Slashdot Mirror

pigrabbitbear writes with an excerpt from an article at Motherboard: "Earlier last week we heard about the strange blob-bot, an amoeba-mimicking, pulsating, little horror of a robot. But that's nothing in the face of news that engineers at Virginia Tech have built a robotic jellyfish. As if the threat of the oceans being taken over by deadly stinging jelly cyborgs isn't scary enough, there's this: the researchers claim that, because their Robojelly is powered by a hydrogen-based catalytic reaction, rather than electricity, it could 'theoretically' power itself indefinitely. When you consider our best options for powering underwater craft are currently batteries, nuclear reactors, or tethers to the surface, a chemically-powered propulsion system is groundbreaking (and, well, a bit nerve-wracking)." The full paper is available for free (at least for 30 days; registration required).

AstroPhilosopher writes "Recently Wired, USA Today and other news outlets reported on a new spy center being built to store intercepted communications (even American citizens'). Tuesday, Gen. Keith Alexander testified in front of Congress refuting the articles. Alexander even went so far as to claim the NSA lacks the authority to monitor American citizens. It's an authority that was given to the NSA through the FISA Amendments Act signed into law by Bush and still supported today by Obama."

An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times has announced that, starting in April, visitors to NYTimes.com will only be able to access 10 free articles a month, down from 20 articles currently. The NYTimes paywall was put into effect last year, and seems to have been a success, with nearly half a million digital subscriptions to all of Times Co.'s websites; this despite the fact that the paywall is trivial to circumvent (for example, by deleting all cookies from nytimes.com)." The submitter included a link to the WSJ article on the change, which appears to also be paywalled.

An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times has announced that, starting in April, visitors to NYTimes.com will only be able to access 10 free articles a month, down from 20 articles currently. The NYTimes paywall was put into effect last year, and seems to have been a success, with nearly half a million digital subscriptions to all of Times Co.'s websites; this despite the fact that the paywall is trivial to circumvent (for example, by deleting all cookies from nytimes.com)." The submitter included a link to the WSJ article on the change, which appears to also be paywalled.

Fluffeh writes "As recently covered here, EU countries are starting to drop ACTA support. Now, long-time opponent of the secretly negotiated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, Sen. Ron Wyden introduced an amendment to a Senate 'jobs bill' that would force ACTA to come before Congress for approval. His second amendment tries to force a change (PDF) in how the whole process around such treaties is handled. Right now, the U.S. attempts to keep its negotiating positions a secret. What vital national security interests could be at stake if the public knew USTR was promoting 'graduated response' laws or proposing changes in ISP liability? Wyden doesn't believe there are any."

Fluffeh writes "As recently covered here, EU countries are starting to drop ACTA support. Now, long-time opponent of the secretly negotiated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, Sen. Ron Wyden introduced an amendment to a Senate 'jobs bill' that would force ACTA to come before Congress for approval. His second amendment tries to force a change (PDF) in how the whole process around such treaties is handled. Right now, the U.S. attempts to keep its negotiating positions a secret. What vital national security interests could be at stake if the public knew USTR was promoting 'graduated response' laws or proposing changes in ISP liability? Wyden doesn't believe there are any."

Fluffeh writes "As recently covered here, EU countries are starting to drop ACTA support. Now, long-time opponent of the secretly negotiated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, Sen. Ron Wyden introduced an amendment to a Senate 'jobs bill' that would force ACTA to come before Congress for approval. His second amendment tries to force a change (PDF) in how the whole process around such treaties is handled. Right now, the U.S. attempts to keep its negotiating positions a secret. What vital national security interests could be at stake if the public knew USTR was promoting 'graduated response' laws or proposing changes in ISP liability? Wyden doesn't believe there are any."

Fluffeh writes "As recently covered here, EU countries are starting to drop ACTA support. Now, long-time opponent of the secretly negotiated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, Sen. Ron Wyden introduced an amendment to a Senate 'jobs bill' that would force ACTA to come before Congress for approval. His second amendment tries to force a change (PDF) in how the whole process around such treaties is handled. Right now, the U.S. attempts to keep its negotiating positions a secret. What vital national security interests could be at stake if the public knew USTR was promoting 'graduated response' laws or proposing changes in ISP liability? Wyden doesn't believe there are any."

itwbennett writes "Apotheker wanted to sell off HP's PC division, Whitman vowed not to, and now HP is combining the PC division with the printer division in an effort to cut costs, unnamed sources told the All Things D blog. Given that both divisions reported declining sales last quarter, is HP hoping that two wrongs make a right?"

Fluffeh writes with news that U.S. Congressmen Baca (D-CA) and Wolf (R-VA) have proposed a bill that would require most video games to have a warning label decrying their "potential damaging" long-term effects on children. "Under the one-page Violence in Video Games Labeling Act (PDF), packaging for all video games except those rated 'EC' for Early Childhood would be required to prominently display a message reading: 'WARNING: Exposure to violent video games has been linked to aggressive behavior.' The proposed label would be required even if the video game in question is not violent."

ananyo writes "Laser beams at the National Ignition Facility have fired a record 1.875 megajoule shot into its target chamber, surpassing their design specification. The achievement is a milepost on the way to ignition — the 'break-even' point at which the facility will finally be able to release more energy than goes into the laser shot by imploding a target pellet of hydrogen isotopes. NIF's managers think the end of their two-year campaign for break-even energy is in sight and say they should achieve ignition before the end of 2012. However, with scientists at NIF saying that a $4 billion pilot plant could be putting hundreds of megawatts into the grid by the early 2020s, some question whether the Department of Energy is backing the wrong horse with ITER — a $21-billion international fusion experiment under construction at St-Paul-lez-Durance, France. Is it time for the DoE to switch priorities and back NIF's proposals?" Perhaps a better idea, given the potential benefits of fusion research, would be for the DoE to throw their weight behind multiple projects, rather than sacrificing some to support others.

suraj.sun writes with a followup to last week's news that Mozilla was thinking about reversing their stance on H.264 support. Mozilla chairman Mitchell Baker and CTO Brendan Eich have now both written blog posts explaining why they feel H.264 support is no longer optional. Eich wrote, "We will not require anyone to pay for Firefox. We will not burden our downstream source redistributors with royalty fees. We may have to continue to fall back on Flash on some desktop OSes. I’ll write more when I know more about desktop H.264, specifically on Windows XP. What I do know for certain is this: H.264 is absolutely required right now to compete on mobile. I do not believe that we can reject H.264 content in Firefox on Android or in B2G and survive the shift to mobile. Losing a battle is a bitter experience. I won’t sugar-coat this pill. But we must swallow it if we are to succeed in our mobile initiatives. Failure on mobile is too likely to consign Mozilla to decline and irrelevance." Baker added, "Our first approach at bringing open codecs to the Web has ended up at an impasse on mobile, but we’re not done yet. ... We'll find a way around this impasse."

