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It is bizarre to me that a company with such prowess in buying power, most of the time have no idea how to handle their brand-new assets. It even got to the point that Yahoo swears to not fuck it up, compared to drawing this grand vision of improvement that most of what other companies would've done. Though I think it is the right decision to back-off, there are barely anything Yahoo can provide to Tumblr (except huge sums of money that is). Also correct me if I'm wrong, isn't Flickr pretty successful as it is now, not in a bombastic way, sure, but it's making decent money.

Even so, how does Google know that the current user is (a) a facebook user and (b) has Katy Perry as one of his/her friends. Facebook doesn't share that information with Google. Facebook wants a walled garden vs giving users what they want. Google now knows who is in your circles and can give you better results as such for the entire internet as well as your circle of friends. Already there are bloggers who have written about how useful the new search is.

And if you think this is evil, then will you say the same when Facebook does the same thing? When Microsoft does the same thing? Facebook is going public and you can be sure they will expand into general search, what do you think they'll do with all the information they have on their users? Especially given the low margins of facebook advertising compared to search advertising, it's only a matter of time until Facebook gets into search and leverages their social data. If anything, Google is guilty of pioneering this new way of searching. Users want this. They wanted Google providing search results using Twitter data then Twitter refused to share data with Google, so Google created their own network to give users what they want. I don't see a problem here.

G+ attracts users from a variety of sources, probably even some people that never joined any of these networks. G+ is not a Facebook killer. It's not a Twitter killer either (no anonymity) - and that's actually a good thing! Why should G+ kill any other service to be successful? Yeah, it can surely weaken their position, but I do think it can coexist with these. To me, it seems Facebook is just panicking - because how else can you interpret these "messages" from Facebook? If G+ is truly no danger or insignificant, why obsess with declaring this every week? Facebook seems to be overreacting a little bit.

While I adore Flickr, and have a pro account, it's not my "backup"

Flickr does not s

While I adorefire Flickr, and have a pro account, it's not my "backup".

Flickr does not store the "original" image in all cases, see http://thomashawk.com/2011/01/20mb-file-size-limits-on-photo-sharing-sites-are-stupid.html

I think it's foolish to consider a "back" something that costs you $25/year and you have no say in whether they delete your profile or not.

When uploading to photo sharing sites - beware!
I just finished moving my photo collection OUT of the cloud and I have to say, getting my 33,000+ photos BACK from Flickr (which is relatively open, as cloud photo services go) was not an easy task.
Cloud photo storage is plagued by compression and data loss (picasa), by warrantless unrecoverable deletion (Flickr - of a paid account! and obviously - Facebook) and other reliability/survivability problems.

Personally, as an avid photographer, I can't sleep soundly unless my photos are backed up in at least three places, one of the offsite. I accomplish this using a local mirrored drive, and the great cloud backup service - crashplan.
A mirrored drive would be tricky in your case, but you could use a USB hard drive connected to a family member/friends always-on computer. Back up to that using either the crashplan client (which is free for such uses, and works great) or rsync, syncback or any other homebrew solution. Pair that with a cloud backup service, and you should be fine.

Most importantly, never relay on the cloud as your single backup strategy - the internet is full of horror stories of people who THOUGHT they had everything backed up in the cloud... a USB drive sitting at a friends place is much easier to verify.

Wow, that's some URL: http://thomashawk.com/2009/08/so-if-time-magazine-dc-comics-and-platon-didnt-send-flickr-a-dmca-takedown-notice-over-the-obama-joker-image-who-did.html

I look forward to the day when an entire Slashdot submission is just a blog's URL.

He was just cleverly tricking Slashdot readers into reading the fine article when they were simply examining the URL.

http://thomashawk.com/2009/08/so-if-time-magazine-dc-comics-and-platon-didnt-send-flickr-a-dmca-takedown-notice-over-the-obama-joker-image-who-did.html

I look forward to the day when an entire Slashdot submission is just a blog's URL.

