, in a further tightening of internet controls.

China has the world’s largest and most sophisticated web censorship and monitoring system, which it has tightened still further after the Middle Eastern uprisings. Measures included blocking major virtual private networks, which allow people to evade internet controls.

The new software, which costs about 20,000 yuan (£1,900), allows officials to check the identities of users and monitor their activity. Businesses that fail to comply face a fine of the same size and could have their licences revoked.

Strict controls already apply at internet cafes, which poorer people rely on for access.

It is unclear how strictly the measures will be enforced, and it appears that only Dongcheng district has told owners of the regulations. A staff member at its internet security unit said the initiative was city-wide, but Beijing police headquarters had not responded to a faxed query at time of writing.

The Dongcheng police officer added: “This regulation is made to enhance internet security and to assist public security bureaux to break criminal cases. Details of implementation are confidential.”

According to the New York Times, a notice from the district office said the measure would tackle offenders seeking to “conduct blackmail, traffic goods, gamble, propagate damaging information and spread computer viruses”.

“This is undoubtedly an invasion of Wi-Fi users’ privacy,” said Jason Chen, a 22-year-old Beijing resident.

“We have already felt the restriction on university campuses, since they have always been monitored. But this time, the control is stretching to cafes and people’s feeling of violation is sharper. If cafes cancel their Wi-Fi I will care a lot, and I believe young people will react strongly.”

Some venues in Dongcheng complained they were already losing custom after cutting off Wi-Fi.

“It is just unbelievable. Customers are not happy either,” said Leona Zhang, manager of the Contempio bar.

“Some owners simply think this is for the public security bureaux to make money from us. The charge is the same regardless of size, even for small ones with only two or three tables.”

Businesses in other parts of Beijing said they had not heard of the measure.

“If the regulation was implemented here, it would struggle to be accepted. The cost is too high,” said a worker at the New Seven Day Bar in Haidian.

“Furthermore, there is also the privacy of our customers to protect.”

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Source: Associated Press
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has briefly emerged from medical leave to unveil a new service for his i-devices. The iCloud will store user information from several devices, like the iPhone and iPad, and make it available on all of them.

This article titled “Washington moves to classify cyber-attacks as acts of war” was written by Ed Pilkington in New York, for The Guardian on Tuesday 31st May 2011 22.27 UTC

The US government is rewriting its military rule book to make cyber-attacks a possible act of war, giving commanders the option of launching retaliatory military strikes against hackers backed by hostile foreign powers.

The Pentagon has concluded that the laws of armed conflict can be widened to embrace cyberwarfare in order to allow the US to respond with the use of force against aggressive assaults on its computer and IT infrastructure.

The move, to be unveiled in a US department of defence strategy document next month, is a significant step towards the militarisation of cyberspace, with huge implications for international law.

Pentagon officials disclosed the decision to the Wall Street Journal, saying it was designed to send a warning to any hacker threatening US security by attacking its nuclear reactors, pipelines or public networks such as mass transport systems. “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” an official said.

The new strategy would adapt the existing right of self-defence contained in the UN charter by bringing cyberweapons under the definition of armed attacks.

Joel Reidenberg, a professor at Fordham University in New York who teaches IT law, said the policy was an important recognition that new forms of warfare could harm Americans, “and that the US will protect its citizens in their 21st-century activities.”

Sami Saydjari, a former Pentagon cyber expert who now runs a consultancy called Cyber Defense Agency, said the rule change was a logical and reasonable next step. “The US is vulnerable to sabotage in defence, power, telecommunications, banking. An attack on any one of those essential infrastructures could be as damaging as any kinetic attack on US soil.”But other cyber specialists warned the new provision would be extremely hard to implement and could escalate the militarisation of the internet.

Jody Westby, co-author of the UN publication The Quest for Cyber Peace, said attacks were difficult to track and trace back to their origins, often making it impossible to determine who is behind them.

She called for more diplomatic efforts to increase co-operation between governments rather than widening military options. “Sabre-rattling like this in the cyber age could backfire on the US, as it could spark further cyber-attacks on US infrastructure that could be massively destructive for American civilians.”

The Obama administration signalled its intentions two weeks ago when the White House released its vision for the future of cyberspace. “When warranted, the US will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would to any other threat to our country,” it said, adding that such responses included “all necessary means” including military ones.

The US is considered especially prone to cyber-attacks because millions of computers in America have been infected and because its military networks are so highly computerised.

Alan Paller, research director at the Sans Institute, which trains computer security professionals, said military and defence computers in the US had come under attack from foreign states at least since 2003, with losses including key technical data for the 0bn F35 fighter.

“The military knows its systems are under constant and increasingly sophisticated attacks,” he said.

US analysts have their sights particularly on China and Russia as potential sources of state-sponsored cyberwarfare. A congressional panel has warned that China had the capability of hitting federal networks connected via the internet, such as the national electricity grid, in a way that “could paralyse the US”.But tRussia was blamed in 2008 for a computer attack on the US Central Command which oversees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia was also implicated in more localised cyber attacks on Georgia and Estonia.

The US has also been implicated in cyber sabotage. It has been suggested that Stuxnet, the computer worm unleashed last year against Iran, was the work of the Israeli government, backed by Washington. Westby pointed out that the US has not denied the claim. “It seems we’re happy to launch our own cyber-attacks when it suits us. That’s hardly good diplomacy.”

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Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance this afternoon and unveiled the iPad 2 personally.

