Slashdot Mirror

On my website I have a lot of "reviews" of restaurants in my area. Many of these I write about before they even open their doors to obtain a good Google search ranking so that when they do open I can capture many of the first searchers for them. When I do visit the places (or someone else does and posts a negative comment) I get a flood of astroturfing from the owners or employees (or other interested parties) which I usually can pick out immediately by the tone and message of the e-mail (corporate-speak laced comments) or the fact that they have 6 posts with different names and e-mail addresses from the same IP.

Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers had an interested financial party posting about it near the beginning, Kami Japanese Steakhouse had several attempts at this and most recently I had several comments from the same IP with different names and fake e-mail addresses for Bucky's Soup Sandwiches and Salads.

So it's not just limited to major corporations paying people to do this kind of shit. It happens on a much smaller scale everywhere. Thankfully I am a local website operator that takes the time to moderate comments and pay attention to their games. Who knows what more professional sites have to deal with as far as astroturfing skew.

On my website I have a lot of "reviews" of restaurants in my area. Many of these I write about before they even open their doors to obtain a good Google search ranking so that when they do open I can capture many of the first searchers for them. When I do visit the places (or someone else does and posts a negative comment) I get a flood of astroturfing from the owners or employees (or other interested parties) which I usually can pick out immediately by the tone and message of the e-mail (corporate-speak laced comments) or the fact that they have 6 posts with different names and e-mail addresses from the same IP.

Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers had an interested financial party posting about it near the beginning, Kami Japanese Steakhouse had several attempts at this and most recently I had several comments from the same IP with different names and fake e-mail addresses for Bucky's Soup Sandwiches and Salads.

So it's not just limited to major corporations paying people to do this kind of shit. It happens on a much smaller scale everywhere. Thankfully I am a local website operator that takes the time to moderate comments and pay attention to their games. Who knows what more professional sites have to deal with as far as astroturfing skew.

On my website I have a lot of "reviews" of restaurants in my area. Many of these I write about before they even open their doors to obtain a good Google search ranking so that when they do open I can capture many of the first searchers for them. When I do visit the places (or someone else does and posts a negative comment) I get a flood of astroturfing from the owners or employees (or other interested parties) which I usually can pick out immediately by the tone and message of the e-mail (corporate-speak laced comments) or the fact that they have 6 posts with different names and e-mail addresses from the same IP.

Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers had an interested financial party posting about it near the beginning, Kami Japanese Steakhouse had several attempts at this and most recently I had several comments from the same IP with different names and fake e-mail addresses for Bucky's Soup Sandwiches and Salads.

So it's not just limited to major corporations paying people to do this kind of shit. It happens on a much smaller scale everywhere. Thankfully I am a local website operator that takes the time to moderate comments and pay attention to their games. Who knows what more professional sites have to deal with as far as astroturfing skew.

I'd just like to point out that the parent is decieving. He's not a programmer. According to his website, "Bill is employed by Century College working on developing new recruitment and retention programs." I seriously doubt that means programs in the slashdot sense.

He's just pissing in the GP poster's cornflakes; he isn't for real and should be modded appropriately. His only technical qualifications seem to be messing with his own blog, which he describes as "working on the website."

Don't take my word for it though -- follow the links and decide for yourself how technical Bill might be. I personally have formed the opinion that he's a cereal-pisser.

Here's his own list of articles with a more technical bent:

http://www.lazylightning.org/taxonomy/term/6

It's only fair that the enrollment is not permanent otherwise one day the list would include nearly every number.

*Shrug*, the fucking assholes like Justice Just for Girls clothing store just call you and call you and couldn't give a fuck less if you're on the DNC list (among others that use pre-recorded messages that end up on your answering machine even if you aren't home/don't answer). When you call to complain they just tell you that someone else put your number on their list. My argument is that if I'm on the DNC list I don't want *anyone* calling me unless it's a personal call. Sadly, that's not how it works.

I couldn't care less if every phone number in the universe was on that list. Businesses need to realize that cold call telemarketing is a dead business and they really should divert their money and attention elsewhere like beating out my Google ranking.