OK, freedom vs. (perceived) security, photography, etc. are all good things to discuss. However, Thomas Hawk is a complete asshole. By his own admission:

For years San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art has maintained a "no photographs" policy for their permanent collection, according to Hawk's popular blog -- but he's been taking photographs there anyways.

Fail.

Here... for a start, try taking a look at their official photography policy.
http://www.sfmoma.org/visit/visitinfo_hours.asp

It clearly states
Cameras
Photography is allowed for personal, noncommercial use, except where noted. Flash photography and videography are not allowed in the galleries. Tripods are not allowed.

Also... it's pretty clear he's aware of the rules changing.
http://thomashawk.com/2008/06/sf-moma-changes-photography-policy-non.html

Also, him cheerfully getting a guard fired in 2006 adds to his dossier. Someone should shove Hawk's cameras up his ass, and let him take all the pictures he wants of blood vessels being ruptured.

Would it be presumptuous for me to ask if you work as a rentacop? Mind if I ask if you have a metal badge or one of those gold colored cloth ones?

The museum had a policy of no photographs. This is hardly uncommon: not only do many people find it annoying to stumble over photographers and deal with flashes while they're trying to look at art, but repeated exposure to light flashes can damage art.

Fucking fail.
You posted this drivel without even bothering to do even the most basic research. Then you pretended to know exactly what the guy was thinking, when in fact, the opposite is clearly true.

Here... for a start, try taking a look at their official photography policy.
http://www.sfmoma.org/visit/visitinfo_hours.asp

It clearly states

Cameras
Photography is allowed for personal, noncommercial use, except where noted. Flash photography and videography are not allowed in the galleries. Tripods are not allowed.

Again. Fucking fail.

The museum had a policy of no photographs. This is hardly uncommon: not only do many people find it annoying to stumble over photographers and deal with flashes while they're trying to look at art, but repeated exposure to light flashes can damage art.

This is completely wrong--the museum lifted its ban prior to Hawk's visit (still no flash though). I've been following Hawk's blog for a while now, and he had made a point of becoming a member of the museum after they had liberalized their photography policy. As best as I can tell, they kicked him out because they thought he was taking pictures of a female member of the staff from the second floor of the atrium. However, this is pretty ridiculous since he seems to have been using a 14mm lens. For you non-photographers out there, using a super wide angle lens like this means you pretty much have to be right on top of a person in order for them to not look like an ant. Hawk has a picture of Simon Blint, the guy who kicked him out of the museum, taken from the second floor of the atrium in the museum that's clearly taken with a super wide angle lens. Allegedly Hawk offered to show Blint his photos but Blint refused to look.

Yes, this was discussed in an earlier Slashdot story, " RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized", and in a bunch of other places:

* Boing Boing p2pnet reddit Heise Online (German) Truemors BlogRunner/Digital Rights Hugh Casey IDG (Polish) Geek News Central CE Pro Gizmodo TechDirt Read/Write Web Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection TDPRI WhatReallyHappened.com Slyck Root.cz (Czech) Craigslist Forums Hard OCP Wired.com Uneasy Silence Overclock.net Wake World SpaceBattles.com Hydrogen Audio BrickFilms.com Hockey Zombie iLounge Zune Scene AllmanBrothersBand.com Golem (German) PC Magazin (German) Tweakers (Dutch) Mackauf (German) Wake Space Kino-eye.com Digital Copyright Canada Northwest Progressive Institute Louisville Music News Frant

Could you elaborate on that? I looked through the article and didn't see any mention of DRM causing problems.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Haaaalllleeeeejuuuuuahhhhh!

We just did it. After probably 20 or so phone calls to numerous departments all over Apple and AT&T we finally found the *right* department who can actually activate iPhones with you online, on the spot.

The magic number, and you will want to write this one down, is 877-800-3701. A special shout out and thanks to Scott Francis who left us a comment with the key to getting this whole mess solved. Apparently this is the one place at AT&T where they can actually activate your iPhone with you online. It was about a 20 minute hold and about a 10 minute process but the iPhone is now activated.

