Slashdot Mirror

He's got one, apparently... Slashdot... http://hughpickens.com/slashdot/

If anyone is a "super submitter" it must be this guy, I think he is the submitter of about one third the submissions I click on.

Steve Green writes that in a stunning reversal for Righthaven, the Las Vegas copyright troll won't be collecting any damages from a man it once branded as a copyright infringer but instead must pay the man's legal fees of $34,045. US District Judge Philip Pro awarded the fees in the case of Kentucky message board poster Wayne Hoehn dismissing Righthaven's suit and finding that Righthaven didn't have standing to sue him due to the Review-Journal maintaining control of the column despite Righthaven's claims of ownership and even that if Righthaven did have ownership, Hoehn was protected by the fair use doctrine in posting an entire Las Vegas Review-Journal column on a sports betting website message board. This is the second attorney's fee award against Righthaven. Earlier, Randazza Legal Group was awarded $3,815 for representing defendant Michael Leon. But these are likely just the tip of the iceberg, with prevailing defendant Thomas DiBiase asking for $199,250 while the Democratic Underground will likely seek a fee award of many hundreds of thousands of dollars after Righthaven was dismissed from that suit for lack of standing. The bottom line for Righthaven is that so far it has not won a single lawsuit - of 275 lawsuits filed since 2010 - on the merits."

Joe Konrath has an interesting interview with independent writer John Locke who currently holds the coveted #1 spot in the Amazon Top 100 and has sold just over 350,000 downloads on Kindle of his 99 cent books since January 1st of this year which with a royalty rate of 35%, is an annual income well over $500k. Locke says that 99 cents is the magic number and adds that when he lowered the price of his book "The List" from $2.99 to 99 cents, he started selling 20 times as many copies - about 800 a day, turning his loss lead into his biggest earner. "These days the buying public looks at a $9.95 eBook and pauses. It's not an automatic sale," says Locke. "And the reason it's not is because the buyer knows when an eBook is priced ten times higher than it has to be. And so the buyer pauses. And it is in this pause - this golden, sweet-scented pause - that we independent authors gain the advantage, because we offer incredible value." Kevin Kelly predicts that within 5 years all digital books will cost 99 cents. "I don't think publishers are ready for how low book prices will go," writes Kelly. "It seems insane, dangerous, life threatening, but inevitable."

The story should have read:

Joe Konrath has an interesting interview with independent writer John Locke who currently holds the coveted #1 spot in the Amazon Top 100 and has sold just over 350,000 downloads on Kindle of his 99 cent books since January 1st of this year which with a royalty rate of 35%, is an annual income well over $500k. Konrath says that 99 cents is the magic number and adds that when he lowered the price of his book "The List" from $2.99 to 99 cents, he started selling 20 times as many copies - about 800 a day, turning his loss lead into his biggest earner. "These days the buying public looks at a $9.95 eBook and pauses. It's not an automatic sale," says Locke. "And the reason it's not is because the buyer knows when an eBook is priced ten times higher than it has to be. And so the buyer pauses. And it is in this pause - this golden, sweet-scented pause - that we independent authors gain the advantage, because we offer incredible value." Kevin Kelly predicts that within 5 years all digital books will cost 99 cents. "I don't think publishers are ready for how low book prices will go," writes Kelly. "It seems insane, dangerous, life threatening, but inevitable."

In spite of the error, this particular submission is very thought provoking as evidenced by the number of comments it received and is one of my personal favorites. Please accept my apology for my mistake in attributing the statement about "The List" to John Locke, the subject of the interview, when the statement was actually written by Joe Konrath, the man who conducted the interview. I assure you that the mistake was completely inadvertent on my part.

Best Regards,

Hugh Pickens

I have a lousy memory so over the past fiteen years, I have set up a series of about 20 Filemaker databases where I keep all the information that I don't want to lose. The strength of Filemaker for me is that it is easy to set up and that the database allows full text searches. Each database is set up using a template that automatically puts in the creation date and time and the modification date and time.

For example, when I started surfing the net in 1996, I set up a Filemaker database for all the interesting web sites I might want to come back to that includes the URL and a text description of the database. Over the years I have about 7,000 entries in the database. What is interesting is to go back and see what sorts of sites I was visiting say in 1998.

Whenever I see an interesting article with information that I may want to access again, I just copy all the text into another database along with the URL of the information. That database now has about 40,000 entries since I started keeping it in 1999.

I have another database that I started keeping in 1992 with all the phone calls that I make and receive and another database. That was very useful to me when I was a project manager and had to keep track of about twenty subcontractors and my agreements with them on what deliverables I would get from them and when they were due.

I have another database that I just call text where I edit text files for emails I send, or slashdot posts like this one before I post them. That one has about 30,000 entries so far.

I even have a database that I keep of slashdot stories that I have submitted and which ones have been accepted. Periodically I do a dump of that database to my web site.

I like to write non-fiction, and if I'm working on an article, then I have a web site set up where I can use a personal Wikipedia to keep track of references and footnotes like this one I have been working on for a while of Stanley Ann Dunham, the mother of President Obama, who grew up in my hometown of Ponca City or this one on the Pioneer Woman Models that I recently had accepted for publication in Oklahoma Magazine.

I don't recommend this methodology for everyone, but it works for me.