In many rural areas, wireless broadband is making inroads.

In many rural areas (NW Iowa and Eastern SD) are my most recent surprising experience) they have EDGE data networks (I-Wireless and/or Cingular) that I have absolutely rocking speeds on (compared to metro areas like MSP) in the middle of farm fields.

It never ceases to amaze me when I'm in the middle of farm land on a minimum maintenance road in rural South Dakota that I have full data service.

Why not try tethering or a PCMCIA data card? If you can't get *anything*, that's better than nothing.

What this depends on is information being indexed by coordinates, via tags or elsewise. Not sure that'll take off.

What world do you live in? Everything on Google (and plenty of other sites) is indexed by coordinates including my own. While I don't particularly care for the idea of push advertising to my GPS-enabled mobile device, I can see what a huge advantage it would be for advertisers and what a consumer's perceived benefit would be.

Hell, I spend a ton of time working with geospatial data for use with increasing marketing and recruitment range/success. It's a big deal these days and with the advent of Google Maps API, Google Earth, and other third party utilities like shp2kml, you can access a plethora of freely available GIS information to do your job better (like plotting data with KML overlays for counties).

What this depends on is information being indexed by coordinates, via tags or elsewise. Not sure that'll take off.

What world do you live in? Everything on Google (and plenty of other sites) is indexed by coordinates including my own. While I don't particularly care for the idea of push advertising to my GPS-enabled mobile device, I can see what a huge advantage it would be for advertisers and what a consumer's perceived benefit would be.

Hell, I spend a ton of time working with geospatial data for use with increasing marketing and recruitment range/success. It's a big deal these days and with the advent of Google Maps API, Google Earth, and other third party utilities like shp2kml, you can access a plethora of freely available GIS information to do your job better (like plotting data with KML overlays for counties).

I normally vacation on Hilton Head Island in SC. Been going there pretty much yearly since I was 9. Now that I'm married I have a timeshare on the island for the same week that I have been going my whole life.

This year we attempted to trade the timeshare (which used to be cake with RCI) but found that our choices (we wanted to go to Montana) were limited and RCI was being difficult. Because we traded out we weren't able to get back to our usual location in Hilton Head so we settled on nearby Edisto Beach, SC.

I have never been to Edisto Beach and knew nothing of it other than it's location on a map and what a few websites said about it. I immediately went to Flickr, searched for Edisto Beach and scrolled through the results. After finding someone who I felt might want to answer some questions for me, I fired off a message and asked for some suggestions.

Now, while I could have done something like that years ago via various Internet communication mediums, photo-sharing sites have really stepped up the process IMHO. While I don't personally use Flickr (I won't pay to host my photos, I'm happy to host them myself) for my photos, I do enjoy the service that they provide for others to do so.

numerous swipes = worn card + license. I'd rather not deal with the DMV any more than absolutely required.

Works for me. Every time I get a new license I spend my time ensuring that the data cannot be read off of the magnetic stripe. I refuse to allow my card to be swiped for any reason, especially restaurants for checking ID.

I'm completely uninterested in this great idea...

I could see it being used for a virtual tour of a park, college campus, or business complex. Plot out a route and then follow it along with pictures and sound.

Seems pretty useful to me. I wish that more public entities would publish their SHP boundaries in KML/KMZ so I wouldn't have to convert them myself.

It could become a real useful tool for the web.

They didn't really address night time flash performance. Lots of people want to take pictures when they go out at night and these tests were inadequate since the subjects were small and close. Large people 5-6 feet away require a brighter flash and/or higher ISOs. Cell phone cameras haven't the room for a large flash and the capacitors it requires. I wonder how these phones would fare under these conditions?

They don't address the simple fact that some people, like me, don't give a shit about what the mobile photos look like. I carry both devices to places I plan to take photos and I use the digital camera (currently a Canon SD700IS) for the nice photos and the mobile to take photos that are going to be immediately moblogged.