Thanks to everyone who spent the last day plus with us on ZooomrTV while we got it activated. It's been a fun ride. Now time to play with the phone and figure it out.

Oh great. Just what we need are more incidents like this and this. Who gets to define "amateur"? Or how about what is really going to happen is simply giving the police more latitude in harassing photographers who are operating from open, public spaces already paid for in taxes by the taxpayer? From this text Mr. Dunn suggested that the city deliberately kept the language vague, and that as a result police would have broad discretion in enforcing the rules. I'd say that it looks like it. Also, from the article who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10 minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment. Why a tripod? Does that make for a professional? If so, I must be a triple professional, because I have three tripods. ;-) Seriously though, this is the sort of law that sounds like it was put together over a drinking game by a couple of high school students, but in reality it has been assembled by a group of mid level government bureaucrats who obviously have not thought very far down the road as to the possible implications, legal or otherwise. For instance, The draft rules say the office could take up to 30 days to issue a permit, but Ms. Cho said she expected that most would be issued within 24 hours. leading me to wonder: Will the film student, of which there are many in NYC have to now go and apply for a permit and a $1 million dollar insurance policy for every single class assignment? What about the news agencies who might have to report on breaking stories? Will they be breaking the law covering the news?

This is simply absurd and as a photographer, I will *not* be traveling into NYC if this proposed policy becomes law.

Apparently, Chicago hasn't heard about this exception. This has been discussed on slashdot back when it happend. Where's the line between arcitecture and art?

The article is by Andrew Orlowski, the same guy that reported that Jimmy Wales was dead as part of his ongoing attack on Wikipedia, printed fabricated e-mails, and otherwise upheld the fine standards of Register journalism.

Has anyone actually listened to the audio to hear what Kahn actually said?

--MarkusQ

http://thomashawk.com/2006/08/how-vista-will-final ly-make-living.html

Taht's monkey DNA. If you want living Neanderthal DNA, you need to look here.

Since the story didn't link to the blog, here it is: http://thomashawk.com/2006/03/yahoo-shoppers-bewar e-priceritephoto.html

They still have a lot of great bargains on 35mm over at PriceRitePhoto!

Actually they have now changed their name on eBay to BarclayPhoto

The blogger that this all started with has been doing a good job of tracking these guys down, including all of the aliases they operate under.

Check out some of Thomas' later blog entries, especially this one if you want to feel like you got a good experience :-)

Check out some of Thomas' later blog entries, especially this one if you want to feel like you got a good experience :-)

I heard the voicemail one of these scumbags left for someone not too long ago. I don't know about others, but I would have had the police online to file charges... These people are scary.

Luckily, they're not the most intelligent people, as the voicemail seems to show. Calling someone a "bitch" repeatedly and threatening to kill them via an easily traced means is just asking for legal trouble. They don't know how to deal with the actual bad publicity they're starting to get. (Ratings sites are not actual bad publicity, since hardly anyone uses them, and there are many different ones).

I have a feeling this sort of scam will disappear in due time. It's getting harder and harder to hide from geeks with net connections and blogs, and bad word of mouth, unlike bad "reviews," is killer for a business. Just think of how many techies you know who refuse to buy a particular brand of hard drive simply for hearing about a friend's bad experience once.

Oh, the rest is a total shameless plug, but we did a bit about this on GeekNights last Thursday.

http://thomashawk.com/2005/11/priceritephoto-abusi ve-bait-and-switch.html

http://thomashawk.com/2005/12/apology-letter-from- ed-lopez-owner-of.html

Guess they had a sudden bout of guilt and shame?