New submitter unimacs writes "So Apple has been under fire recently for the conditions at the factories of their Chinese suppliers. I listened to 'This American Life's' recent retraction of the Michael Daisey piece they did a while back. Great radio for those of you who haven't heard it — rarely has dead air been used to such effect. Anyway, while his work has been discredited, Michael Daisey wasn't inaccurate in his claims that working conditions are poor in iPhone and iPad factories. Given that, are there any smart phone manufacturers whose phones are made under better conditions?"

New submitter unimacs writes "So Apple has been under fire recently for the conditions at the factories of their Chinese suppliers. I listened to 'This American Life's' recent retraction of the Michael Daisey piece they did a while back. Great radio for those of you who haven't heard it — rarely has dead air been used to such effect. Anyway, while his work has been discredited, Michael Daisey wasn't inaccurate in his claims that working conditions are poor in iPhone and iPad factories. Given that, are there any smart phone manufacturers whose phones are made under better conditions?"

Fluffeh writes "Word from Ars Technica is that OnLive, a service provider that seems to totally flout Microsoft licensing and offers iPad users a Microsoft Desktop for free (or a beefier one for $5) isn't being sued by Microsoft, as this blog quotes: 'We are actively engaged with OnLive with the hope of bringing them into a properly licensed scenario.' The people who are angry include Guise Bule, CEO of tuCloud. He accuses Microsoft of playing favorites with OnLive — whose CEO is a former Microsoft executive — while regularly auditing license compliance for companies like tuCloud that provide legitimate virtual desktop services. Bule is so mad that he says he is forming an entirely new company called DesktopsOnDemand to provide a service identical to OnLive's, complete with licensing violations, and dare Microsoft to take him to court. Bule hopes to force Microsoft into lifting restrictions on virtual desktop licensing that he says inhibit growth in the virtual desktop industry, and seem to apply to everyone except OnLive." One of the restrictions applied to licensed remote desktop providers is that each user must have his own dedicated machine (pretty onerous in the days of 16+ core servers costing a mere grand or two).

Fluffeh writes "Word from Ars Technica is that OnLive, a service provider that seems to totally flout Microsoft licensing and offers iPad users a Microsoft Desktop for free (or a beefier one for $5) isn't being sued by Microsoft, as this blog quotes: 'We are actively engaged with OnLive with the hope of bringing them into a properly licensed scenario.' The people who are angry include Guise Bule, CEO of tuCloud. He accuses Microsoft of playing favorites with OnLive — whose CEO is a former Microsoft executive — while regularly auditing license compliance for companies like tuCloud that provide legitimate virtual desktop services. Bule is so mad that he says he is forming an entirely new company called DesktopsOnDemand to provide a service identical to OnLive's, complete with licensing violations, and dare Microsoft to take him to court. Bule hopes to force Microsoft into lifting restrictions on virtual desktop licensing that he says inhibit growth in the virtual desktop industry, and seem to apply to everyone except OnLive." One of the restrictions applied to licensed remote desktop providers is that each user must have his own dedicated machine (pretty onerous in the days of 16+ core servers costing a mere grand or two).

An anonymous reader writes "Following the recent Italian case, Apple is now being sued by the Belgian consumer association 'Test-Achats' (french/dutch website) for not applying the EU consumer protection laws by only giving a one-year warranty on its products. At the same time, Apple is not only refusing to give the mandatory two-year warranty but is also selling the additional year of warranty with its Applecare products. If the consumer association wins its case, Apple could be forced to refund Applecare contracts to its Belgian customers while providing the additional year of warranty for free."

pigrabbitbear writes with an excerpt from an article at Motherboard: "Anyone planning on buying a new iPad should know what they're getting themselves into by now. In recent years, Apple and other hardware manufacturers have made it liquid-crystal clear that they're not fond of the idea that customers can tear open and fix products without the help of licensed repair specialists. Even if it's as easy as ordering a part online and following a few instructions gleaned from a Google search, hardware companies generally seem to prefer we keep the hood closed. It should not be surprising, then, that the latest version of Apple's much-desired tablet has one 'killer' feature that's finally getting the attention it deserves: A design that stops you from getting inside of it."

kkleiner writes with an update on the boycott of Elsevier started in January. From the article: "Academic research is behind bars and an online boycott by 8,209 researchers (and counting) is seeking to set it free — well, more free than it has been. The boycott targets Elsevier, the publisher of popular journals like Cell and The Lancet, for its aggressive business practices, but opposition was electrified by Elsevier's backing of a Congressional bill titled the Research Works Act. Though lesser known than the other high-profile, privacy-related bills SOPA and PIPA, the act was slated to reverse the Open Access Policy enacted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 that granted the public free access to any article derived from NIH-funded research."

kkleiner writes with an update on the boycott of Elsevier started in January. From the article: "Academic research is behind bars and an online boycott by 8,209 researchers (and counting) is seeking to set it free — well, more free than it has been. The boycott targets Elsevier, the publisher of popular journals like Cell and The Lancet, for its aggressive business practices, but opposition was electrified by Elsevier's backing of a Congressional bill titled the Research Works Act. Though lesser known than the other high-profile, privacy-related bills SOPA and PIPA, the act was slated to reverse the Open Access Policy enacted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 that granted the public free access to any article derived from NIH-funded research."

benrothke writes "The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), now in its 16th edition, is the de facto style guide for American writers. It deals with aspects of editorial practice, grammar, usage, document preparation and more. It's just one of many style guides for writers. The Microsoft Manual of Style, just released in its 4th edition, attempts to do for the technical writers what the CMS has done for journalists and other writers." Read below for the rest of Ben's review. Microsoft Manual of Style author Microsoft Corporation pages 464 publisher Microsoft Press; rating 10/10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 978-0735648715 summary Invaluable guide to becoming a better technical writer A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field. The implementation of a style guide provides uniformity in style and formatting of a document. There are hundreds of different style guides available — from the The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, to the Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law and many more.

Microsoft's goal in creating this style manual is about standardizing, clarifying and simplifying the creation of content by providing the latest usage guidelines that apply across the genres of technical communications. The manual has over 1,000 items, so that each author does not have to make the same 1,000 decisions.

Anyone who has read Microsoft documentation knows it has a consistent look, feel and consistency; be it a manual for Visual C#, Forefront or Excel. With that, the Microsoft Manual of Style is an invaluable guide to anyone who wants to better the documentation they write.

For example, many writers incorrectly use words such as less, fewer, and under as synonymous terms. The manual notes that one should use less to refer to a mass amount, value or degree; fewer to refer to a countable measure of items, and not to use under to refer to a quantity or number.

Style guides by their very nature of highly subjective and no one is forced to take accept the Microsoft style as dogma. The authors themselves (note that the book was authored by a group of senior editors and content managers at Microsoft, not a single individual) note that they don't presume to say that the Microsoft way is the only way to write. Rather it is the guidance that they follow and are sharing it with the hope that the decisions they have made for their content professionals will help others promote consistency, clarity and accuracy. With that, they certainly have achieved that goal.

The book is made up of two parts; with part 1 comprised of 11 chapters on general topics.