Yes, in a perfect world, I'd love a mobile camera that takes great photos but I also want to upload them immediately via E/GPRS and post them to my site from the location. If we start getting into the 5+ megapixel range and the image sizes become unmanageable for this use, I'm reverting from where I've been for the last three years.

I frequently take long geocaching trips and like to have few things with me while I hike. It may be a leftover thing from when I was in Scouting and was constantly out backpacking, but it might just be that I hate carrying shit.

Anyway, I *always* carry with me a mobile phone with Internet service (EDGE/GPRS). In my case I don't have one that I can tether but if you are seriously interested in bringing your computer (I wouldn't, the weight is too much) then at least you will have connectivity in many more areas than if you just had wifi. In addition, I can take quick snapshots and upload them immediately to my mobile images gallery on my website from where ever I am. The quality is shit but at least people can tag along virtually until I upload the nice pictures.

Also, a nice GPS unit with good battery life (this is less of an issue these days with my Garmin 76CS (I haven't upgraded to the x series yet) will last three full days (~30 hours of the unit being on) on two lithium AAs. If I'm using 2500ma rechargables I might get 12 hours total.

The GPS is a nice touch if you want to geo-tag your photos later. Upload your tracks and use one of the pieces of software out there to match the EXIF data to your GPS tracks and then you can map the photos, etc, etc. It's a nice touch.

I frequently take long geocaching trips and like to have few things with me while I hike. It may be a leftover thing from when I was in Scouting and was constantly out backpacking, but it might just be that I hate carrying shit.

Anyway, I *always* carry with me a mobile phone with Internet service (EDGE/GPRS). In my case I don't have one that I can tether but if you are seriously interested in bringing your computer (I wouldn't, the weight is too much) then at least you will have connectivity in many more areas than if you just had wifi. In addition, I can take quick snapshots and upload them immediately to my mobile images gallery on my website from where ever I am. The quality is shit but at least people can tag along virtually until I upload the nice pictures.

Also, a nice GPS unit with good battery life (this is less of an issue these days with my Garmin 76CS (I haven't upgraded to the x series yet) will last three full days (~30 hours of the unit being on) on two lithium AAs. If I'm using 2500ma rechargables I might get 12 hours total.

The GPS is a nice touch if you want to geo-tag your photos later. Upload your tracks and use one of the pieces of software out there to match the EXIF data to your GPS tracks and then you can map the photos, etc, etc. It's a nice touch.

Some places even have huge fish tanks as you're exiting, some would say to calm you down after a big loss so you're more likely to come back.

I was just in Vegas over Christmas and the only place that I saw with a fish tank was well off the strip and had exits closer to the Casino than where the tank was located.

That said, everything else you mentioned is true and while I am not a gambler, I do constantly think about the flashing lights and sounds (even though they are annoying in any other location) and how it was nice to be there. Odd thoughts for a non-gambler :(

I crossed the border on a geocaching trip to Winnipeg and we were stopped and held for an hour by the Canadian border agents. After we waited for them to stop standing around chatting and deal with us (which was 35 minutes of the hour we were there) they began to interview a group of three men that were waiting before us. The conversation with the border patrol agent went something like this:

Agent: "Sir, according to our records obtained from the Minnesota State Patrol, you were stopped for DUI in April 2006. When you were asked if you had any prior incidents and you said, 'no' you lied. You are not to lie to a Border Patrol Agent at any time."

Crosser: "I haven't been convicted yet."

Agent: "I didn't ask if you were convicted."

---

Agent: "Sir, according to our records you were convicted of lewd conduct and indecent exposure in March of 2006. When I asked you if you had any prior convictions and you said, 'no', you lied. You are not to lie to a Border Patrol Agent at any time."

Crosser: "It was reduced to a lesser charge!"

Agent: "I asked if you had any prior incidents."

---

This went on for the next individual as well (I don't remember what he did wrong). After that they were released and permitted to go on to their next destination which was a wedding in Winnipeg. For us, they called us one by one into a back interview room and asked us a bunch of questions about our educational background and work history. I actually felt uncomfortable with some of the questions but answered them anyway.