Taken from http://thomashawk.com/2005/12/apology-letter-from- ed-lopez-owner-of.html An Apology Letter From Ed Lopez, Owner of PriceRitePhoto I received a call this morning from Ed Lopez, the owner of PriceRitePhoto. We spoke at length and he told me that the activity that has resulted from my post on my experience with his business has most certainly impacted his business. Mr. Lopez told me that he was calling to apologize and that Mr. Philips was going to be terminated at a company board meeting later on this morning. He confirmed to me that they do have the camera in question in stock and although I am not interested in purchasing it from them at this point indicated that he would sell it for me at the advertised price. Subsequently Ed sent me the following email: "On behalf of Priceritephoto I would like to sincerely apologize for the negative experience that you have experienced with our company. As a company this is not representative of the way we treat our customers. If there is anything that we can do at this point to rectify the situation, please let me know. We have tens of thousands of happy customers who have purchased form us in the past and it is our commitment to give our customers the best value when dealing with us. We are doing a comprehensive review of our company's procedures to ensure that something like this never occurs. We have also terminated Mr. Philips from his position with our company." Although I do not believe my "Steve Philips experience" was an isolated case by this merchant (and certainly the other testimonials suggest that this is in fact more of a common practice by them), my own personal view is that any retaliation towards this vendor should be channeled through legitimate and legal channels. Although some of the crank phone calls are actually pretty funny I think that it is better to take the high road in this case and to use legitimate resources where they exist, whether reporting them to the comparison pricing services or contacting the Attorney General (as I have done) or reporting them to people like the Better Business Bureau. I think that the popularity of this story comes in large part because the message resonates so strongly with all of us. Although in a sense it is the classic tale of David and Goliath retold, it is much more than this. We all have at one point or another in our lives been bullied and most of us have been defrauded or ripped off. The fact that so many times in the past there was nothing we could do about it makes us feel all that much better about the fact that in today's internet and blogosphere we actually CAN do something about it. It is tremendously empowering for all of us to be able to turn the powerlessness that we felt in the past into justice in todays' blogosphere through the help of things like Digg and Slashdot and Boing Boing. And although every rip off does not receive this level of attention, I believe this story in a greater sense is representative of perhaps thousands of rip off experiences that we have all suffered in the past and been able to do nothing about - some directly with this vendor, some directly with New York based camera vendors like this one, and some with just fraudulent internet businesses wherever they happen to be located. Because we in the past have had to live with the bitterness of our own personal frauds, our feelings towards the popularity of this story is that much stronger - as is our desire to retaliate. This being said, I again would encourage everyone to take the high road with respect to this vendor. I believe that the power of this story and the ultimate outcome, whatever that may be, will carry much more weight if as a public we handle things responsibly and do not resort to illegal tactics or harassment. Although there is a sense that we all must feel that these folks have gotten what they deserved, I think it would be a far greater legacy for this story to have if change takes place in legal a

The following comment was taken from Thomas Hawk's blog:

I read this, and all the comments, and the only thing that ran through my mind is that for all our consumer protection laws, both in Canada and the US, crap like this still happens after all these years...

As a legitmate online retailer, I'm saddened to hear how scammers are only hurting all of us with these stunts.

However, there are a couple things you can do to try and get even, other than blogging about it. First off, for an internet company, or at least an internet arm of a company, getting a means of payment is absolutely critical. If you can't get paid, its pointless to scam. For the internet, this pretty much means you must have either a credit card, and a means of processing it, or else have a paypal or paypal equivalent system. For the Credit Card system, some of them, Visa, Amex, Mastercard have all told me explictly, in writing, that if chargebacks are on 2% or more of my transactions they will terminate my ability to process CCs, not to mention bill me some outrageous fee per chargeback (the reason I say outrageous is that I've found a bit of a problem with CC fraud at the buyer's end, and I have no reliable way to identify them because of data handling limitations). I'm also not positive on this, but for merchants, I believe Visa requires merchants to jump through something like 30 hoops if they are doing online transactions to reduce or prevent fraud, some of them relate to information handling, and that should Visa determine that they are not abiding by those terms, then Visa will not honor any transaction with that company (I'm not sure because I use a third party handling system, and so its someone else's headache). Either way, in reporting them, and/or contesting the charges with the credit companies is particularly important in fighting these guys because the major credit card companies have an interest in making sure scammers don't get into their networks.