...every living thing, including viruses, are mutants (or at least descendants of mutants).

The article title has to be one of the more braindead ones I've seen here on Slashdot...

Oh yeah!?! Well did you ever stop - for one moment - to consider that the summary might actually have been written by a zombie, you insensitive clod?! Have you seen the picture on that guy's home page? Seriously, though, have a little sensitivity for the interests of the unliving, perhaps you may find yourself amongst them one day...

I've read both Slashdot articles. They look similar to me. The older one is far superior.

Basically, if you have a keyboard of poor quality that has poor shielding and no noise reduction components, it is possible to read signals. The question is, which keyboards and computers are poorly designed and poorly shielded?

Read the complete story: This PDF, not referenced by Slashdot, tells the whole story: CanSecWest/core09 March 16-20, 2009 (PDF). Quote from page 41: "This doesn't work against USB keyboards because of differential signaling". Also, on page 12: "The [PS/2 keyboard] wires are very close to each other and poorly shielded".

Slashdot articles of especially poor quality: Are they paid advertisements? I've read Slashdot articles for years, and there is now a new phenomenon. A publication runs an article of very poor quality and Slashdot links to it, possibly to lead Slashdot readers to the publication so that they will read the ads. This article was submitted to Slashdot by a professional writer, Hugh Pickens, who is possibly acting as a public relations agent. He has written at least 413 Slashdot articles. Does someone at Slashdot accept money to publish his articles?

Quote from the OLDER article referenced by the OLDER Slashdot story:

'March 12, 2009, 02:46 PM - IDG News Service -

'Inverse Path researchers Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco say they get accurate results, picking out keyboard signals from keyboard ground cables.

'Their work only applies to older, PS/2 keyboards [PS/2 connector, not PlayStation], but the data they get is "pretty good," they say. On these keyboards, "the data cable is so close to the ground cable, the emanations from the data cable leak onto the ground cable, which acts as an antenna," Barisani said.

'That ground wire passes through the PC and into the building's power wires, where the researchers can pick up the signals using a computer, an oscilloscope and about $500 worth of other equipment. They believe they could pick up signals from a distance of up to 50 meters by simply plugging a keystroke-sniffing device into the power grid somewhere close to the PC they want to snoop on.

'Because PS/2 keyboards emanate radiation at a standard, very specific frequency, the researchers can pick up a keyboard's signal even on a crowded power grid. They tried out their experiment at a local university's physics department, and even with particle detectors, oscilloscopes and other computers on the network were still able to get good data.'

I've read both Slashdot articles. They look similar to me. The older one is far superior.

Basically, if you have a keyboard of poor quality that has poor shielding and no noise reduction components, it is possible to read signals. The question is, which keyboards and computers are poorly designed and poorly shielded?

Read the complete story: This PDF, not referenced by Slashdot, tells the whole story: CanSecWest/core09 March 16-20, 2009 (PDF). Quote from page 41: "This doesn't work against USB keyboards because of differential signaling". Also, on page 12: "The [PS/2 keyboard] wires are very close to each other and poorly shielded".

Slashdot articles of especially poor quality: Are they paid advertisements? I've read Slashdot articles for years, and there is now a new phenomenon. A publication runs an article of very poor quality and Slashdot links to it, possibly to lead Slashdot readers to the publication so that they will read the ads. This article was submitted to Slashdot by a professional writer, Hugh Pickens, who is possibly acting as a public relations agent. He has written at least 413 Slashdot articles. Does someone at Slashdot accept money to publish his articles?

Quote from the OLDER article referenced by the OLDER Slashdot story:

'March 12, 2009, 02:46 PM - IDG News Service -

'Inverse Path researchers Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco say they get accurate results, picking out keyboard signals from keyboard ground cables.

'Their work only applies to older, PS/2 keyboards [PS/2 connector, not PlayStation], but the data they get is "pretty good," they say. On these keyboards, "the data cable is so close to the ground cable, the emanations from the data cable leak onto the ground cable, which acts as an antenna," Barisani said.

'That ground wire passes through the PC and into the building's power wires, where the researchers can pick up the signals using a computer, an oscilloscope and about $500 worth of other equipment. They believe they could pick up signals from a distance of up to 50 meters by simply plugging a keystroke-sniffing device into the power grid somewhere close to the PC they want to snoop on.

'Because PS/2 keyboards emanate radiation at a standard, very specific frequency, the researchers can pick up a keyboard's signal even on a crowded power grid. They tried out their experiment at a local university's physics department, and even with particle detectors, oscilloscopes and other computers on the network were still able to get good data.'

Congratulations on 10 years of slashdot.

I think you've found the formula for the best discussion of technical and scientific issues on the web - editor selected stories and reader moderated comments.

Whenever I think of a story to post to slashdot, I try to anticipate how people are going to respond, but when a story is accepted, I am always amazed by the diversity of opinion and the startling insights I see generated. Slashdot is online brainstorming at its best with the benefit of tens of thousands of smart people looking at an idea and providing their unique points of view .

I think Vernor Vinge said it best in his dedication to Rainbows End. "To the Internet-based cognitive tools that are changing our lives -- Wikipedia, Google, eBay, and the others of their kind, now and in the future"

To that distinguished group, I would definitely add slashdot.

Best Regards and hopes for 10 more years of slashdot success.