Slashdot Mirror

There used to be http://del.icio.us/ but it seems they've changed it.

I'm moving mine to http://www.diigo.com/. You can import your Del.icio.us bookmarks once you exported them via https://secure.delicious.com/settings/bookmarks/export @ http://www.diigo.com/tools/import_all. You can also use this https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all to expor it as an XML.

Tech Crunch and All Things D. Sounds like the Yahoo folks aren't too happy about the word leaking out - "whoever it is, gone!

With Yahoo shutting down Del.icio.us, where will we bookmark things such as these delicious Christmas Lights ... HO-HO-HO! ;-)

You have requested http://del.icio.us/ Access to the requested web page is denied using Burst Technology Filtering Software. The Requested web page is categorized as Social Networking. If you think this is in error, please contact your system administrator.

Aside from the RSS feeds of Slashdot and the main UK dailys, I like to read semantically or search engine generated feeds:

Delicious popular tag 'politics':
http://del.icio.us/rss/popular/politics

Delicious popular tag 'science':
http://del.icio.us/rss/popular/science

Google News search 'biodiesel', an endless stream of positive news:
http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&ned=uk&q=biodiesel&ie=UTF-8&output=rss

I'm hoping that Delicious may eventually allow combinations of tags, e.g. popular uk+politics.

Plus a few other plain RSS feeds:

BBC Technology:
http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/technology/rss.xml

XKCD A webcomic of romance and math humor.
http://xkcd.com/rss.xml

Tech-On Asian Technology News:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/index.rdf

The Guardian's 'Comment is Free' article stream with comment section:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/rss

Buffalo Beast, US political satire:
http://interglacial.com/rss/buffalo_beast.rss

Fabians political society:
http://fabians.org.uk/index2.php?option=com_ds-syndicate&version=1&feed_id=1

Aside from the RSS feeds of Slashdot and the main UK dailys, I like to read semantically or search engine generated feeds:

Delicious popular tag 'politics':
http://del.icio.us/rss/popular/politics

Delicious popular tag 'science':
http://del.icio.us/rss/popular/science

Google News search 'biodiesel', an endless stream of positive news:
http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&ned=uk&q=biodiesel&ie=UTF-8&output=rss

I'm hoping that Delicious may eventually allow combinations of tags, e.g. popular uk+politics.

Plus a few other plain RSS feeds:

BBC Technology:
http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/technology/rss.xml

XKCD A webcomic of romance and math humor.
http://xkcd.com/rss.xml

Tech-On Asian Technology News:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/index.rdf

The Guardian's 'Comment is Free' article stream with comment section:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/rss

Buffalo Beast, US political satire:
http://interglacial.com/rss/buffalo_beast.rss

Fabians political society:
http://fabians.org.uk/index2.php?option=com_ds-syndicate&version=1&feed_id=1

How worried are you about control (i.e., is your concern that you have continued access, or is your concern that others not have access)?

If you are only concerned about continued/full access to your data, delicious has what I find to be a very acceptable statue quo:

https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all

That doesn't mean that they won't change something down the line (though I don't think they will...), but it makes it pretty easy not to be left in the lurch, just pull down all your data at comfortable intervals.

If you don't want other people to have access, never mind the solution that uses a bookmark sharing service.

http://del.icio.us/tag/work+project
http://del.icio.us/tag/multiple+tags

http://del.icio.us/tag/work+project
http://del.icio.us/tag/multiple+tags

Here's the educative games I suggest.

http://www.food-force.com/ Made by the U.N. Free, MacOS X or Windows. (sorry no Linux afaik) Probably the best one in my list for the 6-8 years old.

http://www.tqworld.com/ - Tranquility. After years and years, this game has something no other game offers. Well suited for the youngsters. Free, but not open source.

http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/ U.N. too. Free and web-based. Excellent. Probably best for 8 years old (older ones of your range). Surprisingly informative.

http://www.stepmania.com/ Not sure that ones counts as edutainment, but it sure is good for the children! Open source and available for all platforms.

http://www.openttd.org/ A railroad tycoon open source clone (gosh I'm getting old ;-). Suitable for your oldest ones?

