Slashdot Mirror

Jetpacks are sooo old. Where are the rocket boots?

There seems to be a new problem with the white Macbooks reacting to the sweat in their owner's skin: See: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageI D=2819568 and (self link) http://toxicsoftware.com/blog/macbook-tarnishing/. I have some photos on Flickr showing the damage. So far I've only found one other case like this - but i imagine there will be more. Whatever material Apple is/was using on the Macbooks they really need to test it better.

Yes, Sara is now at Yahoo, at least the last I was aware of.

Real life blacksmithing is incredibly fun. I started out when I worked at Philmont. I even made my own knife. It's really not that hard. There's a bit of a learning curve, but as long as you know someone who's done it before and can answer questions when you have them, it's not hard at all.

(Flickr set of all my Philmont photos)

Real life blacksmithing is incredibly fun. I started out when I worked at Philmont. I even made my own knife. It's really not that hard. There's a bit of a learning curve, but as long as you know someone who's done it before and can answer questions when you have them, it's not hard at all.

(Flickr set of all my Philmont photos)

I see. It seems to be the difference of true public spaces (under the rule of public order) and private spaces which look like public spaces at first sight. E.g. you can protest on the street but may not do it in a shopping mall. Okay, some persons like Le Richard and his crazy Frenchmen do.

It's already here: Windows Vista Lemon - Lime.

Actually, you want to enable disabling auto-updates. Disabling auto-update is disabled by default.

Seeing this fake coloring book about lawyers, and then reading that makes me think that's great "story" for a similarly fake childrens' book about what's going on. Might get a couple people to care.

If only I could draw.

No, we don't need an LED on the front showing me EVERY POSSIBLE THING THE MACHINE IS DOING, etc . . .

Speak for yourself. I like lots of Blinky Lights!

The datacenter that I spend a lot of time in for work uses these biometric hand scanners. I've been told that they measure the bone density of various bones within the hand. If that is how they work then I'd think it'd be a pretty tough thing to fake. Anybody know if that is how they actually work? How reliable they really are?

What worries me is the guy who already has an RFID tag in his left hand.

Doctor: Oh shit!, we let something in his hand!
Assistant: But Doctor! We didn't operate on his left hand, this was only a vasectomy.
Doctor: ... This was a vasectomy?

Oh well. It is a cool looking case, but I wonder how many slashdotters would actually rip apart vintage Apple gear just to make a speaker.

CEO Steve Ballmer was unavailable for comment at his Geneva hotel room today, however in the early hours of this morning Swiss police discovered this...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mar-s/3148634/

It's not going to happen in Firefox 2, but maybe Firefox 3. A development branch (http://wiki.mozilla.org/Gecko:Reflow_Refactoring) already passes the Acid2 test (http://flickr.com/photos/dbaron/126886608/), but needs more work.

Yeah, it's not like Sony hasn't been doing this for a while. They've been running TV and web ads about cartoon squirrels wanting to fuck the PSP; that failed to generate enough outrage to get free publicity, so they've just turned up the offensiveness a bit.

(Also, is racial sensitivity the reason why Apple make sure the black MacBook is more expensive than the white one?)

WebOS is the future ... but not for the reasons listed here. Portability, i.e. being able to access your files and programs from any computer, is nice, but not a killer feature. It's ridiculous to claim that most people's computers are too slow, when in fact they are more than adequate. That's why PC sales stopped seeing such growth after 2000. Most people who could afford a computer had one that could do everything they needed. Hence prices have dropped while computing power has continued to increase.

No, the reason a WebOS (err WebOSses hopefully) will come about is because computing needs have changed. Look at today's teenagers. Most of what they do with a computer is online. If you took their computer, and disconnected it from the internet, it would be practically useless to them.

There are a few exceptions. They still use the computer to transfer pictures from their digital camera to an online service, like Photobucket or Flickr. They still use the computer to transfer music to their iPods. The computer is just an intermediary in these cases, and it's not hard to imagine these things being done without it -- just add WiFi. Then their camera could upload their photos directly to Photobucket, and their iPod could download songs and videos from iTunes and YouTube.

Of course there is the need for office type apps, like word processing and spreadsheets. These things can also be handled online pretty easily. In the future they will be handled online not because it's better, but just because everything else is online. Right now these things listed so far: photo managment, music management, word processing, are small things to most young people. The big things are instant messaging, email, social networking, etc. The big things are online. The small things will follow.

And that's why WebOS will come about. It will not be an OS in the traditional sense. Traditional OSses were about providing the infrastructure for applications to run on a computer. The point of the computer was the applications, but you needed an OS to make the applications possible. Thus the OS had to manage memory allocation, device management, user input/output, etc. The point was still the apps. The apps are online now, and new infrastructure is needed for them. That's where WebOS comes in. That's what WebOS must be. It must provide the infrastructure for applications and allow these applications to interoperate.

