Slashdot Mirror

They are finally serving their "Tweet Button" widget via SSL. This has long been a thorn in my side.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

I left Geeknet aka all the other names Rob has typed already nearly exactly a year ago now, and had stopped really posting on Slashdot prior to that but the work, creation and launching of Slashdot remains one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Rob and I went to the same middle school, high school, college and had the joy of working together for well over a decade; I've been very lucky to have worked with him and the other friends we started with.

Rob and I became friends not actually because of being in the same school, though we knew each other that way. We because friends when we both had modems and got on the BBSes, and that desire to have a place to share news and stuff with friends was what I think Slashdot has done well with. Bringing together the people who have the love of technology in their blood. Rob is really really good at that, and working with him and the rest of the folks has been on honor and privilege.

We've had some good wedding times and some burnination times (Chris, I forgot about the cell phone. That makes me giggle.) And while I could go on and on, then I'll turn maudlin and no one wants that.

I started at Google just over a week ago now, and love what I'm doing -- and I think that's the most important lesson I learned from Slashdot. You won't always like what you are doing but if you working on something you love and with good people around you, that's worth a lot.

If you care to see me poke fun of Rob, you can find me on Twitter as (the imaginatively named) @hemos, or find me on Google Plus as Jeffrey Bates

Thanks for the fun, Rob. We done good.

    It's long been suspected that "ECHLON" already monitors phone calls, faxes, and emails. But hey, maybe all their gear is just a huge expensive decoration, to distract tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy freaks. The truth is somewhere in the middle. :)

      RIM's SMS most likely don't leave their network. Why would they? If I recall correctly, they are encrypted at the phone, so they wouldn't be easy to intercept at the tower.

    The same would also apply to cell providers, unless SMS was already easily interceptable when it hit the tower.

    Although it would appear safe, are messages sent via https://twitter.com/ really safe? Probably not.

    But why would governments have to go through the hassle of intercepting messages at the tower, and decrypting them, when the providers can hand them over, unencrypted, on an E-silver-platter(tm).

    Most likely such a meeting isn't to determine if they should or shouldn't do it, but what the pricing will be. I guarantee, if the gov't wants it, the provider will let them pay at greater than cost. It's a lot easier to negotiate for a live feed, than to come back later with a warrant. For god and country only goes so far, but the right price tag will get you anything.

Or is it: Immediate action needed. LDNers cannot have another evening like last night tonight. BBM clearly helping rioters outfox Police. Suspend it.

Well, I don't know that it was, but Wikileaks claims so: "We can confirm that the claimed DDB destroyed data included more than 60,000 emails from the NPD"

That said, I've since read a comment on the netzpolitik blog (fourth hand information?) that DDB claims the leaked mails are a different set of 60,000 emails from the NPD... which seems quite a stretch. Of course, it's very possible that the original source (hackers, presumably) re-leaked the mails after Wikileaks didn't/couldn't do anything with them.

Prominent blogger Violet Blue was kicked out because her real name is too fake sounding apparently. Adding insult to injury she was being harassed on G+ by people using their real names, who are still there. https://twitter.com/#!/violetblue/status/104827767031480320

There is one thing that Microsoft frequently gets right that Google can learn from - Developers! Developers! Developers.

Want to see desperation in action?

To Any Published WebOS Devs: We'll give you what you need to be successful on #WindowsPhone, incl.free phones, dev tools, and training, etc.

http://twitter.com/#!/BrandonWatson/statuses/104681012000337920

Or maybe the WP7 devs just wanted a fourth to play Bridge?

By the time this made it to slashdot, the deal's more or less in the final phases of burning out.

On the other hand, I did order mine so hopefully it will actually show up.

An Android/Cyanogenmod is inevitable with several devs already signed on with more expressing interest. Source for the kernel is also available.

Unfortunately, though this is a great deal, this is not a tablet where the android community will grow (as w/the nook, which are still available and a great deal in its own right w/cm7).

You've been talking to Michael Dell, haven't you?

Samsung is now showing to a court in Netherland 20 cases of prior art in tablets, such as this one from 1994: the Knight Rider http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2011/04/tablet-computers-as-seen-from-1994.html As seen on these videos, this looked exactlty like an iPad! You may follow the courtroom debates thanks to Andreas Udo de Haes https://twitter.com/#!/andreasudo and on OsNews: http://www.osnews.com/

But here's a tweet of mine on the subject from a few months ago:
"I think Apple should FedEx Jason Chen the yet to be released iPhone 5 just to screw with him."

https://twitter.com/#!/JustinFreid/status/78269879458865152

Anonymous denied that.