They checked our passports and birth certificates and while the previous group had convictions and lied and we didn't, we still had our car searched for another 30 minutes before being allowed to move along.

So, even though Bush shouldn't be allowed into the country, these fools were. Bleh.

You can upload them if you're a home owner (probably a good idea if you want to sell your house and it looks nice) but they don't have the full frontal w/o that.

Now, they do use Microsoft Live Aerials, which for many areas, include incredibly accurate and recent data. http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=rfkgjj77 04hd&style=o&lvl=2&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene= 6409624">This upcoming development of town homes is close to my own house and was only being talked about back at a Lakeville Planning Commission meeting in November of 2005!

The current development there has two housing units up and a third on the way. Based on a for sale sign in a yard I'm familiar with, I would date these photos to the spring of 2006.

They want to know how I've engineered it, and I have to say I honestly don't know. But if they want to pay Google to increase their ranking above mine, go for it.

I routinely outrank local businesses that I write about on my site. Generally these businesses are unknown to Google and if I don't link to their actual site (it may not exist prior to me posting about them and them subsequently finding out that I gave them an unfavorable review).

I have watched local businesses like Divinci's Pizza go in and out of business while trying to gain top Google ranking. I have also had pissed off business owners post to my site trying to prove that they aren't as bad as I said they were.

Why am I ranked higher? Probably because of Slashdot and the various other blogs that link back to me (I'm somewhere around 270 links). Other than that, who the fuck knows.

The canadian border person *laughed*, said "those americans are crazy", and let them on their way without any further hassle.

And yet, when I crossed into Canada on a geocaching trip to Winnipeg, we received a *huge* hassle going into Canada and *none* on the return trip into the US.

On the way in we were detained for full criminal background checks, questioning by lazy border guards who insisted on standing around (in full view of us) doing nothing for 45 minutes before deciding we needed to be questioned, and a full car search.

All of that would have been fine if they hadn't given the three *criminals* in front of us a free pass into Canada after they (we were easily able to overhear the border guard chastising them) lied about their criminal histories (DUI, prostitution and committing lewd acts, as well as theft). Not only did they let them in they didn't even search their car.

We were very concerned on our return trip about how awful the US border guards would be. Well, after two questions each and about two minutes of our time we were back in the United States on Sunday.

I guess everyone has a different experience. Mine? I certainly won't be returning to Canada anytime soon.

How about IBM just adds mobile web stuff to IBM.com which automatically detects the mobile connection and serves the proper content?

ibm.com is shorter to type than ibm.mobi ;)

I have a script that converts letters to numbers (dollar word) at http://lazylightning.org/dollar -- it works for regular browsers and mobile ones (WAP) so people can use it from the field when they are geocaching.

It's fairly easy to do with a couple of simple lines in your HTML and your http.conf.

Gore may well be a boring old fart, but these images are pretty interesting...

Yeah, so was the entire Al Gore presentation on Global Climate Change that I saw last summer. We wondered if some Apple intern had to make his PowerPoint presentation for him. Well done but nothing more than pretty propaganda.

I've also mentioned Al Gore's Global Climate Change presentation before on Slashdot.

I've seen better pictures come out of a four megapixel (MP) camera with better lenses than those that come out of a seven MP camera with poorer quality optics.

I had an older Kodak 5MP camera that was replaced (by gift) in September with a 7.2 MP camera. While the Kodak was older, clunkier, and didn't have as many megapixels, it still took better photos than the new camera which had a great review on the Digital Photography Review. I've seriously thought about going back to the older camera :(

As far as phone cameras go, mine has quality that sucks, but I still take a ton of photos with it for my site (I think I'm at 3900 since 10/2004). It's not the quality that matters to me (I'm not looking for device consolidation really) it's just the fact that I can take a photo and immediately upload it to my gallery. It was especially useful while sitting on the beach in Maui and uploading photos of our honeymoon for those back home to check out.