Right now if I'm a developer writing a Windows-based application, I don't have to worry about low level machine code for writing bits to disk, but if I'm writing an application for the web, chances are that I have to worry about creating database connections and issuing SQL in some form to read/write data. A WebOS will eliminate the need for this. If I'm writing a Windows app, I don't have to worry about peeking and poking pixels to draw things on the screen. However, if I'm writing a web app, I have to not only know about HTML and JavaScript, but the quirks of how different browsers render different things (CSS box model for example.) A WebOS should eliminate the need for such arcane knowledge.

This is still the sort of thing colleges spend money on, instead of, oh, say, that long-overdue raise for faculty...

Macs have won over the Ruby crowd (who are definitely nerds):

http://flickr.com/photos/mintchaos/sets/7215759417 6520552/

Tiltomo is visual image search engine that uses mathematical calculations to analyze the similarity and relationship between images. The goal is to make it easier for users to find the images they like by letting them start with a broad search, and then visually narrow down the type of image they are looking for. Users enter a keyword, and are presented with an initial set of thumbnails. They then click on the image that is most "similar" to the one they are after, whereby similar is defined as either Image Subject + Color + Texture, or only Color + Texture. Tiltomo currently works with the images stored on Flickr.*

*Submitted but never posted. Now aren't you glad you're not paying for this site?

I noticed this when I visited Paris as well - wide, open sidewalks with big bushy trees that flare out without having to be trimmed back every week. On the other hand, I wandered some old streets of Kyoto recently and they seem to do the opposite - very ugly. From a purely visual perspective, it's no contest.

I see Sun-sponsered OpenOffice.org ads on the sides of buses every damn day.

Didn't realize that it was just because I live near Redmond.

In Ann Arbor, Michigan they will ticket you every two hours if you leave your car in a designated 2-hour parking spot. It's kind of gratifying to watch peoples' reaction when they return to their car and find 4 or 5 parking tickets under the windshield wiper, since they thought they "had it all figured out" that the $10 expired meter fine is cheaper than feeding the meter or using an off-street parking structure.

Also, the first ticket is usually for an expired meter ($10) and the subsequent tickets are for going beyond the posted time limit ($25 each). Needless to say, it can get expensive. Just ask this guy who obviously got a few tickets [flickr.com] himself.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/76331315/in/ photostream/

Simply observe the chat above. I tried to make it abundantly clear that I could use 100% of my bandwidth 100% of the time. Within 6 months, after repeated harassment, they gave me an ultimatum: Use less than 100G per month, or be terminated.

Ultimately I was terminated. A few months later, I finally got $50 back; originally they were trying to charge me the $300 cancellation fee even though it was they who cancelled me, not the other way around.

In talking with thier esclation director, he admitted that I was having zero impact on network performance.

And, they say "no bots". And they consider bittorrent a fucking bot, if you'll believe that.

This was AFTER I installed a scheduler that basically only downloaded at 10% capacity during business hours. That wasn't good enough.

Buyer beware. SpeakEasy is nothing but another faceless corporation in my eyes. I've returned to the land of Mom-and-Pop ISPs. Silcon.com doesn't have great performance, but they leave me alone.

Is this the same weevlos?

I hope so!

Hilarious.

http://www2.flickr.com/photos/weevlos/

Wow Tim, that was quite a little rant. Have you ever been to India? (If not, I have some travel photos at http://flickr.com/photos/mark_watson/sets/1622965/ - enjoy :-)

Seriously, India has been investing heavily in education for decades, and they are justifiably reaping some well deserved benefits from that policy. Overall, I had a very positive feeling about India and the people there.

Here's my car. No back seat. But try telling me that it won't help me get laid. ;)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paolovalde/97621037
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paolovalde/97911008/i n/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paolovalde/97621037
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paolovalde/97911008/i n/photostream/

For that matter, why aren't we (as a community) grilling Firefox for their lack of standards compatibility? What would it take for them to 'get the picture'