Paypal-like accounts and payment systems are the other major means for scammers to get paid, and I've had nothing but abuse from Paypal (I swear by whatever you want me to swear by I'm legit, which pisses me off no end because I'm not the one at fault here). Paypal IMHO pretty much screws retailers, someone even complains to them of fraud, and paypal doesn't check twice, they simply freeze the retailer account, sieze all assets in it, and refund the complainer, all without informing the retailer, or even verifying the source of the complaint. This has happened in my case twice, and both cases the actual fraud was buyer side, and I never recieved a response to my requests for information from Paypal. I now no longer deal with Paypal. Either way you look at it, there are two extremely easy ways to really affect these scammers: make it extremely difficult for them to recieve payment for their attempts.

The other major thing to do, most police forces will have both a high-tech crimes, and an economic crimes divisions. I've talked to my municipal, regional, national, and now even International police agencies regarding these fields in conjunction with complaints of this nature. The single biggest point they had to make to me was that most of this stuff goes unreported. They can only act on, and get funding for the stuff they know about, and for that, you have to report this. It sucks, but thats the important part: Call your police depts, if they need to pass it to the FBI, I assume they will. I know the Canuck police branches in those fields are wonderfully connected, and share information on those regularly so that those who need, and can act on the information have it available when they need it.

Lastly, I hate to say this, but you guys down there are mighty litigious as a society. First off, any transaction, esp if it involves your CCs, make sure you get a reciept. That reciept is a contract, and contracts are fun for legal purposes...he's a lawyer

Not respectful, not on topic, not even clear what the complaint is.

If I were HP, would delete it simply for incoherence.

See http://thomashawk.com/hello/305309/1024/HP%20Comme nt%20Screenshot-2005.05.06-08.19.47.jpg for screen shot.

Allow me to commend you on some fine journalism devoid of homophobia, on your blog, Thomas.

And let me quote:
- Jim Allchin is a very senior person
- for someone of Jim's rank to take the time and openly discuss Longhorn and Microsoft strategy with us was amazing
- I thank Jim for taking his time
- And certainly bloggers typically do not get the type of opportunity to suggest features to someone at Jim's level.
- So on to the dinner. I wrote Wow, with regards to Jim actually meeting with us
- Best of all was Jim's reaction when I expressed my delight
- Jim reacted strongly and said that
- if what Jim suggested about further speed improvements
- Jim asked questions about some
- the most rewarding was the ability to talk to Jim specifically
- Jim confirmed that there would be
- Jim and Microsoft are very excited
- Jim suggested that
- Jim said that by not requiring
- Jim said that you are going to see
- Jim said that although Microsoft could
- Jim suggested that Microsoft has a firm grasp
- Jim did acknowledge that
- Jim said that they are working on many of these issues
- I was able to ask Jim about when we might
- I asked Jim if we would see
- One of the primary purposes for Jim getting together with us
- Jim seemed very concerned with how we all
- Jim seemed very receptive
- It was fun to be able to share with Jim
- Jim seemed to feel that this is a bigger
- Jim agreed that giving people
- I suggested to Jim
- It was weird feeling the déjà vu as I left the dinner last night after spending a few hours with Jim. I was reminded again of that old dream

Third-grade writing style a new vogue among bloggers, or simply someone infatuated with... Jim?

"One of the most impressive aspects about Longhorn is the speed with which it catalogs, organizes and searches your PC. In addition to great new views (you can see a physical representation of every file on your PC that can be magnified as you move the scroll wheel of your mouse), the speed at which Longhorn renders the views was spectacular. Best of all was Jim's reaction when I expressed my delight at how quickly views were rendered. Jim reacted strongly and said that the speed that we were seeing was unacceptable and that over the course of the next year the system will get even faster."