For the curious ones, here's the other worthy (subjective) open source games I discovered with time. http://del.icio.us/Satri/game+opensource

You also don't seem to pay attention to the fact that whenever bad things start happening in the UK (like having a camera on every street corner, turning on cell phone microphones when calls aren't being made, or forcefully collecting DNA from arrested people, even if they are innocent), those same tactics are employed in the USA, usually within 3 years.

You also seem to be under the poor misconception that no UK police are armed. Um, that guy they shot in the head on the subway? Remember him? Or did you just conveniently forget.

Furthermore, this article wasn't about police shootings. It was about police using Facebook to lift information that they really shouldn't have. Facebook applications have already lied to users in many ways -- like when you click X to remove a story from your feed, it's still in the feed that your friends all see, so you are mis-led into thinking you buried a story. Or the Blockbuster lawsuit, where they are putting people's faces next to movies, representing them as liking a movie when they don't necessarily do.

The point being, police are dicks. And your failed empire of a country is most definitely not immune to the dickery of authority -- after all, it's why we succeeded from you: http://del.icio.us/ClintJCL/abuseofauthority+uk

Please tell me all the stories chronicled here are just a misrepresentation of reality:
http://del.icio.us/ClintJCL/AbuseOfAuthority

Please check out some of these links; I have been saving stories which fall under the "Technology War" category:

The links: http://del.icio.us/ClintJCL/TechnologyWar

I have also blogged about a lot of them, but these would be harder to read than my saved links:

http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/category/politics/technology-war/

Another facet of the technology war: As real-world situations are replaced by virtual/technological situations, the corporations are trying very hard to ensure that the same rights we had in the real world do not transfer over to technology. There are a lot of situations that fall into this rather broad description.

I'm trying to make more people aware that there is a global phenomenon going on here. It's not a bunch of evil men in a board room conspiring against us while laughing maniacally in the dark; it is simply a side-effect of a lot of global abstract forces at work.

Okay, so the advertisers are tracking you using a non-personally identifiable cookie. What about the government? They are wiretapping your home phone and your wireless phone without adequate 4th amendment protections. To top it all off Congress is trying to give immunity to those who violated your Constitutional Fourth Amendment rights.

People are pissed off because Amazon knows you want a roll of toilet paper, but don't care when the government might be spying on you? Get a clue and get your priorities straight.

http://www.stopthespying.org/
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/02/myth-facts-about-retroactive-immunity-and-attorneys
http://del.icio.us/milican/domestic+surveillance

JOhn

The question was which programming language programmers should learn, and Python is one of the few reasonable answers I've seen in the comments.

If you program in Ruby, learn Python because it has been there before you, and you can often translate Python solutions into Ruby ones. Yes, I have personally translated Python code into Ruby back when Python 1.52 was the state of the art. Then Python improved so greatly that I dropped Ruby and canme back, mainly because of the wide variety of modules available for Python. After 7 years with Python, http://del.icio.us/tag/python continues to throw up surprisingly useful stuff.

If you program in Java, learn Python because you can begin to use it today http://www.jython.org/Project/index.html to reduce the number of lines of code that you have to write. The Jython code can access all of your Java classes so there is no need to learn a new set of libraries. And Jython has solid support behind it from SUN.

If you program in C# or VB, learn Python because you can get that same advantage, leveraging all your existing libraries and classes while reducing the lines of code that you have to write. And IronPython http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=IronPython has solid support behind it from Microsoft.

If you need to write code for yourself, from simple scripts up to cross-platform applications, then learn Python and use one of the distros of the standard CPython such as ActiveState or Enthought. Or roll your own by downloading from http://www.python.org/ and adding the libraries that you need. Want to build wxWindows apps crossplatform? wxPython does it. Want GTK apps cross-platform? The pyGTK is the library for you. Need to distribute Windows binaries? Use Py2exe. Or for OS/X use Py2app and on UNIX use freeze.

Python has 10 years of widespread use behind it with people building everything from multi-thousand lines-of-code apps to system admin scripts. If you want to learn how to write threaded apps, Python lets you focus on the essentials. Or if you want to avoid threading and build asynchronous servers or true parallel apps, Python has modules for that as well.

If you are already a master of three or more current programming languages (not COBOL) then maybe you won't gain anything by learning Python, but every other programmer really should make it part of their toolbox. If nothing else, use it to build quick prototypes, then when it's write, redo it in C++ or Java for the final delivery. The boss will not complain if it reduces the turnaround time for your projects.