I think this answers your question: http://flickr.com/photos/dbaron/126886608/

"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer." Jean Jacques Rousseau. A lot of charged language has been flying around over the past four days or so with regards to Flickr and what rights their users ought or ought not to have with regards to their content. It started off with a thread in Flickr Central when Google launched their new Picasa photo sharing app and has escalated from there to Digg, TechCrunch and now Slashdot. As I've been involved in the recent debate since it started I wanted to offer up my thoughts on the matter at hand. It's important to note that yesterday I joined Zooomr, a direct competitor to Flickr. I've kept quiet on the posts over the weekend because I wanted to announce that before offering up anything more on the subject than I already have. As one of Flickr's heaviest users I feel that I have a decent understanding of the situation and problem at present. A number of months back Anil Dash wrote a post called "The Interesting Economy." In this post Anil posed the most basic question of all from a Flickr user's perspective, "what's in it for me?" From Anil: "But interestingness in Flickr doesn't pay. At least not yet. Non-pro users are seeing ads around my photos, but Yahoo's not sharing the wealth with me, even though I've created a draw. Flickr's plenty open, they're doing the right thing by any measure of the web as we saw it a year ago, or two years ago. Today, though, openness around value exchange is as important as openness around data exchange." Caterina Fake responded to Anil with the following: "Everyone needs to get paid, businesses need to thrive. I don't begrudge blogs like Anil's their AdSense links, or Flickr displaying ads on free accounts (I may have a bias there). But monetization strategy or no, the culture of generosity is the very backbone of the internet. It is why I have always loved it." At the time, and still today, I agree with Caterina Fake. I have always felt that I've gotten much more out of Flickr than money could ever provide and thus I've felt it more than a fair deal. I don't need to be paid by Flickr. I enjoy the generosity that Caterina speaks of and love the share and share alike spirt of Flickr. And over the past year I've spent hours and hours and hours working away at my flickrstream. Uploading new photos every day, meticulously documenting my images with detailed tags, building friends and making contacts, enjoying and sharing with everyone I meet, and participating actively in many different groups and conversations on the site. But lately I've been having some second thoughts. The central issue around the recent debate is not whether or not you can get your photographs out of Flickr. Slashdot got this really wrong when they wrote, "yet Flickr's API only allows uploading, not exporting." There are several tools that have already been developed to allow exporting out of Flickr. Downloadr and Slickr come to mind immediately. You absolutely can get your photographs out of Flickr your photos are not locked up. Flickr is not the roach motel that others have been making it out to be. What is at issue is not your photos, but the metadata associated with your photos. At present Flickr does

"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer." Jean Jacques Rousseau. A lot of charged language has been flying around over the past four days or so with regards to Flickr and what rights their users ought or ought not to have with regards to their content. It started off with a thread in Flickr Central when Google launched their new Picasa photo sharing app and has escalated from there to Digg, TechCrunch and now Slashdot. As I've been involved in the recent debate since it started I wanted to offer up my thoughts on the matter at hand. It's important to note that yesterday I joined Zooomr, a direct competitor to Flickr. I've kept quiet on the posts over the weekend because I wanted to announce that before offering up anything more on the subject than I already have. As one of Flickr's heaviest users I feel that I have a decent understanding of the situation and problem at present. A number of months back Anil Dash wrote a post called "The Interesting Economy." In this post Anil posed the most basic question of all from a Flickr user's perspective, "what's in it for me?" From Anil: "But interestingness in Flickr doesn't pay. At least not yet. Non-pro users are seeing ads around my photos, but Yahoo's not sharing the wealth with me, even though I've created a draw. Flickr's plenty open, they're doing the right thing by any measure of the web as we saw it a year ago, or two years ago. Today, though, openness around value exchange is as important as openness around data exchange." Caterina Fake responded to Anil with the following: "Everyone needs to get paid, businesses need to thrive. I don't begrudge blogs like Anil's their AdSense links, or Flickr displaying ads on free accounts (I may have a bias there). But monetization strategy or no, the culture of generosity is the very backbone of the internet. It is why I have always loved it." At the time, and still today, I agree with Caterina Fake. I have always felt that I've gotten much more out of Flickr than money could ever provide and thus I've felt it more than a fair deal. I don't need to be paid by Flickr. I enjoy the generosity that Caterina speaks of and love the share and share alike spirt of Flickr. And over the past year I've spent hours and hours and hours working away at my flickrstream. Uploading new photos every day, meticulously documenting my images with detailed tags, building friends and making contacts, enjoying and sharing with everyone I meet, and participating actively in many different groups and conversations on the site. But lately I've been having some second thoughts. The central issue around the recent debate is not whether or not you can get your photographs out of Flickr. Slashdot got this really wrong when they wrote, "yet Flickr's API only allows uploading, not exporting." There are several tools that have already been developed to allow exporting out of Flickr. Downloadr and Slickr come to mind immediately. You absolutely can get your photographs out of Flickr your photos are not locked up. Flickr is not the roach motel that others have been making it out to be. What is at issue is not your photos, but the metadata associated with your photos. At present Flickr does

All in one hardware with minimal cable clutter.
Heh. You haven't seen the USB hubs and resulting cable rat-nests and the additional monitor and external speakers and the cat5 Ethernet and the firewire iSight attached to my 12" iBook right here. ... Wait a minute, did I just say "firewire iSight"? ... There you go. You can see a bit of this post on the screen. ... 'Minimal cable clutter' ,*ts*, my ass.