Chapter 1 is about Microsoft style and voice and has basic suggestions around consistency, precision, sentence structure and more. The chapter also has interesting suggestions on writing bias-free text. It notes that writers should do their best to eliminate bias and to depict diverse individuals from all walks of life in their documentation. It's suggested to avoid terms that may show bias with regards to gender, race, culture, ability, age and more. Some examples are to avoid terms such as chairman, salesman and manpower; and use instead moderator, sales representative or workforce.

The manual also notes that writers should attempt not to stereotype people with disabilities with negative connotations. It suggests that documentation should positively portray people with disabilities. It emphasizes that documentation should not equate people with their disability and to use terms that refer to physical disabilities as nouns, rather than adjectives.

The book takes on a global focus and notes that since Microsoft sells its products and services worldwide, content must be suitable for a worldwide audience. For those writing for a global audience, those sections of the manual should be duly considered.

The manual also cautions authors to avoid too many technical terms and jargon. The danger of inappropriate use of technical terms is that people who don't think of themselves as computer professionals consider technical terms to be a major stumbling block to understanding. The manual suggests whenever possible, to use common English words to get the point across, rather than technical one.

The book provides thousands of suggestions on how to write better documentation, including:
do not use hand signs in documentation — nearly every hand sign is offensive somewhere
do not refer to seasons unless you have no other choice – since summer in the northern hemisphere is winter in the southern hemisphere
spell out names of months – as 3/11/2012 can refer to March 11, 2012 in some places and November 3, 2012 in others
use titles, not honorifics, to describe words such as Mr. or Ms. – not all cultures have an equivalent to some that are common in the United States, such as Ms.

Chapter 6 is on procedures and technical content, and explains that consistent formatting of procedures and other technical content helps users find important information quickly and effectively. In the section on security, the style guide notes not to make statements that convey the impression or promise of absolute security. Instead, the writer should focus on technologies or features that help achieve security; and suggests to be careful when using words such as safe, private, secure, protect,and their synonyms or derivatives. It is best to use qualifiers such as helps or can help with these words.

As noted earlier, the style guide is simply a guide, not an absolute. In the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, author Lynne Truss write of terms that are grammatically incorrect, but so embedded into the language, that they are what she terms a lost cause. With that, the style guide has the pervasive use of the term all right, as opposed to alright.

According to dictionary.com, although alright is a common spelling in written dialogue and in other types of informal writing, all right is used in more formal, edited writing. My own preference is that alright is clearer and ultimately more concise. In this guide, I found that Microsoft's preference for all right to be distracting.

Differences aside, part 1 provides vital assistance to any writer that is interested in writing effective content that educates the reader in the clearest manner possible. The book is the collective experience of thousands of writers and their myriad sets of documentation. The book provides page after pages of unique information.

Part 2 is a usage dictionary that is a literal A-Z of technical terms, common words and phrases. The goal of the usage dictionary is to give the reader a predictable experience with the content and to ensure different writers usage a standard usage of the same term. Some interesting suggestions in the usage dictionary are:

access rights – an obsolete term. Use user rights
collaborator – do not use collaborator to describe a worker in a collaborative environment unless you have no other choice as it is a sensitive term in some countries. Specifically, being a collaborator in a third-world country can get one killed.
email – do not use as a verb. Use send instead.
master / slave – do not use as the terminology, although standard in the IT industry, may be insulting to some users. The manual notes that its use is prohibited in a US municipality.
press – differentiate between the terms press, type, enter, and use, and to use press, not depress, hit or strike when pressing a key on the keyboard

Some of the terms suggested are certainly Microsoft centric, such as:
blue screen – they suggest not to use blue screen, either as a noun or a verb to refer to an operating system failure. Use stop or stop error instead
IE – never abbreviate Internet Explorer; always use the full name

Say what you will about Microsoft, but any technical writer who is serious about being a better writer can learn a lot from the writers at Microsoft. Microsoft is serious and passionate about documentation and it is manifest in this style guide.

Microsoft has been criticized for their somewhat lukewarm embrace of open source. With the Microsoft Manual of Style, Microsoft is nearly freely sharing a huge amount of their intellectual capital. At $29 for the paperback and $10 for the Kindle edition, the manual has a windfall of valuable information at a bargain-basement of a price.

This guide is a comprehensive manual for the serious writer of technical documentation, be it a high school student or veteran author. In fact, to describe the guide as comprehensive may be an understatement, as it details nearly every facet of technical writing, including arcane verb uses.

Many authors simply write in an ad-hoc manner. This manual shows that effective writing is a discipline. The more disciplined the writer, the more consistent and better their output. Anyone that wants to be a better writer will undoubtedly find the Microsoft Manual of Style an exceptionally valuable resource.

Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.

You can purchase Microsoft Manual of Style from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

benrothke writes "The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), now in its 16th edition, is the de facto style guide for American writers. It deals with aspects of editorial practice, grammar, usage, document preparation and more. It's just one of many style guides for writers. The Microsoft Manual of Style, just released in its 4th edition, attempts to do for the technical writers what the CMS has done for journalists and other writers." Read below for the rest of Ben's review. Microsoft Manual of Style author Microsoft Corporation pages 464 publisher Microsoft Press; rating 10/10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 978-0735648715 summary Invaluable guide to becoming a better technical writer A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field. The implementation of a style guide provides uniformity in style and formatting of a document. There are hundreds of different style guides available — from the The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, to the Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law and many more.

Microsoft's goal in creating this style manual is about standardizing, clarifying and simplifying the creation of content by providing the latest usage guidelines that apply across the genres of technical communications. The manual has over 1,000 items, so that each author does not have to make the same 1,000 decisions.

Anyone who has read Microsoft documentation knows it has a consistent look, feel and consistency; be it a manual for Visual C#, Forefront or Excel. With that, the Microsoft Manual of Style is an invaluable guide to anyone who wants to better the documentation they write.

For example, many writers incorrectly use words such as less, fewer, and under as synonymous terms. The manual notes that one should use less to refer to a mass amount, value or degree; fewer to refer to a countable measure of items, and not to use under to refer to a quantity or number.

Style guides by their very nature of highly subjective and no one is forced to take accept the Microsoft style as dogma. The authors themselves (note that the book was authored by a group of senior editors and content managers at Microsoft, not a single individual) note that they don't presume to say that the Microsoft way is the only way to write. Rather it is the guidance that they follow and are sharing it with the hope that the decisions they have made for their content professionals will help others promote consistency, clarity and accuracy. With that, they certainly have achieved that goal.

The book is made up of two parts; with part 1 comprised of 11 chapters on general topics.

Chapter 1 is about Microsoft style and voice and has basic suggestions around consistency, precision, sentence structure and more. The chapter also has interesting suggestions on writing bias-free text. It notes that writers should do their best to eliminate bias and to depict diverse individuals from all walks of life in their documentation. It's suggested to avoid terms that may show bias with regards to gender, race, culture, ability, age and more. Some examples are to avoid terms such as chairman, salesman and manpower; and use instead moderator, sales representative or workforce.

The manual also notes that writers should attempt not to stereotype people with disabilities with negative connotations. It suggests that documentation should positively portray people with disabilities. It emphasizes that documentation should not equate people with their disability and to use terms that refer to physical disabilities as nouns, rather than adjectives.