Taxi drivers, fishermen, and garbage men all die at a rate greater than police. This was in mainstream media just a few months ago -- article probably still up at CNN.com. Meanwhile, police act like this, and pretty much get away with it the majority of the time. Criticism is more than necessary, and being skewed has nothing to do with it -- They are already skewed by being in the position they are. They can already shoot someone in the back and have internal affairs clear it in a week. That's pretty skewed too. Like the others said, Free Speech isn't necessarily about being fair. You need a little more perspective into the police. Go RSS subscribe to BadCopNews and read EVERY article for 6 months and tell me if your worldview is not changed by the experience.

This is the best website on design that I've found: http://webdesignfromscratch.com/

For searches like this, don't use Google or other search engines like it. Search people's bookmarks. http://del.icio.us/search/?fr=del_icio_us&p=design&type=all

To try to help put these numbers into perspective, this blog post is currently #1 on slashdot, #7 on reddit, the top page of del.icio.us, etc; yet www.w3.org is still serving more than 650 times as many DTDs as this blog post, according to a 10-min sample of the logs I just checked.

I get a surprising number of IPv6 hits on my webserver at home. Most of these appear to be XP or Vista boxes with Internet connection sharing turned on that automatically assign themselves a 6to4 addresses when they have an interface with a public IPv4 address.

IPv6 with 6to4 is easy to set up, and I'd recommend it to anybody who has a static IPv4 address. You can use NAT-PT so all your IPv6 hosts can still get to the IPv4 network. If you have a couple of DNS servers, you can even set up reverse DNS for your IPv6 network just the way you want using this nice web interface from the NRO.

I maintain some good links to stuff about IPv6 on del.icio.us.

I hate NAT. And I think IPv6 can be just as secure. Partly because a 64-bit address space is really hard to effectively randomly probe working addresses and partly because it's fairly easy to configure a firewall to not allow incoming connections.

At least in the US, when was the last time you went to a TLD that WASN'T a .com, .net, .edu, or .gov?

• Yahoo! servers use Free BSD
• Flickr servers use Linux/Apache
• del.icio.us servers use Free BSD

Is this kind of merger a good argument for releasing server side software under the GNU Affero GPL ? If these services were using software licensed under something like the GNU Affero GPL, then a company like Microsoft wouldn't be able to go near them.

I know the argument against this form of license is that large players like IBM, Sun and Google would not want to use them, so the projects would find it difficult to get sponsorship. But both Flickr and del.icio.us started as small start-up teams with a cool idea, and became valuable because of the user base they attracted. When they started out they weren't looking to be bought out by a large company, they just wanted to try out their idea and share it with their friends.

If the next cool idea is started by a team who used tools licensed under the GNU Affero GPL, what happens when it gets discovered and attracts a huge user base ? It would be interesting to see which of the big players would be prepared to become involved. A potentially disruptive technology.

For electronic music I find netlabels are a good source and most of the music is released under a Creative Commons license. I guess one way to describe a netlabel is as a curated collection of music, there is the concept of quality control and reputation is important for the better known labels. They aren't just a huge collection of dubious quality music like mp3.com used to be.

A good label is Thinner, and for more have a look at the netlabel catalogue, my collection, or just use Google.

I've used Jaiku. It's like a combination of Twitter and an aggregated feed publisher. You can register all your 'places' on the net, and it publishes a consolidated RSS feed about your activities. For example, you can add your del.icio.us bookmarks, your Flickr photo stream, your last.fm 'recently played' music, or any other feed (say from your blog), and any updates to any of these are published as one combined feed. You can add other Jaiku users as friends and view similar updates from them.
They provide a mobile application (Nokia S60 3rd ed. is supported currently, don't know about others) that lets you publish messages like Twitter. This also integrates with the phonebook, so you can enter the Jaiku ID for your friends, and get an update of what they're doing. The mobile app only shows what updates your friends have made to Jaiku, i.e. it won't provide details of their other feeds.
It's an interesting app, somewhat like Facebook's 'news' page, lets you publish minute by minute details of whatever you're doing-if you're so inclined. And of course, your Jaiku page is accessible by anyone, so much for privacy.