And the more riots there are, the more chance for the AP et al. to get nice pictures to license out to the tabloids for tomorrow's front pages. Earlier, apparently, Sky News had a ticker thing listing places that didn't have police protection, until importantish people complained and it got taken down. But then, that's what comes from having mainstream media more interested in selling newspapers than anything else.

Today has been a rather different story - Twitter has been used to organise a community-driven clean-up process, with large numbers of people gathering in the damaged areas of London to help fix things and tidy up. #riotcleanup is still trending worldwide, and has been for most of the day, #riotwombles (a wonderful tag) has been used for organising people on the streets, and @riotcleanup has picked up over 70,000 followers today. There's also a sort of website running now.

Social media, the Internet and technology in general are just tools - it's how people use them that matters; and today we've definitely seen them being used for good.

Today has been a rather different story - Twitter has been used to organise a community-driven clean-up process, with large numbers of people gathering in the damaged areas of London to help fix things and tidy up. #riotcleanup is still trending worldwide, and has been for most of the day, #riotwombles (a wonderful tag) has been used for organising people on the streets, and @riotcleanup has picked up over 70,000 followers today. There's also a sort of website running now.

Social media, the Internet and technology in general are just tools - it's how people use them that matters; and today we've definitely seen them being used for good.

Today has been a rather different story - Twitter has been used to organise a community-driven clean-up process, with large numbers of people gathering in the damaged areas of London to help fix things and tidy up. #riotcleanup is still trending worldwide, and has been for most of the day, #riotwombles (a wonderful tag) has been used for organising people on the streets, and @riotcleanup has picked up over 70,000 followers today. There's also a sort of website running now.

Social media, the Internet and technology in general are just tools - it's how people use them that matters; and today we've definitely seen them being used for good.

Anonplus is just a troll domain. The "hacks" are likely faked to increase activity to the site, seeing as they occur so often and with little repercussion, and from seemingly made up groups. https://twitter.com/#!/anonymouSabu/status/100708943524929536 https://twitter.com/#!/anonymouSabu/status/100709124857274368

Anonplus is just a troll domain. The "hacks" are likely faked to increase activity to the site, seeing as they occur so often and with little repercussion, and from seemingly made up groups. https://twitter.com/#!/anonymouSabu/status/100708943524929536 https://twitter.com/#!/anonymouSabu/status/100709124857274368

You say "follow", but you clearly don't mean that in the Twitter sense ( http://twitter.com/#!/neiltyson )

14 hours ago, he said: "Yes, all rumors are true: I'm hosting a 13-episode, 21st century version of COSMOS, to air on FOX in 2013: http://n.pr/nBEz44 "

The original blog post is here.

The man said it best himself.
http://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/99600564995887104

"Simple Logic: Worried that FOX viewers don't know, think, or care about science? That's why COSMOS belongs on FOX."

and he's right. if anyone can spark an interest in science it's Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

If you can't bring yourself to tune into Fox
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=139033386
National Geographic Channel will air a same-night encore of the episodes following their broadcast on Fox.

A blog post about mental illness and startups.

My tweet along a similar line, from some time ago.

From what I've read -- mostly by following tweets by Skud on the subject -- there are a significant number of people inside Google who aren't happy with the "real names" policy. Even accepting the intent, it's poorly executed, as it makes some classic blunders in its assumptions about what forms names take. It strikes me as a case in which someone at the top of the food chain insisted on a simple, stupid idea.

I think you're quite right: there's a real opening for Google to express contrition, revamp its policy, differentiate Google+ from Facebook, and come out of this as the big damned hero.

Given that, it's easy to see why real names are preferred on a social network; it makes it easier for you to connect with people you know, and you're expected to only really share stuff with people who already know your name anyway.

I fail to see that. For example, I want to contact a guy called Robert Miller. I actually know him in person. However there are thousands of them on the Internet, and probably a hundred in the heavily populated area where we both live. His name is worthless to me as a location tool. If you want to locate a specific person in the USA you'd better use his SSN, and even that is not a guarantee of anything. If you want to locate a specific person in the world ... you can't do that.

The only reliable way for me to contact this guy on Internet is to call him (or meet him) and ask "what is your unique ID on the Internet / social network / blog?" - and then he says "Oh, yes, it's bmiller_0x8832E017" ... Well, if I go through this exchange I don't need to know his real name as it is registered in the social network - I already know it.