I've seen better pictures come out of a four megapixel (MP) camera with better lenses than those that come out of a seven MP camera with poorer quality optics.

I had an older Kodak 5MP camera that was replaced (by gift) in September with a 7.2 MP camera. While the Kodak was older, clunkier, and didn't have as many megapixels, it still took better photos than the new camera which had a great review on the Digital Photography Review. I've seriously thought about going back to the older camera :(

As far as phone cameras go, mine has quality that sucks, but I still take a ton of photos with it for my site (I think I'm at 3900 since 10/2004). It's not the quality that matters to me (I'm not looking for device consolidation really) it's just the fact that I can take a photo and immediately upload it to my gallery. It was especially useful while sitting on the beach in Maui and uploading photos of our honeymoon for those back home to check out.

I thought it was common knowledge that a large portion of bloggers (the majority?) simply copy text from elsewhere as their "blog".

The only time that I copy/paste stuff into the posts on my site is when I'm directly quoting a source or posting a copy of an e-mail from staff members or inviduals that opted to e-mail me directly instead of posting a comment.

Take for example the comments from the Copper Bleu Training Manager regarding my disappointment in their Guinness Pours or the comments from a comic in training at Acme Comedy Company.

The rest of the time my thoughts and writings are my own worthlessness. I personally don't know any other local bloggers that copy much content. I guess I only read the worthwhile ones?

I thought it was common knowledge that a large portion of bloggers (the majority?) simply copy text from elsewhere as their "blog".

The only time that I copy/paste stuff into the posts on my site is when I'm directly quoting a source or posting a copy of an e-mail from staff members or inviduals that opted to e-mail me directly instead of posting a comment.

Take for example the comments from the Copper Bleu Training Manager regarding my disappointment in their Guinness Pours or the comments from a comic in training at Acme Comedy Company.

The rest of the time my thoughts and writings are my own worthlessness. I personally don't know any other local bloggers that copy much content. I guess I only read the worthwhile ones?

Now the authors finally have the ability to respond back to comments!

Are they going to sidestep or blatantly ignore valid questions like Peter Dawkins did at a recent talk/book signing that I attended?

Are these authors going to have control over what posts are kept and which are not?

Personally, I don't want to see another astroturfing arena show up on Amazon. There are already plenty of "professional" reviewers out there that skew the impression of the books/items they review. I don't need the author to have an avenue to hype his own research while getting to pick and choose which comments to ignore/delete and which to keep and respond to.

Consider a jury: 12 people too stupid(*) to get out of jury selection wonder why the scientific evidence is so bad.

While this is off-topic, I'm surprised you were modded up with that flame of a comment. I'm no fan of jury duty, along with everyone else, but it is that duty that gives some people a fair trial. In a time of lessening freedom I'm surprised that anyone would talk like that!

If you're talking about the hardships that certain counties place on their jurors, then we're discussing something else entirely.

I got to experience some altitude sickness at around 10k feet when I went to Maui on my honeymoon. I wasn't a pussy like you in your sealed train! I was out in the open riding a bike down the volcano!

Going from sea level to 10k feet in such a short time sucked *and* I paid a shitload to do it too!

I'm sure folks in my situation are in a minority, but it's frustrating sometimes to know that something neat like this it out of your grasp.

There are plenty of folks in your situation and they are all quite vocal about it. I tend to agree with you but there are always some slimmed down versions of phones which are available for people in your situation. I have two friends that cannot bring cameras into work. One bought a lower end model phone for $49 and uses that. The other just doesn't bring his phone into work.

As for the rest of the people buying phones out there... 90% of those people have no use for a camera phone and rarely use it at all. If they do use it, it's for crappy photos of their friends while drinking. Yeah, we've all heard a couple of stories where teenaged girls took photos of attacker's license plates, etc.

Some people, like me, enjoy having a phone on their Internet connected phone and use it more than the rest of the public. I have a mobile gallery where I dump all my photos from my phone. Some of those end up on my website in stories about restaurants or some dumb bullshit my friends and my wife did.