Similar implementations have already been done.

With Ruby on Rails, it uses a similar technique for discovering actions. It even has facilities for creating custom URL maps so what would normally come across as ?search=blah would get converted into /search/blah...

del.icio.us uses that for tag search (ie: http://del.icio.us/username/blah).

For my internal invoicing system that I wrote in PHP (but never finished), you could search for invoices by going to /invoice/# or invoice/customer/[name or number] or search for customers using similar techniques.

The trick involves a .htaccess file that does a rewrite to a single catch-all if the requested URL does not exist. The app can then parse the request and infer what the user really wants, whether it's an action of a controller, a query or similar.

Although I've never seen this specifically applied to search (a la google), it's been used for filtering with tags (like del.icio.us).

stupid software patents.

Browsers actually did a good thing by automatically adding "http://" if you forgot it.

Really, why should any casual user have to remember the protocol identifier, and the colon-slash-slash? They just didn't take this idea far enough.

If you did away with the address bar then how would you easily know where you were and that you hadn't suddenly been pushed to another site?

Or how would you know what to enter into the popup box next time you wanted to visit the site, especially when you were visiting another computer?

http://del.icio.us/

That was easy.

A good browser would recognize it without the protocol id, the colon-slash-slash...

...and without the dots.

Or you could just type "bookmarks" and it would locate a list of bookmark storage sites.

If you are the type of user who wouldn't use a well-known bookmark site, then you are the type of user who knows how to find it without a search engine.

Huh? URLs weren't meant to be exposed? I thought the whole point was that they were easier to remember (and more transportable as a side effect) than plain IP addresses.

They are. But that doesn't mean they should have been, or had to have been, exposed to the user all the time, to the extent that commercial-use domain names need to be branded and trademarked. It was a mistake. Besides, URLs are not easy to remember for most non-techies. Even short ones. Browsers actually did a good thing by automatically adding "http://" if you forgot it. Really, why should any casual user have to remember the protocol identifier, and the colon-slash-slash? They just didn't take this idea far enough.

If you did away with the address bar then how would you easily know where you were and that you hadn't suddenly been pushed to another site?

Why should you care? I thought that was one of the points of the web? And don't tell me about phishing, people still fall for phishing scams even when the URL is exposed. It's just not helpful.

Or how would you know what to enter into the popup box next time you wanted to visit the site, especially when you were visiting another computer?

http://del.icio.us/

That was easy. A good browser would recognize it without the protocol id, the colon-slash-slash and without the dots. Or you could just type "bookmarks" and it would locate a list of bookmark storage sites. If you are the type of user who wouldn't use a well-known bookmark site, then you are the type of user who knows how to find it without a search engine.

http://del.icio.us/

http://www.google.com/bookmarks/

http://bookmarks.yahoo.com/

Gee, that was easy.

You wont agree with all of these, but hopefully you'll agree with some of them.

He got tased, for chrissakes. Yeah. Great freedom. Stay at a podium too long, get arrested. What world are YOU living in? Try talking to a Russian expatriate sometime about what you can get away with there vs. here. Or just go to my abuse of authority link collection and check out the state of things yourself.

• http://del.icio.us/ for sites of interest
• GMail drafts for urls along with results and saved documents

I used to email myself a link to a page when I found something interesting. The email account I used for that is so clogged up I had to stop using it. Now I've installed the del.icio.us plugin for firefox I just use that you tag pages by topic so you can just look through all the pages you have tagged with a particular topic.

On the subject of PDF printing I used to do that too but my hard drive got clogged up with a bunch of stuff I would never get round to reading. Cute Pdf is free for windows, in Linux print to file and use pstopdf or a similar too, I'm sure there is a print to pdf tool as well I've never used one though...

what you need is an del.icio.us account

I have my bookmarks available in every browser, and can sort them in multiple ways, and search them.

I use Firefox when using Linux or Windows, and I mainly use Safari on my iBook because it feels faster. I do have Firefox installed though, purely for the Firebug extension.

YouTube.

Her name is Whitney Rearick, she is 37, a "political activist".