Only the provider of the social network benefits from knowing the real name (and address, etc.) of a participant. Other members of the social network fall into two large groups:

1. Members who already know who bmiller_0x8832E017 is. They don't need a reminder.
2. Members who don't know Robert Miller in person. Perhaps he lives in a different country. Then they don't care what his real name is.

There is no third group among the members of the social network that would need to know that an account bmiller_0x8832E017 is really associated with Robert A. Miller, Ph.D., Esq., M.D. living at 123 Main St., Paradise, AZ, USA. What would be the value of this information, especially when obtained in out of band way (not by asking?) Stalking is the most likely answer, or physical threats after some heated cyberspace discussion. Do I want any of that? NFW.

Aside from that reasoning, we already have examples of social networks (Twitter) where the number of followers of certain authors is huge. That may be temporary if the author is at the center of some event, or permanent if the author is a public figure. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect that the author "personally knows" all the followers. Do you think Obama personally knows 9.4 million people who follow him? If so, he has an excellent memory (and doesn't need a teleprompter :-)

Not true. The Boston police have a Twitter page that allows them to post updates and respond to citizens' questions, and it has scaled beautifully.

You're looking for this: http://twitter.com/#!/fireland/status/34754301213544448

That is the best part of Twitter. You can quit now.

I think Twitter's success is in its simplicity. I'm not on a high horse or anything; I've very few tweets, and I started my illustrious tweeting with a re-hash of a Penny Arcade strip.

So, now that any potential Twitter cred I might have had is out the window (Twitcred? Tweetcred?), the fact is Twitter is a vastly dumbed-down blogging service that lets anyone post whatever inane minutiae of their life they may feel compelled to share with the rest of us. I'll admit there's a certain bit of creativity in trying to cram something of substance within 140 characters. The funny bit is that practically no tweets actually have any substance in them.

I think Twitter's success is in its simplicity. I'm not on a high horse or anything; I've very few tweets, and I started my illustrious tweeting with a re-hash of a Penny Arcade strip.

So, now that any potential Twitter cred I might have had is out the window (Twitcred? Tweetcred?), the fact is Twitter is a vastly dumbed-down blogging service that lets anyone post whatever inane minutiae of their life they may feel compelled to share with the rest of us. I'll admit there's a certain bit of creativity in trying to cram something of substance within 140 characters. The funny bit is that practically no tweets actually have any substance in them.

".. because those quacks peddling death in a pill ARE using coercion and violence. It's called "Take my pill or you are going to die. I guarantee this pill will let you live. Nothing else can save you." And that's what their sales pitches boil down to."

Are you talking about the conventional practicioners or the alternative ones?

"The Triumph of New-Age Medicine"
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/the-triumph-of-new-age-medicine/8554/
"Medicine has long decried acupuncture, homeopathy, and the like as dangerous nonsense that preys on the gullible. Again and again, carefully controlled studies have shown alternative medicine to work no better than a placebo. But now many doctors admit that alternative medicine often seems to do a better job of making patients well, and at a much lower cost, than mainstream care -- and they're trying to learn from it. ... The list of much-hyped and in some cases heavily prescribed drugs that have failed to do much to combat complex diseases, while presenting a real risk of horrific side effects, is a long one, including Avastin for cancer (blood clots, heart failure, and bowel perforation), Avandia for diabetes (heart attacks), and torcetrapib for heart disease (death). In many cases, the drugs used to treat the most-serious cancers add mere months to patients' lives, often at significant cost to quality of life. ... "

And quoting Marcia Angell:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. [Marcia Angell]"

Vitamin D, periodic fasting, and eating a lot more vegetables, fruits, and beans can help prevent cancer, but it is harder to deal with cancer in those ways when you already have it (though they can sometimes still help). See Dr. Joel Fuhrman and Dr. John Cannell for more information with references.

But it also seems like, as above, some (not all) mainstream practices for cancer really are pointless (but profitable).

My mother died of colon cancer (as part of her situation where she also had dementia). A surgeon pushed us into doing an operation for her cancer that I really regret as the testing, hospitalization and recovery process put her through a lot of trauma and did her no real good. A good thing to do with my anger, both at that surgeon and at myself for being persuaded by him, is to tell others how to have a good chance of preventing cancer, and a very much smaller chance at treating it with good nutrition, vitamin D, and sometimes fasting. I even just twittered something on that @ Hugo Chavez (with links to those references for Fuhrman and Cannell):
    http://twitter.com/#!/pdfernhout/status/95159429871321090

Cancer is a horrible disease, and anger about it is common. Like Mr. Fred Rogers might say, all feelings are legitimate, it's what we do with them that matters. I hope you can find something positive and constructive to do with your anger about cancer and those who take advantage of people suffering from it, whoever those people are.