The book takes on a global focus and notes that since Microsoft sells its products and services worldwide, content must be suitable for a worldwide audience. For those writing for a global audience, those sections of the manual should be duly considered.

The manual also cautions authors to avoid too many technical terms and jargon. The danger of inappropriate use of technical terms is that people who don't think of themselves as computer professionals consider technical terms to be a major stumbling block to understanding. The manual suggests whenever possible, to use common English words to get the point across, rather than technical one.

The book provides thousands of suggestions on how to write better documentation, including:
do not use hand signs in documentation — nearly every hand sign is offensive somewhere
do not refer to seasons unless you have no other choice – since summer in the northern hemisphere is winter in the southern hemisphere
spell out names of months – as 3/11/2012 can refer to March 11, 2012 in some places and November 3, 2012 in others
use titles, not honorifics, to describe words such as Mr. or Ms. – not all cultures have an equivalent to some that are common in the United States, such as Ms.

Chapter 6 is on procedures and technical content, and explains that consistent formatting of procedures and other technical content helps users find important information quickly and effectively. In the section on security, the style guide notes not to make statements that convey the impression or promise of absolute security. Instead, the writer should focus on technologies or features that help achieve security; and suggests to be careful when using words such as safe, private, secure, protect,and their synonyms or derivatives. It is best to use qualifiers such as helps or can help with these words.

As noted earlier, the style guide is simply a guide, not an absolute. In the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, author Lynne Truss write of terms that are grammatically incorrect, but so embedded into the language, that they are what she terms a lost cause. With that, the style guide has the pervasive use of the term all right, as opposed to alright.

According to dictionary.com, although alright is a common spelling in written dialogue and in other types of informal writing, all right is used in more formal, edited writing. My own preference is that alright is clearer and ultimately more concise. In this guide, I found that Microsoft's preference for all right to be distracting.

Differences aside, part 1 provides vital assistance to any writer that is interested in writing effective content that educates the reader in the clearest manner possible. The book is the collective experience of thousands of writers and their myriad sets of documentation. The book provides page after pages of unique information.

Part 2 is a usage dictionary that is a literal A-Z of technical terms, common words and phrases. The goal of the usage dictionary is to give the reader a predictable experience with the content and to ensure different writers usage a standard usage of the same term. Some interesting suggestions in the usage dictionary are:

access rights – an obsolete term. Use user rights
collaborator – do not use collaborator to describe a worker in a collaborative environment unless you have no other choice as it is a sensitive term in some countries. Specifically, being a collaborator in a third-world country can get one killed.
email – do not use as a verb. Use send instead.
master / slave – do not use as the terminology, although standard in the IT industry, may be insulting to some users. The manual notes that its use is prohibited in a US municipality.
press – differentiate between the terms press, type, enter, and use, and to use press, not depress, hit or strike when pressing a key on the keyboard

Some of the terms suggested are certainly Microsoft centric, such as:
blue screen – they suggest not to use blue screen, either as a noun or a verb to refer to an operating system failure. Use stop or stop error instead
IE – never abbreviate Internet Explorer; always use the full name

Say what you will about Microsoft, but any technical writer who is serious about being a better writer can learn a lot from the writers at Microsoft. Microsoft is serious and passionate about documentation and it is manifest in this style guide.

Microsoft has been criticized for their somewhat lukewarm embrace of open source. With the Microsoft Manual of Style, Microsoft is nearly freely sharing a huge amount of their intellectual capital. At $29 for the paperback and $10 for the Kindle edition, the manual has a windfall of valuable information at a bargain-basement of a price.

This guide is a comprehensive manual for the serious writer of technical documentation, be it a high school student or veteran author. In fact, to describe the guide as comprehensive may be an understatement, as it details nearly every facet of technical writing, including arcane verb uses.

Many authors simply write in an ad-hoc manner. This manual shows that effective writing is a discipline. The more disciplined the writer, the more consistent and better their output. Anyone that wants to be a better writer will undoubtedly find the Microsoft Manual of Style an exceptionally valuable resource.

Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.

You can purchase Microsoft Manual of Style from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

suraj.sun sends this quote from an op-ed at Ars Technica: "Eight months ago, content owners and Internet service providers agreed to the Copyright Alert System, a 'six-strike' plan to reduce copyright infringement by Internet users. Under the system, ISPs will soon send educational alerts, hijack browsers, and perhaps even slow/temporarily block the Internet service of users accused of online infringement (as identified by content owners). At the time it was announced, some speculated that the proposed system might not be legal under the antitrust laws. ... If I had to explain antitrust in a single word, it would not be 'competition' — it would be 'power.' The power to raise prices above a competitive level; the power to punish people who break your rules. Such power is something society usually vests in government. Antitrust law is in part concerned with private industry attempting to assert government-like power. ... The Copyright Alert System represents a raw exercise of concerted private power. Content owners as a group have control over their product. They have leveraged this control to forge this agreement with ISPs, who need to work with content owners in order to offer content to their own users. ISPs, in turn, have power over us as users."

wiredmikey writes "Earlier this month, researchers from Kaspersky Lab reached out to the security and programming community in an effort to help solve a mystery related to 'Duqu,' the Trojan often referred to as 'Son of Stuxnet,' which surfaced in October 2010. The mystery rested in a section of code written an unknown programming language and used in the Duqu Framework, a portion of the Payload DLL used by the Trojan to interact with Command & Control (C&C) servers after the malware infected system. Less than two weeks later, Kaspersky Lab experts now say with a high degree of certainty that the Duqu framework was written using a custom object-oriented extension to C, generally called 'OO C' and compiled with Microsoft Visual Studio Compiler 2008 (MSVC 2008) with special options for optimizing code size and inline expansion."

theodp writes "Foxconn Technology Group, Apple's largest supplier and the target of allegations of poor work conditions, welcomed a retraction of a This American Life radio program episode it said was based on lies. 'I am happy that the truth prevails, I am glad that Mike Daisey's lies were exposed,' Louis Woo, a spokesman for Taipei-based Foxconn said. 'People will have the impression that Foxconn is a bad company,' Woo added, 'so I hope they will come and find out for themselves'. Foxconn also said that it has 'no plans to take legal action.'"

theodp writes "Foxconn Technology Group, Apple's largest supplier and the target of allegations of poor work conditions, welcomed a retraction of a This American Life radio program episode it said was based on lies. 'I am happy that the truth prevails, I am glad that Mike Daisey's lies were exposed,' Louis Woo, a spokesman for Taipei-based Foxconn said. 'People will have the impression that Foxconn is a bad company,' Woo added, 'so I hope they will come and find out for themselves'. Foxconn also said that it has 'no plans to take legal action.'"

thomst writes "Cnet's Greg Sandoval reports that New Zealand police filed for the wrong kind of restraining order--the kind that didn't allow for DotCom to have a court hearing prior to the seizure — and that was a mistake, according to a report in the New Zealand Herald. A court has now ruled that the restraining order that enabled police to seize his assets is 'null and void,' and a review of the mistakes made will soon be conducted by New Zealand's attorney general, according to the Herald. The paper noted that there's no guarantee that DotCom will prevail. His lawyers must prove the absence of good faith when the procedural error was made."

silentbrad writes "An investigation by CBC News has turned up voters all over Canada who say the reason they got robocalls sending them to fictitious polling stations was that they'd revealed they would not vote Conservative. Although the Conservative Party has denied any involvement in the calls, these new details suggest that the misleading calls relied on data gathered by, and carefully guarded by, the Conservative Party. Known as 'CIMS,' the database assigns a 'smiley' face to supporters, and a 'sad' face to non-Conservatives. Liberal and NDP politicians say it would make no sense to call randomly, since many of the voters misled would be Conservatives."

