Iran has a long history of demonstrating its sensitivity to how the Persian Gulf is addressed in public discourse. When the U.S. Navy and other organizations began referring to the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf several years ago, Iran was irate. That controversy resulted in a fair amount of anger among the Iranian people, and continues to this day. Recently, however, the Iranian government suggested that it may take legal action against Google because it simply leaves the Persian Gulf unlabeled in Google Maps.

Actually, Google does identify the body of water as the Persian Gulf if the area is clicked on by a user, it just doesn’t offer a static labeling of that particular body of water. A Google spokesperson anonymously explained that there are other bodies of water and areas of the world that are unlabeled and that the Persian Gulf is not an exception in that regard. If a search is performed for the term “Persian Gulf”, the correct body of water is returned as the search result.

Given the political and cultural sensitivities that follow the Persian Gulf – both the body of water and the name itself – Google is probably wise to simply avoid the issue altogether. Of course, Iran is not happy with the idea that Google would leave the body of water unlabeled and the issue is apparently worthy of rhetoric at the highest levels of the Iranian government.

In the grand scheme of things – and with all the political turmoil in Iran surrounding its nuclear program and various economic sanctions – it would seem that this Google issue is simply too trite to be worthy of concern. But, just as in the United States, politicians in Iran can’t resist the opportunity to stir up controversy at every opportunity, no matter how insignificant.

Many teens in the 80′s grew up with computers like the Atari 400, Atari 800, Commodore Vic-20, Commodore 64, Texas Instruments TI-99/4A or Apple II, they were the mainstream personal computers of the era. However, my family chose a different route. We bought the Coleco ADAM as our first home computer. There were many good reasons why we bought an ADAM. However, we discovered a few drawbacks to the machine and traveled the lonely road of owning an orphaned product.

The built in daisy wheel printer was one of the ADAM’s most compelling features. was both a blessing and a curse. While it produced brilliant looking papers compared with the poor quality perforated mess produced by the its dot matrix competitors, the ADAM’s printer may have the singular distinction of being the loudest computer printer ever produced by humanity. If you were printing out a school paper everyone in your home would know. The ADAM printer was also very slow. It printed 10 or 11 characters per second. By my recollection, dot matrix printers of the era were printing 60 to 80 characters per second. Since the ADAM printer was faster than we could type, our family thought it was an improvement.

My Coleco ADAM’s first papers were well received at the high school level, but relying on the clackety daisy wheel was disastrous when I was away at college. On one of my very first papers, the letter “e” broke off on the daisy wheel. I searched all over Gainesville, Florida, looking for a replacement before giving up and hand lettering every instance of the required vowel into my paper. By 1987, the Coleco ADAM was already an orphan. I had no idea which daisy wheel would be an adequate replacement for the original equipment wheel.

After losing another paper due to a power failure, I switched to doing all my papers on campus in a computer lab. Floppies were safer than ADAM SmartDRIVE tapes and the dozens of computers in a college lab gave me plenty of backup systems in the event of a problem. Unfortunately, I couldn’t trust “mission critical” papers to an orphan computer. The ADAM was supported under warranty for some period of time by Honeywell. When we had a problem, we took the machine in to a service center and it was repaired. However, we were fortunate to live in a major city near one of the service centers. Packing an ADAM up in its original packaging and sending it off via UPS would probably not have been a trivial exercise back in the late 80s.

The late 80s and early 90s were exciting times for computer users. By the time I graduated college, I had left the Coleco ADAM behind and moved on to IBM PCs. However, the ADAM still has fans. Even now, Coleco ADAM user groups have extended the capabilities of their machines and can make this vintage computer do amazing things.

Sources:
Personal Experience

Other articles by this contributor:
Retro Game System Review: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Four Useful Retro Tools for Writers
Vintage Camera Review: Canon AF35M II SureShot Autoboy 2 35mm Film Camera

Rihanna To Play Villain In Fast & Furious 6

Rihanna will have a role in the upcoming movie Fast & Furious 6. Writers were impressed with her acting debut in Battleship and felt the villain role would suit her perfect.

Rihanna will be racing cars alongside Dwayne Johnson & Vin Diesel out in England where the movie will be filmed. The filming will start early next month.

Ashton Kutcher is in the news a lot these days, both for his work on television and for his very public split with Demi Moore. The latest news featuring the 34-year-old actor is a flap over an advertisement he appears in for Popchips. The ad features Kutcher dressed in various garb and playing an array of characters, but one of those characters, in which he portrays the 39-year-old “Raj,” a Bollywood movie producers, has been deemed offensive by many.

In the ad, Kutcher appears in traditional Indian garb, and has brown makeup on and a mustache. The ad itself has been removed from the Popchips website and other online channels after it almost immediately drawing the ire of those who had viewed it. Anil Dash, the tech entrepreneur, was probably the most outspoken in his criticism, noting, “I can’t imagine I have to explain this to anyone in 2012, but if you find yourself putting brown makeup on a white person in 2012 so they can do a bad ‘funny’ accent in order to sell potato chips, you are on the wrong course.”

At this point, Kutcher himself has not responded to the controversy, but Keith Belling, founder and CEO of Popchips, posted on the company’s website to apologize. In the noted, he stated, “We received a lot feedback about the dating campaign parody we launched today and appreciate everyone who took the time to share their point of view. Our team worked hard to create a light-hearted parody featuring a variety of characters that was meant to provide a few laughs. We did not intend to offend anyone. I take full responsibility and apologize to anyone we offended.”