So, while they aren't great for everyone and aren't used by most, they are still a useful addition IMHO.

I had a friend, located in Biloxi, MS contact me via SMS this morning to let me know that he and his family were all ok. Their house and their cars were flooded out. He had to turn off the mobile after a couple messages to conserve energy.

Now, I saw this story ahead of time (and t-mobile's site was already snail slow) but I got to the page for Mississippi. My SMS to him:

t-mobile is offering free wifi to hurricane victims: Flowood (Borders),
Kinkos (Hattiesburg & Jackson), and Starbucks (Ridgeland & Southaven)

Now, after I sent it, I thought about it. In the entire state of MS they have *5* wifi hotspots? Are these locations operational? Will they offer some electric draw for those that need it?

I really think it's great that t-mobile is offering this to those people affected by the storm but so few locations and many w/o power? What good can it really do? Skype, where are you?

Most of these people would probably prefer telephone service over Internet access. Luckily this guy was able to e-mail via SMS and get in touch w/those that care about him.

I'm just glad that one of the people I know from the area is ok and I wish all those affected by the storm the best of luck for a speedy and safe recovery.

I have put up a mirror of locations in text format. Hopefully this will be easier to disseminate.

"We want to have our life choreographed, cataloged, witnessed and archived," Stakutis said. "Now we are heading to a world where this is possible without effort."

Do we? It's one thing to have a personal diary or blog that you opt-in to submit information to daily. Hell, I have even expanded on my mobile pics to include a "blog" of what I did during any particular day... That's my *choice* to put that information out there for people to see. It's not mandated by my cell phone to take pictures of what I'm doing and throw them into a database that I have no control over.

While Eagle "acknowledges that the project raises some important questions about privacy and about the ownership of data, and says people should feel empowered, not scared, by his cell-phone applications," I just can't get passed his statement earlier in the article:

The Media Lab behavior is beautifully regular, but the lab lives and dies by sponsors' meetings," Eagle said. "So the weeks leading up to sponsors' meetings, people are pulling all-nighters and people are going crazy trying to get their demo working.

Is this another demo for one of your sponsors that might end up buying the rights of this technology from you and then creating their own spyware network of their mobile users' daily habits? Tracking when, where, and how they communicate to "better" serve them with advertisements and the selling/stealing of their data to other institutions and data thieves?

He has already founded a company called MetroSpark that in September will launch a Bluetooth-powered social-introduction service.
After filling out a personal profile, MetroSpark will attempt to be a gracious, ubiquitous host that connects people with common interests, whether they are technology conference goers who share an interest in motorcycles or barhopping singles who love long walks on the beach at sunset.

Oh, so you started this company -- got it advertised on Wired and now Slashdot -- and it's never going to get bought out by someone else (i.e. Dodgeball) and they aren't going to use this huge database of customer data that was originally meant to be benign?

I predict that even more corporations are going to have a field day with this data than what they originally intended (i.e. when/where you have your cell phone on and how many days a week you are sitting at home letting the CATV wash over you). If the corporations (and then obviously the government) can track social networks and trends via software on the phones you can bet your ass they are going to include it "free of charge" while still restricting your "free" access to any other programs you might want to run.

I predict that people will fall for this invasion just like any other. We're seriously one step closer to the "Big Brother" that everyone used to fear... Now we are welcoming him with open arms!

Many scientists and some of Mr. Barton's Republican colleagues say they were stunned by the manner in which the committee, whose chairman rejects the existence of climate change, demanded personal and private information last month from researchers whose work supports a contrary conclusion.

I was lucky to recently attend Al Gore's presentation on Global Climate Change. While I don't care about Global Warming at all (I see it as an eventual end of society and part of the Earth's history) but I did find that Al Gore's excellent multimedia presentation to be full of the very evidence that proves Global Climate Change is occurring and increasing in speed.

Why are these leaders creating issues for scientists unless they are trying to strongarm them? Were they seriously thinking that this data was created from false research? Antarctica is losing large slabs of ice at an alarming rate but it has nothing to do w/temperatures rising?