An anonymous reader writes "Last year Russian researchers discovered a well-preserved mammoth thigh bone and announced plans to clone a mammoth from the bone marrow within — and they just signed a deal with South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation to bring the project to fruition. The Sooam scientists plan to implant the nucleus of a woolly mammoth cell into an elephant egg in order to to create a mammoth embryo, which would then be placed in an elephant womb. 'This will be a really tough job,' Soaam reasearcher Hwang In-Sung said, 'but we believe it is possible because our institute is good at cloning animals.'" Not to be confused with a similar mammoth effort at mammoth-cloning at Kyoto University.

An anonymous reader writes "Last year Russian researchers discovered a well-preserved mammoth thigh bone and announced plans to clone a mammoth from the bone marrow within — and they just signed a deal with South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation to bring the project to fruition. The Sooam scientists plan to implant the nucleus of a woolly mammoth cell into an elephant egg in order to to create a mammoth embryo, which would then be placed in an elephant womb. 'This will be a really tough job,' Soaam reasearcher Hwang In-Sung said, 'but we believe it is possible because our institute is good at cloning animals.'" Not to be confused with a similar mammoth effort at mammoth-cloning at Kyoto University.

New submitter Hartree writes "This American Life aired an episode in January about visiting Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen China that supplies Apple with iPhones and iPads. It was the most downloaded of all of its episodes. That show helped prompt Apple to release, for the first time, a list of its suppliers and allow outside audits of working conditions at its suppliers. This American Life has now retracted the episode after finding out that Mike Daisey, whose visit to the factory the show was based on, fabricated portions of the story. This included a number of minor items, but also major ones such as his saying that he personally met underage workers and those poisoned by hexane exposure. To set the record straight, this weekend's episode of This American Life will present how they were mislead into airing a flawed story (PDF)."

ananyo writes "Neutrinos obey nature's speed limit, according to new results from an Italian experiment. The finding, posted to the preprint server arXiv.org, contradicts a rival claim from the OPERA experiment that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light. ICARUS, located just a few meters from OPERA, clocked neutrinos traveling at the speed of light, and no faster, after monitoring a beam of neutrinos sent from CERN in late October and early November of last year. The neutrinos were packed into pulses just four nanoseconds long. That meant the timing could be measured far more accurately than the original OPERA measurement, which used ten microsecond pulses. The new findings are yet another blow to OPERA's results. Researchers there had announced possible timing problems with their original measurements. For many, this will pretty much be case closed."

In 2010, Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi used his computer's webcam to spy on the activities of his gay roommate, Tyler Clementi, and commented about it publicly on Twitter. Days later, Clementi committed suicide. Ravi was indicted on 15 charges, going to trial last month. Now, reader doston sends word that the trial has ended, and Ravi has been found guilty on all 15 charges, though the jury returned a not guilty verdict on aspects of certain charges. "After less than three full days of deliberations, the five men and seven women of the jury found Dharun Ravi, 20 years old, guilty of invading the privacy of his 18-year-old roommate, Tyler Clementi, and his dorm-room date. They also found that Ravi was motivated by bias under a New Jersey hate-crime law that had been largely untested so far. ... The jury had been asked to decide Ravi’s motivations when he trained his webcam on Clementi and his date on two separate occasions in September 2010, in a case that set off a national conversation about cyber-bullying and treatment of gay youth. ... Ravi faces up to 10 years in prison on most serious bias intimidation convictions, but is likely to receive a lesser sentence based on sentencing guidelines because he is a first time offender. The India-born Ravi, who has spent most of his life in the U.S. as a permanent resident, faces the possibility of deportation as a result of his criminal conviction. He rejected a plea deal in December that would have kept him out of prison and offered him assistance with immigration authorities."

silentbrad sends this excerpt from the CBC: "The days of screaming activists marching with signs in hand to voice their displeasure at a particular politician are changing rapidly – just ask Vic Toews. Canada's public safety minister was the latest in a string of public-policy lightning rods to feel the wrath of Anonymous, a loose coalition of web-based activists who went after Toews for his overly vociferous promoting of the government's online surveillance bill. ... Graeme Hirst, a professor of computational linguistics at the University of Toronto, says that while Anonymous does share some properties of older protest movements, sometimes its motives can be called into question. 'It's a kind of civil disobedience, so we can immediately make analogies to the Civil Rights movement of the '60s,' Hirst said in an interview. 'On the other hand, it's not entirely clear that Anonymous is as altruistically motivated as those protests were.' ... Hirst viewed the January showdown as 'the first legitimate online protest' that was really only about the online world and suggested that the key to its success was that it was organized not by individuals but by organizations — and ones with clout. ... Another apparently successful online campaign was the Cost of Knowledge protest started by an international group of researchers in January, following a blog post by Cambridge University math professor Timothy Gowers."

An anonymous reader writes "Last month we discussed news of a controversial method Google was using to bypass Safari's privacy settings in order to enable certain features for users who were logged in to Google. Now, U.S. regulators are investigating Google's actions to see whether the search giant has violated the privacy protection agreement they signed last year that includes a clause prohibiting Google from misrepresenting how users control the collection of their data. 'The fine for violating the agreement is $16,000 per violation, per day. Because millions of people were affected, any fine could add up quickly, depending on how it is calculated. ... A group of state attorneys general, including New York's Eric Schneiderman and Connecticut's George Jepsen, are also investigating Google's circumvention of Safari's privacy settings, according to people familiar with the investigation. State attorneys general can have the ability to levy fines of up to $5,000 per violation.' European regulators are adding the Safari investigation to their review of Google's consolidated privacy policy."

An anonymous reader writes "Last month we discussed news of a controversial method Google was using to bypass Safari's privacy settings in order to enable certain features for users who were logged in to Google. Now, U.S. regulators are investigating Google's actions to see whether the search giant has violated the privacy protection agreement they signed last year that includes a clause prohibiting Google from misrepresenting how users control the collection of their data. 'The fine for violating the agreement is $16,000 per violation, per day. Because millions of people were affected, any fine could add up quickly, depending on how it is calculated. ... A group of state attorneys general, including New York's Eric Schneiderman and Connecticut's George Jepsen, are also investigating Google's circumvention of Safari's privacy settings, according to people familiar with the investigation. State attorneys general can have the ability to levy fines of up to $5,000 per violation.' European regulators are adding the Safari investigation to their review of Google's consolidated privacy policy."

mask.of.sanity writes "A working proof of concept has been developed for a dangerous vulnerability in Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). The hole stands out because many organizations use RDP to work from home or access cloud computing services. Only days after a patch was released, a bounty was offered for devising an exploit, and later a working proof of concept emerged. Chinese researchers were the first to reveal it, and security professionals have found it causes a blue screen of death in Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 machines. Many organizations won't apply the patch and many suspect researchers are only days away from weaponizing the code."