This is her Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitnuld/
These are her Delicio bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/whitnuld
A yahoo profile (with a picture): http://profiles.yahoo.com/whitnuld
She writes reviews of music for boise weekly: http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oi d%3A102639

She works for Boise state university and her contact info there is:
Whitney Rearick - University Planner
whitneyrearick@boisestate.edu
Phone 208.426.4180

Now thats a power of Google.
Disclaimer: the information above is gathered from open public sources.

I disagree with your assessment of MD5 and the majority of uses of it. There is a property of MD5 which is broken. It is possible to construct two bytestrings that have the same MD5 hash. In fact, it's relatively easy to.

This breaks an important property that most people assume is true about cryptographic hash functions. I think it's actually very hard, in practice, to determine whether or not losing that property renders a particular system more vulnerable to attack. I don't believe that downplaying the associated risk does anybody any favors. I believe MD5 should be treated as "Effort should be made to remove the use of this algorithm from any existing code unless a convincing case can be made that the break doesn't affect it.".

SHA-1 is similarly 'broken'. But, the break in SHA-1 is not currently computationally trivial to exploit. It is just less computationally expensive than it should be to generate two bytestrings with the same SHA-1 hash than it should be given the length of the hash. But once people start discovering weaknesses in algorithms, it's common that someone refines the technique to make the weakness worse. So, I would treat SHA-1 as "No new code should use this, and it should be removed from existing code if the required effort isn't very large.".

The biggest problem is that there isn't a clear algorithm to move to from SHA-1. SHA-256 and SHA-512 are based on the same principles as SHA-1, so there is worry (but no proof) that the break in SHA-1 could be extended to these two hash functions as well. But WHIRLPOOL, the other major contender, has received very little scrutiny.

I've save a bunch of interesting links about hash functions on del.icio.us.

I disagree with your assessment of MD5 and the majority of uses of it. There is a property of MD5 which is broken. It is possible to construct two bytestrings that have the same MD5 hash. In fact, it's relatively easy to.

This breaks an important property that most people assume is true about cryptographic hash functions. I think it's actually very hard, in practice, to determine whether or not losing that property renders a particular system more vulnerable to attack. I don't believe that downplaying the associated risk does anybody any favors. I believe MD5 should be treated as "Effort should be made to remove the use of this algorithm from any existing code unless a convincing case can be made that the break doesn't affect it.".

SHA-1 is similarly 'broken'. But, the break in SHA-1 is not currently computationally trivial to exploit. It is just less computationally expensive than it should be to generate two bytestrings with the same SHA-1 hash than it should be given the length of the hash. But once people start discovering weaknesses in algorithms, it's common that someone refines the technique to make the weakness worse. So, I would treat SHA-1 as "No new code should use this, and it should be removed from existing code if the required effort isn't very large.".

The biggest problem is that there isn't a clear algorithm to move to from SHA-1. SHA-256 and SHA-512 are based on the same principles as SHA-1, so there is worry (but no proof) that the break in SHA-1 could be extended to these two hash functions as well. But WHIRLPOOL, the other major contender, has received very little scrutiny.

I've save a bunch of interesting links about hash functions on del.icio.us.

Well, I was going to tag it on del.icio.us as toRead ... and read it later, good thing I read your entry. Joking aside the artice does not say anything about avoiding it, and I've tried everything, from egg timers to google calendar to elastic bands on the wrist (smack yourself when you catch yourself doing a bad habit) (see http://www.amazon.com/Snap-Out-Herbert-S-Cohen/dp/ 0871318962 )

I've given up and now accept my procrastination as a way of life

Also Google Video has a lot of public domain movies available for download:
1; 2

I've played with XFN and FOAF on my site, but have seen very little take-up in the last couple of years. There are some social network sites that incorporate them, but I think you can only link to others in a given site.

There's also clainID to show what pages relate to you, or not as the case may be. In some cases you will be able to prove ownership by setting a tag in the page header. del.icio.us and last.fm support this feature.

Of course, in some cases, you don't want a site to be traced back to you.

http://calendar.google.com/
http://www.flickr.com/
http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://del.icio.us/
http://docs.google.com/

You might try Tim O'Reilly's explanation, since he coined the bloody term in the first place.