Here's the photos that I took. http://thomashawk.com/2005/02/i-am-robot-hear-me-r oar.html

So what's so great about TiVoToGo? Everyone acts like this is some big great thing. TiVo spent the entire year in 2004 hyping the thing. I've been able to easily copy programs quickly and efficiently from my Microsoft Media Center PC since 2002. No password, no DRM, no access key, just drag and drop to my laptop over the internet. Frankly I think it's kind of stupid that TiVo spent 2004 making this their big initiative and using valuable engineering and marketing resources when TiVoToGo can only be used by less than half of their users. DirecTV users can't use it and Series 1 users can't use it (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for very valid reasons, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah, it's DirecTV's fault, etc. etc. etc.). Instead, the company should have been focusing on 1. building a dual tuner standalone unit and 2. building a standalone HDTV unit. Good god, who would buy a single tuner DVR anymore? They have finally come to this realization and announced an upcoming unit to accommodate HDTV with dual tuners to be released in early 2006 but quite frankly it may be too little too late. When I can get a dual tuner HDTV box for a monthly fee from Comcast why will I want to shell out big bucks for the TiVo. They had a window of opportunity and they blew it. They chose instead to focus on "TiVoToGo" -- whoop de doo, I own two TiVos and can't even use it. No wonder the stock has gone from $20 to $3.63. I've got more on comments made yesterday by TiVo CEO Mike Ramsay at DEMO yesterday on my blog as well as some information on his recent personal switch from a Windows based PC to a Mac at http://thomashawk.com/2005/02/chip-shipley-speaks- with-tivos-mike.html

TiVo submitted a letter to the FCC this week suggesting that cable operators are not doing enough to promote the CableCARD and are not inclined to promote it, especially the more advanced cards which allow dual tuners. TiVo argues that it is not in the cable operators economic interest to promote them and that the cable companies are trying to completely control their access, guides and channels to the detriment of competitors like TiVo. http://thomashawk.com/2005/01/tivos-letter-to-fcc- and-will-microsoft.html

Sorry. http://thomashawk.com/2005/01/hp-launching-linux-m edia-center-pc-to.html

I've designed a new logo for the combo Linux / HP Media Center PC. http://thomashawk.com/2005/01/hp-launching-linux-m edia-center-pc-to.html/

I've got a picture of the more evil than satan search as well as a more comprehensive critique of the site which asks the question does Microsoft manipulate your search results at: http:// Is_Microsoft_Manipulating_the_Search_Results_with_ Their_New_MSN_Search_for_Their_Own_Agenda?

Photoblogging is so kick ass. It rocks better than Linus Tor, whatever the hell his name is. To turn the mirror on Slashdot, how about checking out the commments over at http://blog.photoblogs.org/2004/11/photoblogs_slas .html#comments where the photobloggers comment back on the slashdot article. Example: "those comments are a joke, 3/4 of the negative viewpoints on there are coming from people who appear to not know anything about design, photography, art, or humanity for that matter. Reading most of them was a waste of my time, I would like to ask for those few moments of my life back...haha" My own most recent photo series is entitled Reflections on Manhattan. http://thomashawk.com/2004/09/reflections-on-manha ttan.html Now go buy a digital camera, get the hell out your house for once and go take some damn pictures of some flowers or something and report back! You only need to go outside for about two hours. Think of the bright side, you can start a hard drive defrag and it might be done by the time you get back.

Somebody was commenting on the interface in an earlier thread but I had no idea... MSN's opposing gradients from hell clash with the XP Luna scheme really, really badly.

Go look. Can you read those tabs at the top-right? Music... ra... radio... movies & tv?

Also - find the transport controls! They are hiding in the worst place possible, at the lower-left corner, which is exactly the last place your eye goes to when scanning the sea of text in the main window. This decision probably hinges on simply not making the thing look too much like iTunes.

God, I get angry just looking at this thing.

What is wrong with them? More money than God and they still can't manage to find a visual design that isn't completely retarded. Reversed text mixed with plain. Tabs - which don't look like tabs - separated by an arbitrary hierarchy. All controls with meaningful functions crammed into a too-small area at the bottom of the window, which sits mashed nicely against your taskbar, which is usually crammed with widgetry as well.

To say nothing of how the MSN Music Store works, I can say that iTunes (and WinAMP, and Audion) knock the shit out of this.