I wouldn't say it's viral, but it's not good publicity. And there are more stories of "spam masters" at Google + suspending/deleting accounts without accountability. Here's a post on Google + about "Skud" (who WORKED at Google) who lost her account because she used her nickname instead of her Christian name. And Google knew her by that nickname; she's been keynote at conferences and introduced as her nickname —links provided so you can see her story and G+ users' reactions to Skud being deep-sixed by G+ spam masters. (She's on twitter too: @skud)

Note, people are asking Cutts for more of an explanation about Dylan than "I looked into it", and Cutts is ignoring them (or repeating the party line that he looked into it). But Dylan isn't shutting up about it. If nothing else, that's terrible PR. Cutts should either work it out with Dylan in private so that Dylan stops talking about it, or say what the TOS violation is. Because people really don't give a shit about "Dylan"; they want to know it won't happen to them.

I wouldn't say it's viral, but it's not good publicity. And there are more stories of "spam masters" at Google + suspending/deleting accounts without accountability. Here's a post on Google + about "Skud" (who WORKED at Google) who lost her account because she used her nickname instead of her Christian name. And Google knew her by that nickname; she's been keynote at conferences and introduced as her nickname —links provided so you can see her story and G+ users' reactions to Skud being deep-sixed by G+ spam masters. (She's on twitter too: @skud)

Note, people are asking Cutts for more of an explanation about Dylan than "I looked into it", and Cutts is ignoring them (or repeating the party line that he looked into it). But Dylan isn't shutting up about it. If nothing else, that's terrible PR. Cutts should either work it out with Dylan in private so that Dylan stops talking about it, or say what the TOS violation is. Because people really don't give a shit about "Dylan"; they want to know it won't happen to them.

I wouldn't say it's viral, but it's not good publicity. And there are more stories of "spam masters" at Google + suspending/deleting accounts without accountability. Here's a post on Google + about "Skud" (who WORKED at Google) who lost her account because she used her nickname instead of her Christian name. And Google knew her by that nickname; she's been keynote at conferences and introduced as her nickname —links provided so you can see her story and G+ users' reactions to Skud being deep-sixed by G+ spam masters. (She's on twitter too: @skud)

Note, people are asking Cutts for more of an explanation about Dylan than "I looked into it", and Cutts is ignoring them (or repeating the party line that he looked into it). But Dylan isn't shutting up about it. If nothing else, that's terrible PR. Cutts should either work it out with Dylan in private so that Dylan stops talking about it, or say what the TOS violation is. Because people really don't give a shit about "Dylan"; they want to know it won't happen to them.

Here's an update: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/norways-capital-shaken-by-bomb-blast/2011/07/22/gIQABA6dTI_story.html

Turns out this has been a twofold attack. First the bomb was set off in Oslo. About two hours later a camp for political youth from the governing labor party was attacked by a single assailant with a "machine gun", glock and a shotgun. He was dresses as a police officer.
7 has so far been confirmed dead in the bombing
10 has been killed in the shooting at the camp, mostly 15-16 years old. More are suspected.
There are several unexploded bombs at the youth camp. The whole camp is held on a little island in a lake, only accessible by boat. Several kids trying to run away by swimming are suspected drowned.

Turns out the attacker are a Norwegian, suspected neo nazi, and fundamentalist christian. With a gun permit. He's been arrested.
This is the suspect according to the newspapers https://twitter.com/#!/AndersBBreivik

What a horrible day indeed :(

https://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/status/93077906326175744

You can't see The Sun, because this.

You get faster code if your code is under a lot of register pressure because you're doing computations with a bunch of reusable intermediate results, etc.

You get slower code if your code is memory-bound, especially if pointer-chasing is involved (because you blow out your caches more easily and end up having to actually talk to RAM more).

Which one matters more for a web browser is a tough question. For example, most operations on the DOM are of the pointer-chasing variety.

See also https://twitter.com/#!/bz_moz/status/73784940755566592

http://twitter.com/#!/simonmaddox/status/91230955863408640

Yeah, half a penny per dollar app? That's clearly outrageous.

http://twitter.com/#!/simonmaddox/status/91230955863408640

The worst part is they have allowed lies to go unchallenged for all this time. And they have lied to cover their own ass in the process. Take a look at this tweet. This is Evan Hansen, the editor in chief at Wired magazine, stating clearly that they have released all relevant portions of the chat logs concerning Manning and Wikileaks.

Now check out this portion of the chat logs.