Oh, and of course you heard of and used web 2.0 sites before anyone called them web 2.0. Think about it. Tim O'Reilly didn't sit around and think, hmm, let's come up with something we could call web 2.0. What would it be? And then went and made a bunch of people start implementing his ideas. It is descriptive, and the term to describe something (as happens pretty much always with history) came after that which is described. There had to be a web 2.0 before anyone could recognize it as something different from what came before and name it.

http://del.icio.us/ClintJCL/911 http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/?s=911

http://del.icio.us/rss/badvista/badvista+vistawatc h
linked from the site have fun plenty a nightmares prop up.

You can't go wrong with a Bitscope, USBee, or DigiView, three computer-based logic analyzers with various extra features.

Consider using genderless Anderson PowerPole connectors in lieu of, or in addition to, banana plugs on your test leads. It's nice to be able to just mix and match 'gator clips, micrograbbers, screw terminals, and what-have-you into custom test leads. You can do this with stacking banana plugs too, but they leave the male plug exposed when you're done. You could cover it with a plastic "screw protector" cover, but PowerPoles are cooler. Powerwerx also sells the "floppy noodle" rubber-insulated test lead wire, if you're like me and prefer to just build your own.

Run a big tinned-copper-braid ground strap across the back of the bench. Get the kind with grommets in it so you have easy attachment points for anything, plus the fine braid means it performs better than a busbar at high frequencies.

I've collected a pile of fun links in http://del.icio.us/myself248/electronics, which might also give you some project ideas. Read the Toolmonger archives if you're bored, and post some of your favorite finds using the "submit a tool" form.

As for test gear, you'll always find a reason to have a PC on the bench, and not just so you can run your bitscope. Hell, you'll probably want to play some tunes in the lab, so include some speakers in the plan. Anyway, look at swing-arm monitor mounts, most of which are modifiable to hold a whole laptop. Getting it up off the bench will save a lot of space and discourage clutter. Get an older machine, or a Toughbook, since you'll want a real hardware parallel port for some projects.

If you do RF work, get a Unidapt kit. Mix and match connectors between BNC, N, SMA, TNC, UHF, and so on. They now offer "wifi" connectors like RP-TNC, MMCX, RP-SMA, etc. Thus proving that the FCC's "nonstandard connector" mandate doesn't really stop anyone, it just forces a proliferation of unnecessary "standards". Bastards.

Whatever you're doing, you'll find a use for a Panavise. You'll want several heads, I'd suggest starting with the standard 303 head and the extra-wide 376. Get two bases instead of swapping heads into one base, it'll give you more versatility.

I can't believe I survived so long on five-dollar pencil soldering irons. I recently picked up a refurbished Edsyn soldering station from EAE Sales and the difference just blew me away. Not only does it work more easily, which I expected, but it warms up in no time flat, since it has a big honkin' heating element that it normally runs at a very low duty cycle. If I'm heating something large, it simply runs more, which means this little featherweight iron is actually capable of much bigger jobs than the clunky Radio Shack unit it replaced. I've relegated the cheapies to toolbox duty, and the Edsyn perches proudly in the center of my workspace.

Speaking of soldering, consider ventilation. Another poster mentioned a fume hood, and that's a fine idea. Look into a flexible-arm fume extractor too. Actually, just get the whole catalog from Lab Safety Supply and order one of everything. :)

Ergonomics are important if you're spending a lot of time in the lab. Look at rubber floor mats, with whatever level of chemical resistance you feel is appropriate. Jigsaw-style interlockable sections make it easy to replace worn or damaged pieces, though they can allow spills to reach the base layer. Consider sound absorbing walls too, if you'll have blowers or other noise-generating equipment running a l

if you're interested, check out some of my blog links: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/tag/politics/technol ogy-war/ http://del.icio.us/ClintJCL/TechnologyWar Some of it is old news, but I'm sure you'll find something new that disgusts you. :) /blogwhore

Areas that Yahoo works for me:

* Start Page. My Yahoo isn't bad, but I actually use their main page - although I only see it once or twice a day, it's a surprisingly good design.
* Yahoo News is my favorite news page on the internet. Google News isn't bad, but it's just an aggregator - Yahoo at has quality feeds (Associated Press, Reuters) - and they actually host their own content.
* The new webmail (that they purchased Oddpost to get, and is a full-function email client in your browser) is absolutely fantastic. It's good enough that I pay for it ($19 per year gets you no advertising on the site or in your outgoing email plus more space than I'll ever use). Server-side mailbox rules are fantastic - and I never have to configure another email client, or worry about backing up my mail when I change computers.
* Address book. It's super-complete (has fields for every IM service, for example) and it integrates with email and Yahoo Maps.
* Yahoo Maps is still better than Google Maps. They did a recent update that surpasses Google for the flash, but Yahoo still has Google beaten in a very important area for me - printability. Have you ever tried *printing* a Google map? It doesn't! Yahoo's map directions print very nicely!