(That purple thing is the most expensive USB device in the picture, btw. It's a dongle for Lightwave.)

Or just use http://flickr.com/services/api/misc.urls.html

"You can construct the source URL to a photo once you know its ID, server ID and secret, as returned by many API methods."

Xeni Jardin (of BoingBoing and NPR fame) reported on this a few months ago. The pictures of the plane are good, but the control equipment is even more so.

personally I am all for decentralization but I realise there are some users who want to open up one program and then start typing an e-mail and buy movie tickets within the same app (a few years off in WMP)

I could already open up 1 program and start typing an e-mail and buy movie tickets within the same app - Firefox. I could also listen to music and run calendar and spreadsheets and look at my pictures and read news. Lots of people are trying to make it so that you only ever need one program to run on your PC, and that's already the case for 99% of computer users.

Way for you and your moderators to not read the article or the link to the flikr images. Quote:

The spots don't wash off, I've only had the MacBook for two weeks. Genius at Apple Store told me to call Apple about it, as he's never seen anything like it. My iBook didn't discolor in the 3 years I had it -- can't be my hands. I don't smoke, don't use latex, etc. And for those who worry about my hygiene habits, thanks. I wash my hands.

What's amazing is that you have about 10 responses jumping to the same conclusion. Oh well, I guess that's what we've come to expect on Slashdot.

There is a series of three prictures. Look at the woman sitting in the back. They are playing reverse-strippoker and she is loosing. The series of three pics starts here: http://flickr.com/photos/theofpa/167011568/in/phot ostream/

Watch out Mericans. Picture contains female nipples. If you look at them you will violate some law under the 'war against porn' situation.

Oh wow, I'm slow. Just took a look at the photo that comes before the linked one... same girls, NSFW

I think the photographer deserves some credit for taking this.

Two girls in the beach reading a UNIX book!!! Summer 2005 in Crete, Greece

Took me a bit of time to figure out how to get the link to the user's profile from just the link to the static picture. I found the flickr API. The rest I leave as an excercise to the reader.

Trivia:
* Taken with a Sony DSC-P73.
            More properties
        * Taken on August 11, 2005
        * See different sizes
        * 4 people call this photo a favorite.
        * Viewed 4,810 times.

There is one comment.
(I'm just curious to see how these numbers change after a slashdotting ;))

I think the photographer deserves some credit for taking this.

Two girls in the beach reading a UNIX book!!! Summer 2005 in Crete, Greece

Took me a bit of time to figure out how to get the link to the user's profile from just the link to the static picture. I found the flickr API. The rest I leave as an excercise to the reader.

Trivia:
* Taken with a Sony DSC-P73.
            More properties
        * Taken on August 11, 2005
        * See different sizes
        * 4 people call this photo a favorite.
        * Viewed 4,810 times.

There is one comment.
(I'm just curious to see how these numbers change after a slashdotting ;))

I reach out to women all the time. It's them letting me touch them that's the hard part.

Windows Vista is so secure that it takes 7 steps and 5 confirmation dialogs to delete a desktop shortcut. Now that's what I call a streamlined interface.

That analogy doesn't work however, because it implies that the unintended goal is more important than the original goal, and not detrimental to the original goal. Meither of those assumptions is true for flickr. Hosting screenshots is /not/ more important that hosting photos. You can argue that it's just as important, but it's not more important, unlike the situation in your analogy.

Secondly, hosting screenshots could easily be seen as being detrimental to their main goal of hosting photos. They aren't about image hosting, they're about photo hosting, and conceivably, someone who isn't interested in screenshots may be annoyed if they start popping up all over the "photo" site they signed up with.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that the only thing that actually happens when you host screenshots is that they don't appear when you do a search. If your friend hosts screenshots and points you at his account, you will see the shots just fine. You can even have flickr groups dedicated to screenshots from second life without any problems. This is a storm in a teacup. If you want to find secondlife images on flickr, you can, but for people who don't want to deal with screenshots, they aren't going to accidently stumble over them. Sounds about perfect to me

Ah, there's lots of other crap in Flickr. Like people doing dumb jock poses. I wonder what photographic value this picture has.

It's in the Community Guidelienes. It's not actually a new change. They tell you very clearly that Flickr is for photos, and not for non-photographic content.

Despite Flickr's new policy on screenshots you can find screenshots of flock fairly easily. http://flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/sets/1082355/

Taking screenshots in games is just like taking photos in real life, only you're in mortal danger at all times and occasionally have to kill people backwards whilst taking them. They're photographs as much as any picture of something someone else made is.

As long as I can still get to the OMG!!! PONEYS!!! version of Slashdot, I'll be fine. At least I'll always be able to make my own sign.

Heh. He already had a chair thrown in his honor -- photo (That's the IE team lead Dean Hachamovitch doing the honors).