MANNING: he (Julian Assange) knows very little about me
MANNING: he takes source protection uber-seriously
MANNING: "lie to me" he says
LAMO: Really. Interesting.
MANNING: he wont work with you if you reveal too much about yourself

This explicitly states that Manning and Assange have almost no relationship. Assange doesn't want to know the guy. Yet lies have persisted for this past year saying that Assange coaxed the documents out of Manning. The feds were trying to build a case against Manning based on that assumption. But the chat logs clearly state the opposite is true.

Wired has lied for a year on the subject and has no credibility. How Evan Hansen is still employed there is beyond my understanding.

Actually, I would argue Weibo is better than both.

Well, if you want to do that effectively, might I suggest actually drawing the comparisons?

Instead of having to post shortened links that direct traffic to an external site, multimedia content is integrated directly into the website’s interface, so that no one ever has to leave the Weibo ecosystem.

Facebook has done this forever with thumbnails and it even loads in a flash player if I link to something on Bandcamp (not sure about other sites). If Wiebo doesn't redirect you an external site, how does it deal with copyright issues? Twitter will soon support images on tweets if it doesn't already for you.

One of those Loyalty / Rewards Systems

Not for me, thanks.

Think of it as social networking plus Pokemon. Sounds awesome to me.

Well, enjoy it man. I am part of a large section of the population of the United States of America that does not find Pokemon cute or entertaining. Sounds like hell to me.

Logging into Weibo takes users to "Weibo Square," a portal filled with endless possible detours, including the hot topics of the day, most popular tweets, and highlighted celebrity users.

Yeah, MySpace had this. It still does now that it's been sold to a marketing firm. And that's where it belongs. Social Networking is about the users. You should spend time at someone's page and trends should be a sidebar. When I see this all I can think of is Supermarket tabloid. Again, not for me.

Okay, this section should technically be labeled “e-commerce,” but I got too excited over the prospect of being able to order food online through a social networking site.

So one of your selling points is that on a massive social network, companies market and sell shit to you. No thanks man. I don't think you understand what "social networking" means to me. Users are the center of attention, not food or ecommerce. If you want to add those Apps and APIs and they start to get intrusive to the core experience, you're going to lose users. You can keep Weibo.

If you call that a conclusive "better than Facebook and Twitter" discussion, you need to work on your sales pitch, shill.

Forget their name, just take a look their company uniforms, they look more like inmates -- not security guards.

Actually I think ActionScript would be superior because its statically typed and properly OO. I was discussing this with Vanessa Hurst a.k.a @DBNess on twitter this weekend.

Actually I think ActionScript would be superior because its statically typed and properly OO. I was discussing this with Vanessa Hurst a.k.a @DBNess on twitter this weekend.

Correct, the propelr place for that is on Twitter..

http://twitter.com/#!/search/i%20have%20to%20poop

Hi! Welcome to slashdot, a place for news. Here's a link to my personal blog, my twitter account, my photo diary, my linkedin profile, ... Now let me abuse this news site even more to funnel traffic to my own stuff.

Like they fixed Stefan Esser's bug that (iirc) was open for every 4.3 version?

This bug was stolen and leaked prematurely, who knows, it may well have been in iOS5.

Every single day? Really? I doubt that very much. First of all Sunday, in many parts of the world have closed shops on that day and other parts of the world close down shops on Fridays early.

Take your silly argument somewhere else.

Go read the facts: http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/google-activates-500000-android-devices-every-day-20110629/

The tweet: https://twitter.com/#!/Arubin/status/85660213478309888

This is nothing to do with a platform war. Stop trying to make it into one.
The simple facts are that Apple has only a few device models, and an import ban hurts them in their biggest
market, but wouldn't make a dent in memory providers. What Apple doesn't sell, HTC, LG, Motorola, Sony-Ericcson, and Samsung will sell. Do you think America is going to stop buying smartphones and tablets?

Dude. I'm making that a QOTD.

Two weeks ago people on the Internets here (in other forums) were talking about how the plant had basically already melted down and that Obama had ordered a news blackout of the plant to conceal mass evacuations that apparently had already begun! All of this to protect his "green jobs" initiative.

Well, guess what? I live in Omaha. There's no meltdown. No evacuation. No flooding at the site.

OPPD's official rumor control page:

http://www.oppd.com/AboutUs/22_007105

OPPD flood blog:

http://www.oppdstorminfo.blogspot.com/

OPPD's Twitter page:

http://twitter.com/#!/oppdcares

They already addressed this on their twitter http://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/status/84075440024719361 The press release wasn't written by them.