Their acquired properties:

* Bookmarks. I wouldn't be able to manage my bookmarks without them.
* Photos. It's a photographer's paradise - for both hosting and browsing photos.

I also have the Yahoo Toolbar installed in Firefox, configured with icons set pointing to most of the above. The areas that Yahoo does *not* work for me are:

* RSS reader. Google Reader is far superior to any of the RSS solutions offered by Yahoo.
* Finance. They've lost me to MorningStar. I still occasionally check Yahoo Finance for their news feeds, but MorningStar has better portfolio tools (and I have a subscription to them anyway).
* Search. Google is still better. For popular things, Yahoo is just as competent, but Google is better for those hard-to-find and obscure searches.

Put it this way: losing Google would be a minor inconvenience, but losing Yahoo would break the internet for me. Although bear in mind that I've been using the internet (and Yahoo) since around '94 - long before Google was around.

http://del.icio.us/bkd69/fitness

Mostly gaming stuff, but some non gaming stuff, like palm pilot software and polar fitness monitors.

bkd

State Phone laws regarding taping a conversation:
http://del.icio.us/ClintJCL/phones%2Btaping

... is "de.lic.io.us"?

Ahem.

Speaking of which -- remember when ".com" meant "executable program" and not "company website"? I almost forgot.

I ran a BBS, WWIV heavily modded, which was telnet-accessible and thus had about 800 users. It got up to over 250 messages a day. This is a lot for a single-access BBS. Offline readers helped multi-task things by allowing multiple people to be typing up their messages at once, because they were offline.

Find the last state of the BBS here: On Earth As It Is In Hell ... As It Is On The Internet.

Also, I have some BBS-related links saved: http://del.icio.us/ClintJCL/BBS. BBSMates is truly the best.

Anyway, I actually started on a dumb terminal with a NON-Hayes compatible 2400bps modem. This was government issued [Dad was an analyst at the postal service headquarters -- I grew up on money earned from coding in BASIC, for chrissakes!]. DEC VT-220 terminal. Most of the BBSes were 300bps or 2400bps and plenty of Commodore BBSes were around.

The damn modem could store only 10 numbers, so you had to manually type in a lot of BBS numbers to dial. And it wasn't "ATDT", it was "Control-T". Non-Hayes, remember? Of course, I couldn't download because THERE WAS NO OPERATING SYSTEM OR DISK DRIVE. Just a monitor, keyboard, a modem.

A friendly sysop of the RE BBS gave me a free 1200bps modem for the PC, and the downloading started. It never stopped. (Seriously.. Not a day goes by that I don't download at least 2 gigs.)

I ultimately met my wife that way, by determining via local BBS that we went to the same school, and meeting and hooking up in a semi-normal way: I invited her over to see how much better Telemate is than Q-Modem. 14.5 yrs later, we're still happy, except now our 2 computers are in the same room, and I run a blog instead of a BBS. In fact, a blog with RSS comment feeds and active reader-participants is the closest feeling I've had since running a BBS; it took us 13 years to get back to where we started.

Mike Focke was the Google of 1990. His BBS list was the only way to KNOW where to start (assuming you had the list . . .) And the phonenumber file used by Telemate? It was flat text. I started putting personal numbers in it. I still use it today. It no longer obeys the telemate .FON file format, BUT IT IS THE SAME FILE I'VE BEEN EDITING SINCE THE 1980S. And thus, I even have the phone numbers of girls I knew in middle school. Quite useless, but it's on my thumbdrive and on a [password-proteced] webpage, of course. I don't have a cellphone so this is useful for me.

I fucking love technology. It's the politics related to technology that scares the crap out of me. I talk about these various issues, sometimes, at my blog . . . [shameless plug]