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses the proliferation of programming languages and what separates the successful ones from obscurity. 'Some people say we don't need any more programming languages at all. I disagree. But it seems clear that the mainstream won't accept just any language. To be successful, a new language has to be both familiar and innovative — and it shouldn't try to bite off more than it can chew. ... At least part of the formula for success seems to be pure luck, like a band getting its big break. But it also seems much easier for a language to shoot itself in the foot than to skyrocket to stardom.'"

First time accepted submitter arnott writes "Science Applications International Corp. said that it will pay $500.4 million in restitution and penalties under a settlement over its CityTime program with New York City. From the article: 'Two former SAIC employees have been charged with conspiring to defraud New York, and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) has called on the company to reimburse the city for the more than $600 million it spent on the program over an 11-year period.'"

New submitter techfun89 writes "Russia plans on sending cosmonauts to the moon as well as unmanned spacecraft to Mars, Jupiter and Venus by 2030. Considering the recent launch failures in Russia, these plans seem very ambitious. From the article: 'These ambitious spaceflight goals are laid out in a strategy document drawn up recently by Russia's Federal Space Agency (known as Roscosmos), the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Tuesday (March 13). And there's more. Roscosmos wants a new rocket called Angara to become the nation's workhorse launch vehicle by 2020, replacing the venerable Soyuz and Proton rockets that have been carrying the load since the 1960s.'"

volts writes "Troubled LightSquared's primary Skyterra 1 satellite has been out of service since the solar storm on March 7. The company says it is 'working through the rebuild of the satellite tapping into the resources that were involved in the original program.' This development follows a stream of bad news including layoffs, default on payments, the resignation of CEO Sanjiv Ahuja and FCC rejection of a scheme to repurpose satellite frequencies for cellular data due to interference with GPS. Another kick in the teeth as company struggles to avoid bankruptcy."

volts writes "Troubled LightSquared's primary Skyterra 1 satellite has been out of service since the solar storm on March 7. The company says it is 'working through the rebuild of the satellite tapping into the resources that were involved in the original program.' This development follows a stream of bad news including layoffs, default on payments, the resignation of CEO Sanjiv Ahuja and FCC rejection of a scheme to repurpose satellite frequencies for cellular data due to interference with GPS. Another kick in the teeth as company struggles to avoid bankruptcy."

New submitter Manzanita writes "The domain of personal analytics, or 'Quantified Self,' is rich with interesting things to measure and many hackers have started projects. But they will only take off if it is sufficiently easy to gather and use the data. Stephen Wolfram has collected and analyzed a lot of his personal data over the last 20 years, but that is far beyond what most of us have the time for. What do you find worth tracking? What is ripe for developing into a business?"

rudy_wayne writes "The end of Encyclopedia Britannica has been widely reported and its demise has been blamed on Wikipedia. However, this article at Wired points out that the real reason is something entirely different. 'In 1990 Britannica had $650 million in revenue. In 1996, long before Wikipedia existed, it was bankrupt and the entire company was sold for $135 million. What happened in between was Encarta. Even though Encarta didn't make money for Microsoft and Britannica produced its own encyclopedia CDs, Encarta was an inexpensive, multimedia encyclopedia that helped Microsoft sell Windows PCs to families. And once you had a PC in the living room or den where the encyclopedia used to be, it was all over for Mighty Britannica. It's not that Encarta made knowledge cheaper, it's that technology supplanted its role as a purchasable 'edge' for over-anxious parents. They bought junior a new PC instead of a Britannica. When Wikipedia emerged five years later, Britannica was already a weakened giant. It wasn't a free and open encyclopedia that defeated its print edition. It was the personal computer itself.'"

BayaWeaver writes "These are exciting times in anthropology. Recent analysis of fossils first discovered in China in 1979 indicate that a human-like species may have co-existed with modern humans as late as 11,500 years ago. This presumably new species has been nicknamed Red Deer Cave people because of their apparent taste for the extinct giant red deer. Other species recently discovered include: the 'hobbits' on the Indonesian island of Flores which are also thought to have been around until 12,000 years ago and the Denisovans discovered in 2010 that co-existed with modern humans in Siberia about 30,000 years ago."

Michael J. Ross writes "Prior to Google+, the company's previous attempts at social networking — Orkut, Dodgeball, Jaiku, Wave, and Buzz — were largely failures, and tended to frustrate users who had devoted time and effort to contributing content and establishing connections with other users, only to see the services wither on the vine. In contrast, Google+ appears to be receiving far more nurturing by the Internet behemoth, and as a result has arguably better chances of not just surviving, but expanding to the point of eventually challenging Twitter and Facebook. Like its rivals, Google+ offers online help information to explain to newcomers the basics of how to use the service. But there is little to no advice on how to make the most of its capabilities, and even the basic functionality is not always clearly explained. That is the purpose of a new book, Google+: The Missing Manual." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Google+: The Missing Manual author Kevin Purdy pages 232 pages publisher O'Reilly Media rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1449311872 summary An introduction to Google's social networking service. Authored by Kevin Purdy, the book was published by O'Reilly Media, on 30 December 2011, under the ISBN 978-1449311872. The publisher's page has a brief description of the book, its table of contents, some comments on the book from customers and reviewers, a couple errata (as of this writing), and links for purchasing the print version (such as the one kindly provided to me by the publisher) and/or the e-book versions (in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats). The "missing CD" page has links to most if not all of the online resources mentioned in the text.

Like the other entries in the Missing Manual series, this one starts with the basics, and builds upon that foundation. It does not assume any knowledge of Google+, or even possession of a Google account.

The book's material is organized into nine chapters, for a total of 232 pages. The first chapter, "Getting Started," explains exactly how to join Google+, invite friends to your new network, and configure your profile, including your privacy settings and a photo (even tweaking it online). The second chapter, "Managing Contacts with Circles" covers how to create new circles, edit and organize existing ones, share them with other Google+ users, and find people to add to your circles. But, oddly, the information is not presented in that logical order. The author explicates the advantages of using more than the default four circles provided by Google. Some points are repeated, but briefly enough that it is inconsequential.

While the first two chapters lay the foundation for joining Google+ and setting up your account and circles, the next three chapters explore the details of using this service — starting with "Streams, Sharing, and Privacy," which explains the various types of streams (main, circle, Notification, and the now-defunct Incoming stream), as well as the user interface elements for those streams and the individual posts they comprise. The author also demonstrates how to write your own posts, specify who gets to see them, edit your posts, and interact with the posts submitted by other users. The next chapter explores the important topic of notifications, which are sent as e-mail messages, smartphone messages, etc. Helpfully, the author discusses the differences between the user interfaces of the Android and iPhone notification apps. The subsequent chapter fully explains how to share photos and videos with other Google+ users, as well as how to upload and perform basic editing of images. However, it may have been more logical to present the latter information before the former.