This article titled “YouTube urged to delete radical cleric’s sermons” was written by Vikram Dodd, crime correspondent, for The Guardian on Monday 28th February 2011 22.01 UTC

Sermons from Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric said to be linked to multiple terrorist plots against Britain and the United States, remain on YouTube despite calls for them to be taken down.

The news follows the conviction of Rajib Karim, a former British Airways computer specialist, for terrorism offences after being inspired by Awalki to explore ways of staging al-Qaida style attacks.

YouTube has been under pressure to remove sermons from Awlaki, who the US say is the “spiritual leader” of al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula and is currently holed up in Yemen.

His sermons have inspired people in Britain and the US to carry out terrorist attacks, with the internet being Awlaki’s main way of spreading his message that violence against the west is justified. Among scores of his videos on YouTube are a 22-part series called “The constraints [of] Jihad”, a five-part interview with the al-Qaida cleric, one called “It’s a war against Islam” and even a defence of Awlaki by a commander from al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula.

The home office said it was looking into the issue, which was highlighted last year by the security minister, Lady Neville-Jones, who called on the White House to “take down this hateful material” when it was hosted on servers within US control.

Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, former chair of the counter-terrorism sub-committee, said: “This is criminally irresponsible, this material continues to inspire jihadists. I’m amazed it is in the public domain so easily. The government must put pressure on YouTube to get this stuff down immediately.”

Awlaki has already inspired at least two Britons to commit to violent jihad. They are Rajib Karim, convicted of terrorism offences, and Roshonara Choudhry, a student from London, jailed last year for trying to murder the Labour MP Stephen Timms after watching Awlaki’s sermons online.

In his message to Karim, Awlaki said his prime target was the United States, and it is the superpower that has borne the brunt of his attentions. Awlaki is linked to multiple attempted plots against the US, by plane and by car bomb.

A YouTube spokesperson said: “YouTube has community guidelines that prohibit dangerous or illegal activities such as bomb-making, hate speech and incitement to commit violent acts, and we have removed a significant number of videos under these policies. These are difficult issues and material that is brought to our attention is reviewed carefully. We will continue to remove all content that incites violence according to our policies. Material of a purely religious nature will remain on the site.”

Washington officials believe the Islamist cleric is the prime suspect behind the “ink printer” bombs which were sent as cargo on planes and timed to explode over the eastern United States.

He is also linked to one successful atrocity – the fatal shootings of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas by an American Muslim fellow soldier in November 2009.

Awlaki, 39, was born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents. He is believed to have lived in London for 18 months before moving to Yemen in 2004, and is now thought to be in hiding in Yemen’s rugged Shabwa or Mareb regions, an area jihadists have at times found to be a safe haven.

The cleric is thought by US authorities to be connected to the attempted car bombing in Times Square, New York and the Christmas Day attempt to explode a bomb concealed in underwear on a flight over the US as well as inspiring the US army psychiatrist who opened fire at Fort Hood.

US officials say he is a “recruiter and motivator” for al-Qaida and skilled at using social media, including a Facebook page and YouTube, to spread his message of violent jihad.

In contrast to most extremist clerics, he communicates clearly, even referencing pop culture, alluding in one online sermon to the singer Michael Jackson to emphasise his point. Awlaki is the only US citizen known to be on the list of targets for assassination by the CIA because of his links to past attacks against the US.

After 9/11, Awlaki was seen as a credible voice against extremism and was once invited to speak at the Pentagon.

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Obama had a White House pow-wow with America’s technology Gods on Thursday and we have the picture to prove it. In attendance was Apple’s Steve Jobs, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Dick Costolo, and Google’s Eric Schmidt among others.

Here’s what the White House Ministry of Propaganda said about the event:

“This evening, the President joined twelve leaders from technology companies to discuss ways to work together to invest in American innovation and promote private sector job growth.  In the President’s State of the Union Address, he called on us to win the future by out-innovating and out-educating the rest of the world and increasing American competitiveness.  The President believes that American companies like these have been leading by investing in the creativity and ingenuity of the American people, creating cutting-edge new technologies and promoting new ways to communicate.  The President specifically discussed his proposals to invest in research and development and expand incentives for companies to grow and hire, along with his goal of doubling exports over five years to support millions of American jobs.  The group also discussed the importance of new investments in education and the new White House initiative Startup America, a partnership with the private sector aimed at supporting new startups and small businesses. The President expressed his desire to continue a dialogue with the group to share new ideas so we can work as partners to promote growth and create good jobs in the United States.”

For some reason the president is still under the impression that it’s the federal government’s job to “work together” with America’s great companies to “invest in American innovation” and “promote” private sector job growth.

Last time I checked Google wasn’t invented by partnering with government. Two private entrepreneurs started it. I don’t think Steve Jobs partnered with the federal government to create the very Macbook Pro that I’m now typing on now. I’m not aware that Mark Zuckerberg partnered with the Bush administration to create Facebook. Likewise for Twitter.

President Obama doesn’t get it and he never will. If he wants to “invest in American innovation” he should get the hell out of the way and let the innovators innovate. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t need any government money or incentive to create Facebook. Hell, he didn’t even need a profit motive. He took a great idea and made it a reality in less than a week from a dorm room at Harvard. Facebook now employees thousands of people. Hey! That’s private sector job growth.

If the president and his job-killing cronies at the EPA, FCC, and IRS would stop regulating and taxing American business to the point of absurdity we might have more of it. Instead, he’s driving businesses into bankruptcy.

Oh, and he can also promote job growth by not continuing to carry water for radical Socialist labor unions. Of course, that’s never gonna happen but it had to be said.