Again, Global Warming is something that's going to happen and it's inevitable, but we don't need to be harassing science because our political survival depends on it.

The issue revolves around some states whose Do Not Call laws are more strict than Federal law and which prohibit telemarketers from calling anyone on a Do Not Call, regardless of an existing business relationship.

Wah! I can't bother people and piss them off during dinner, quiet evenings, and fill up their answering machines with partial recordings not knowing how long the machine's message was.

Businesses are busy scrambling to create new and interesting ways to get your phone number so that they, and their subsidiaries and sister companies, can contact you with their telemarketers. Companies telling me that they cannot process an order without my telephone number, companies telling their employees that they must take a telephone number down for pickup orders placed over the phone, and requiring a phone number to ship a package. Most employees are doing their job and refuse you service (which is a company's right to do at any time) but I find it increasingly annoying. I'll do anything to not give out my phone number including asking for a supervisor, giving out a phone number with the area code and all zeroes, or just giving the switch board number out at work.

I really have no sympathy for companies that are crying to the FCC about this. The public had been whining to the FCC for how many years to get telemarketers to stop? They finally did, creating a list that the telemarketers can reference to narrow their endless search of a customer to people that might be interested in their products, and they still complain?

Give me a break and stay off my phone.

See here for how I used a Bash script to integrate a random Gallery v1 image into Drupal.

Slashdot won't let me post it anonymously, sorry.

Go too fast, and the GPS connects to a violation reporting server and uploads your tracking number and the type of violation (exceeding speed limit for area, failing to stop at a stop light, etc.)

While GPS units are quite accurate (shows my speed as usually about 4 mph under what my speedometer shows) under perfect conditions, they do have a major fault... Signal loss.

So, say you are traveling through a tunnel, in a mountainous area, or even a road that's under heavy tree cover. The GPS will estimate your direction of travel after it loses signal until it gains it back. At the point it regains signal you could have moved a significant distance and the GPS needs to "catch up" thus inflating your average speed.

My Saturn can only go 103 mph before the RPM limiter kicks in and drags me down to ~90 mph. My GPS (see here) reported that I went 115 mph (top right corner of the screen is Max Speed). Obviously a 12 mph overage that could result in a speeding violation or a loss of my "safe driver status".

You mean Ms. Pacman with better graphics? Yeah, I own it.

We prefer to refer to it as "Ownage Ball" though.

I can tell you that the only time I was getting hits from Ask Jeeves is when I was banning a stalker from viewing my gallery. Ask Jeeves had apparently indexed my gallery at one point (ignoring the robots.txt) and had not removed it at any time.

I started seeing these OBNOXIOUS log entries with referrers from ask.com (see here).

I finally had to email ask.com to have them removed. They ignored my first request and then finally removed it after a repeated request. They certainly weren't as easy to deal w/as Google's removal tool.

Personally? I'd never use anything other than Google.

Wow, it looks like he went last night.

Email the pictures off and import them straight to Gallery.

That's what I do although the Bash script I use is a bit more complex as I have it update my changelog automatically and sort things into month galleries too.

And people say they just want their phone to make calls. Bah :)

Email the pictures off and import them straight to Gallery.

That's what I do although the Bash script I use is a bit more complex as I have it update my changelog automatically and sort things into month galleries too.

And people say they just want their phone to make calls. Bah :)

Umm, was that before or after the story about movieblogging hit the front page causing a flood of hits to my mobile picture gallery linked from the moblog story from last week?

The *next* cool thing? Hiptop users have been photo/moblogging for years and there are several sites available just for hiptop users to blog to. I just recently bought a hiptop and even more recently received a camera for it. While I'm not necessarily into "blogging" I do enjoy posting random pictures of where I am for people to see. I sometimes post to one of the hiptop moblogging sites but I generally take pictures for my personal site.