For people who want the capabilities previously only provided by commercial web conferencing services, hangouts might be the most welcome feature of Google+. Chapter 6 explains how to set up and participate in these videos/audio meetings online, as well as how to incorporate Google Chat, YouTube videos, and Android devices. The subsequent chapter, "Searching and Sparks," has plenty of advice on how to search for other Google+ users and the content they contribute. The penultimate chapter dives into the differences you may encounter when using Google+ on small screen devices — specifically, Android and Apple smartphones and tablets. The last chapter, which is the briefest of the bunch, is also likely to prove the least useful to most readers, as it covers how to get started playing the games built into Google+.

The book does not cover Google+ Pages, which was likely introduced after the final draft of the book was submitted to the publisher. Readers are directed to an untitled 14-page PDF file that covers the essentials of Google+ Pages. Oddly, the publisher's page links to that file with the text "Download Example Code"; but there is no example code for this book. The supplement contains a few flaws: "box pop-up box" (page 4), "using a promoting your Page" (9), and "his her name" (11).

Speaking of which, given the relatively modest number of pages in this book, and the limited amount of text on each one, this book contains far too many errata: "works different" (page xiii; echoes of Apple's infernal "Think Different" marketing campaign?), "If typing web addresses by hand that isn't" (page 3), "a different a social networking site" (4), "she's added you [to] her" (54), "added to [the] +Add box" (58), "even if [you] just" (79), "and the[n] click the" (79), "settings that lets you can choose" (83), "modicum [of] more fuss" (105), "share its photos [with] specific circles" (117), "where [the] photo" (124), "just like [the] lightbox view" (126), "and or" (147; should read "and/or"), "an job" (148), "how to [use?] Google+ running" (169), "search find" (170), "bring up to the same list" (180), "The form exact" (185; should read "The exact form"), "you can't get start" (191), "in in" (193), and "a box let you know" (194).

Some of the statements in the narrative are odd — for instance, "Halloween right around October 31" (page 7; when else would Halloween occur?). Other phrases are poorly worded — for instance, "whenever you feel irked or like something must be broken" (44), "maybe an extra like a link" (60), and "select an item from the menu that appears to see only circle-related notifications" (80). Lastly, at least one pair of verbs have inconsistent form ("start" and "mentioning" on page 62). All of these blemishes should have been caught by the copyediting crew. But for the most part, the narrative is straightforward. It is occasionally livened up with a bit of humor, which is good, because portions of the text begin to sound the same, as a result not so much of the author's writing, but more the Google+ interface itself.

Only a few technical errors are immediately evident — for instance, on page 61, the author refers to a for-loop in computer code incorrectly: "+1 is a common way of making a program run over and over again." But it is not a program that is being repeated, but rather a code block.

Scattered throughout the text are numerous text boxes — most of which are labeled "Note" or "Tip." Unfortunately, they are set in a font that is a bit too small for comfortable reading. Also, there does not appear to be any difference among these types of information sections, yet there are at least half a dozen different names for them.

All of the key topics are nicely illustrated with sample screenshots, in grayscale, oftentimes with relevant controls circled or otherwise indicated. The only weakness is that the author typically does not mention which figure is being referenced in the text — not that that would help much anyway, since none of them have figure numbers. It's usually clear from the context, but not always.

Yet the very existence of this book may give readers some pause: If a book of this size is required to explain how to use a social networking service aimed at the general public, perhaps the Google+ user interface needs to be overhauled and made more intuitive? Yet that process is probably underway, because Google+ is under constant revision. Thus there will be portions of the text and screenshots that differs somewhat from the current incarnation of the user interface and its features. But for most of these instances, it is easy enough to determine how what you read in the book correlates with what you might see on the screen.

The primary weakness of this book is that it does not attempt to explain how Google+ might be integrated into a business's online marketing strategy, nor how it compares against Facebook or Twitter in terms of its advantages and disadvantages. In fact, as noted above, the book addresses Google+ Pages only in a supplementary document. Such information would have made this entry in the Missing Manual series far more valuable.

However, one forte of this book is that the author has clearly put effort into learning and explaining the privacy implications of the various Google+ features — critical in this era of evaporating privacy and data breaches on an unprecedented scale.

On balance, he largely achieves his objective. Google+: The Missing Manual is an informative and approachable introduction to Google's social network.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.

You can purchase Google+: The Missing Manual from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Prior to Google+, the company's previous attempts at social networking — Orkut, Dodgeball, Jaiku, Wave, and Buzz — were largely failures, and tended to frustrate users who had devoted time and effort to contributing content and establishing connections with other users, only to see the services wither on the vine. In contrast, Google+ appears to be receiving far more nurturing by the Internet behemoth, and as a result has arguably better chances of not just surviving, but expanding to the point of eventually challenging Twitter and Facebook. Like its rivals, Google+ offers online help information to explain to newcomers the basics of how to use the service. But there is little to no advice on how to make the most of its capabilities, and even the basic functionality is not always clearly explained. That is the purpose of a new book, Google+: The Missing Manual." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Google+: The Missing Manual author Kevin Purdy pages 232 pages publisher O'Reilly Media rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1449311872 summary An introduction to Google's social networking service. Authored by Kevin Purdy, the book was published by O'Reilly Media, on 30 December 2011, under the ISBN 978-1449311872. The publisher's page has a brief description of the book, its table of contents, some comments on the book from customers and reviewers, a couple errata (as of this writing), and links for purchasing the print version (such as the one kindly provided to me by the publisher) and/or the e-book versions (in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats). The "missing CD" page has links to most if not all of the online resources mentioned in the text.

Like the other entries in the Missing Manual series, this one starts with the basics, and builds upon that foundation. It does not assume any knowledge of Google+, or even possession of a Google account.

The book's material is organized into nine chapters, for a total of 232 pages. The first chapter, "Getting Started," explains exactly how to join Google+, invite friends to your new network, and configure your profile, including your privacy settings and a photo (even tweaking it online). The second chapter, "Managing Contacts with Circles" covers how to create new circles, edit and organize existing ones, share them with other Google+ users, and find people to add to your circles. But, oddly, the information is not presented in that logical order. The author explicates the advantages of using more than the default four circles provided by Google. Some points are repeated, but briefly enough that it is inconsequential.

While the first two chapters lay the foundation for joining Google+ and setting up your account and circles, the next three chapters explore the details of using this service — starting with "Streams, Sharing, and Privacy," which explains the various types of streams (main, circle, Notification, and the now-defunct Incoming stream), as well as the user interface elements for those streams and the individual posts they comprise. The author also demonstrates how to write your own posts, specify who gets to see them, edit your posts, and interact with the posts submitted by other users. The next chapter explores the important topic of notifications, which are sent as e-mail messages, smartphone messages, etc. Helpfully, the author discusses the differences between the user interfaces of the Android and iPhone notification apps. The subsequent chapter fully explains how to share photos and videos with other Google+ users, as well as how to upload and perform basic editing of images. However, it may have been more logical to present the latter information before the former.

For people who want the capabilities previously only provided by commercial web conferencing services, hangouts might be the most welcome feature of Google+. Chapter 6 explains how to set up and participate in these videos/audio meetings online, as well as how to incorporate Google Chat, YouTube videos, and Android devices. The subsequent chapter, "Searching and Sparks," has plenty of advice on how to search for other Google+ users and the content they contribute. The penultimate chapter dives into the differences you may encounter when using Google+ on small screen devices — specifically, Android and Apple smartphones and tablets. The last chapter, which is the briefest of the bunch, is also likely to prove the least useful to most readers, as it covers how to get started playing the games built into Google+.

The book does not cover Google+ Pages, which was likely introduced after the final draft of the book was submitted to the publisher. Readers are directed to an untitled 14-page PDF file that covers the essentials of Google+ Pages. Oddly, the publisher's page links to that file with the text "Download Example Code"; but there is no example code for this book. The supplement contains a few flaws: "box pop-up box" (page 4), "using a promoting your Page" (9), and "his her name" (11).

Speaking of which, given the relatively modest number of pages in this book, and the limited amount of text on each one, this book contains far too many errata: "works different" (page xiii; echoes of Apple's infernal "Think Different" marketing campaign?), "If typing web addresses by hand that isn't" (page 3), "a different a social networking site" (4), "she's added you [to] her" (54), "added to [the] +Add box" (58), "even if [you] just" (79), "and the[n] click the" (79), "settings that lets you can choose" (83), "modicum [of] more fuss" (105), "share its photos [with] specific circles" (117), "where [the] photo" (124), "just like [the] lightbox view" (126), "and or" (147; should read "and/or"), "an job" (148), "how to [use?] Google+ running" (169), "search find" (170), "bring up to the same list" (180), "The form exact" (185; should read "The exact form"), "you can't get start" (191), "in in" (193), and "a box let you know" (194).

Some of the statements in the narrative are odd — for instance, "Halloween right around October 31" (page 7; when else would Halloween occur?). Other phrases are poorly worded — for instance, "whenever you feel irked or like something must be broken" (44), "maybe an extra like a link" (60), and "select an item from the menu that appears to see only circle-related notifications" (80). Lastly, at least one pair of verbs have inconsistent form ("start" and "mentioning" on page 62). All of these blemishes should have been caught by the copyediting crew. But for the most part, the narrative is straightforward. It is occasionally livened up with a bit of humor, which is good, because portions of the text begin to sound the same, as a result not so much of the author's writing, but more the Google+ interface itself.

Only a few technical errors are immediately evident — for instance, on page 61, the author refers to a for-loop in computer code incorrectly: "+1 is a common way of making a program run over and over again." But it is not a program that is being repeated, but rather a code block.

Scattered throughout the text are numerous text boxes — most of which are labeled "Note" or "Tip." Unfortunately, they are set in a font that is a bit too small for comfortable reading. Also, there does not appear to be any difference among these types of information sections, yet there are at least half a dozen different names for them.

All of the key topics are nicely illustrated with sample screenshots, in grayscale, oftentimes with relevant controls circled or otherwise indicated. The only weakness is that the author typically does not mention which figure is being referenced in the text — not that that would help much anyway, since none of them have figure numbers. It's usually clear from the context, but not always.

Yet the very existence of this book may give readers some pause: If a book of this size is required to explain how to use a social networking service aimed at the general public, perhaps the Google+ user interface needs to be overhauled and made more intuitive? Yet that process is probably underway, because Google+ is under constant revision. Thus there will be portions of the text and screenshots that differs somewhat from the current incarnation of the user interface and its features. But for most of these instances, it is easy enough to determine how what you read in the book correlates with what you might see on the screen.

The primary weakness of this book is that it does not attempt to explain how Google+ might be integrated into a business's online marketing strategy, nor how it compares against Facebook or Twitter in terms of its advantages and disadvantages. In fact, as noted above, the book addresses Google+ Pages only in a supplementary document. Such information would have made this entry in the Missing Manual series far more valuable.

However, one forte of this book is that the author has clearly put effort into learning and explaining the privacy implications of the various Google+ features — critical in this era of evaporating privacy and data breaches on an unprecedented scale.

On balance, he largely achieves his objective. Google+: The Missing Manual is an informative and approachable introduction to Google's social network.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.

You can purchase Google+: The Missing Manual from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

An anonymous reader writes "Suren Ter discusses privacy, piracy, and the future of filesharing. Suren produced the virally popular YouHaveDownloaded.com, which displays all downloads on the public BitTorrent network associated with an IP address." When asked about his views on piracy: "Just like I told a French journalist and to the lady at the Washington Post, pirates are thieves and they do steal. Yeah yeah, 'when I steal your DVD, you have no DVD, but when I copy a file, you still have a file' — I get that BS. We all know that it’s BS too. However, SOPAs and PIPAs create tyranny. If given the choice between thieves and tyranny, I’d rather stay with the thieves."

suraj.sun writes in about the recent small claims case against AT&T's throttling of 'unlimited' plans. From the article: "AT&T has about 17 million smartphone customers on 'unlimited' plans, and has started slowing down service for users who hit certain traffic thresholds. Spaccarelli maintained at his February 24 small-claims hearing that AT&T broke its promise to provide 'unlimited' service, and the judge agreed. In a letter dated Friday, a law firm retained by AT&T Inc. is threatening to shut off Matthew Spaccarelli's phone service if he doesn't sit down to talk. Spaccarelli has posted online the documents he used to argue his case and encourages other AT&T customers copy his suit."

New submitter Ashenkase writes "Michal Geist reviews what stayed and what was rejected by the Bill C-11 Committee Review. Looks like SOPA-style amendments are dropped except Digital Locks. There is still a chance for Canadians to have their voices heard before third reading: 'The Bill C-11 legislative committee concluded its clause-by-clause review yesterday as eight government amendments were added to the bill and all opposition amendments were defeated. The amendments included an expanded enabler provision and some modest tinkering to other elements of the bill. There are still several steps needed before the bill passes including third reading at the House of Commons, Senate review, and ultimately royal assent, but Canadian copyright reform is well on its way to completion before the summer starts. In the days leading up to the clause-by-clause review, many focused on three key issues: no SOPA-style amendments such as website blocking or warrantless disclosure of information, maintaining the fair dealing balance found in the bill, and amending the digital lock provisions. By that standard, the changes could have been a lot worse. The government expanded the enabler provision, though not as broadly as CIMA requested. Virtually all other copyright lobby demands — website blocking, notice-and-takedown, iPod tax, copyright term extension, disclosure of subscriber information — were rejected. Moreover, the provisions supported by consumer and education groups including user generated content protection, time shifting, format shifting, backup copies, Internet provider liability, and statutory damages reform were left untouched. This represents a major victory for the many Canadians and groups such as Open Media that spoke out on these issues.'"