My "mobile gallery" is powered by Gallery and a simple bash script to import my photos from email attachments. I normally don't put captions on the pictures but sometimes I do. They are just usually there for me to remember something specific about the day or place I was. It's nice not to have to be carrying around my full sized digital camera and waiting till I get home to upload photos for friends/family/slashdotters to see.

My mobile pics are here and the entire photo album changelog is here if you're interested. If your cell phone (or hiptop) has a camera and you'd like to use procmail and Gallery to host your own mobile pics the quick and dirty script to do so is here. There are some requirements (munpack and galleryadd which are both linked to in the document listed above and obviously procmail).

YMMV on what you need to install and whether you like how my photos are sorted ;-)

The *next* cool thing? Hiptop users have been photo/moblogging for years and there are several sites available just for hiptop users to blog to. I just recently bought a hiptop and even more recently received a camera for it. While I'm not necessarily into "blogging" I do enjoy posting random pictures of where I am for people to see. I sometimes post to one of the hiptop moblogging sites but I generally take pictures for my personal site.

My "mobile gallery" is powered by Gallery and a simple bash script to import my photos from email attachments. I normally don't put captions on the pictures but sometimes I do. They are just usually there for me to remember something specific about the day or place I was. It's nice not to have to be carrying around my full sized digital camera and waiting till I get home to upload photos for friends/family/slashdotters to see.

My mobile pics are here and the entire photo album changelog is here if you're interested. If your cell phone (or hiptop) has a camera and you'd like to use procmail and Gallery to host your own mobile pics the quick and dirty script to do so is here. There are some requirements (munpack and galleryadd which are both linked to in the document listed above and obviously procmail).

YMMV on what you need to install and whether you like how my photos are sorted ;-)

The *next* cool thing? Hiptop users have been photo/moblogging for years and there are several sites available just for hiptop users to blog to. I just recently bought a hiptop and even more recently received a camera for it. While I'm not necessarily into "blogging" I do enjoy posting random pictures of where I am for people to see. I sometimes post to one of the hiptop moblogging sites but I generally take pictures for my personal site.

My "mobile gallery" is powered by Gallery and a simple bash script to import my photos from email attachments. I normally don't put captions on the pictures but sometimes I do. They are just usually there for me to remember something specific about the day or place I was. It's nice not to have to be carrying around my full sized digital camera and waiting till I get home to upload photos for friends/family/slashdotters to see.

My mobile pics are here and the entire photo album changelog is here if you're interested. If your cell phone (or hiptop) has a camera and you'd like to use procmail and Gallery to host your own mobile pics the quick and dirty script to do so is here. There are some requirements (munpack and galleryadd which are both linked to in the document listed above and obviously procmail).

YMMV on what you need to install and whether you like how my photos are sorted ;-)

You work as a RECORDS CLERK!

Exactly which union do you belong to?

If I wrote a book with the same name as your website, LazyLightning.Org, and then advertized and promoted my book LazyLightning.Org, would you be upset?

What if I hired a promoter to get me on TV as much as possible, with instructions to make sure that every time I was on TV I was introduced by my name and with the name of my book, LazyLightning.Org. And, what if I made a point of promoting my book, LazyLightning.Org every time my paid promoter managed to get me in front of an audience?

Are you saying that you'd have no reason to be upset?

The skyline in May when I brought my gf to see Ellis Island. This is a sad sad day. To think that our children will not see the skyline as we once did :(

I am not a believer in war and I am not a believer in the loss of lives at any cost. I am trying to understand the necessity of this but I can't.

:(

I messed up. Here is the correct link! here

it doesn't load pages correctly (as IE and NS do)

like this page:

it loads fine in NS and almost fine in IE, but Konq is horrible.

they call them scholarships b/c for the most part Athletes are at the top of the GPA scale as compared to their non-athlete friends.

remember that a MUCH higher percentage of athletes stay in school, graduate on time, and stay out of trouble...

the only reason you hear about athletes in trouble is b/c they are at the front of media attention...

I suggest you change your sig before you make yourself look like a bigger asshole.

If you don't like my opinion, I really don't care.