Slashdot Mirror

No sale, but here you go:

http://twitter.com/Newegg

That's a very interesting case of customer service via twitter.
http://twitter.com/Newegg/

Looks pretty much like it's replacing a contact number. Contact support and complain to your friends at the same time!

This year's FOSDEM in Bruxelles had over 2400 unique MAC addresses and 3600 visitors a day(source). We enjoyed a 1Gbps pipe, and far from saturated it.

It was overall of excellent quality, though there was a glitch in at least one of the hacker rooms where the operators had to upgrade the AP firmware. The geographic setup was more broken out: FOSDEM happens at the Universite Libre de Belgique (how appropriate), with talks in lots of classrooms spread across a few buildings.

It would be useful for everyone if they could post a writeup of their infrastructure.

This year's FOSDEM in Bruxelles had over 2400 unique MAC addresses and 3600 visitors a day(source). We enjoyed a 1Gbps pipe, and far from saturated it.

It was overall of excellent quality, though there was a glitch in at least one of the hacker rooms where the operators had to upgrade the AP firmware. The geographic setup was more broken out: FOSDEM happens at the Universite Libre de Belgique (how appropriate), with talks in lots of classrooms spread across a few buildings.

It would be useful for everyone if they could post a writeup of their infrastructure.

You may not be aware of this, but they have a Twitter account devoted to the PlayStation and a blog. Sadly, the blog doesn't record the time when the entries were posted, but you may notice the 13-hour stretch between "slim consoles still work" and - well, actually, if you follow the link, it basically reiterates that slim consoles are working.

Then complete silence until the 24-hour period ended, followed by a brief announcement that "hey, it works again!" and then completely ignoring that it ever happened. Instead they've posted several blog entries that conveniently knock the PSN outage way down the page.

Do they intend to fix this issue with a patch? Can they? Does it even matter? Who knows, they certainly aren't saying. All they've said is "oops, sorry" and, well, that's it. Not even a "we're still looking into this matter."

Of course, based on the vague "if we get new information we'll keep you posted," I get the impression that this isn't the fault of the people running the blog, it's that the PlayStation group themselves are simply not bothering to communicate. Maybe they're still looking into it, maybe they aren't, but the community managers apparently have no idea based on the weasel-wording on the blog. And that would be a problem that Sony should address.

But in any case, I still have to wonder: why in the hell does a reduced instruction set computer have a buggy leap-year function? Why the hell does it care what the human-readable date is? All it needs to do is keep track of "units of time since a known start point." Let the OS worry about what the human time is.

It's Robert A. Kotick's business plan. Infinity Ward didn't want to work on more Modern Warfare games, as they previously stated, so Activision got angry as they obviously want to milk the cash cow more. It's even worse than how EA releases sports games every year (which still make sense to sports fans).

- business strategy focused on developing intellectual property which can be exploited over a long period, occasionally to the exclusion of creating new, risky or niche titles.
- he stated that focusing on franchises that "have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million franchises"
- "We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." Kotick later stated he tries to promote an atmosphere of "skepticism, pessimism, and fear" in his company and, "We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."

Yeah, Activision sounds just lovely. I just keep wondering why Vivendi doesn't put them in shape, but probably it brings money in now. I just hope Activision dies quickly. At least EA has started to bring some innovation again.

Earlier Activision gave trouble to Brutal Legend developers, and they said it good:

Getting mad at Activision for this kind of thing is like getting mad at an ape for throwing feces. It's just how the beast communicates.

Here is a monday afternoon post from playstation detailing issue and serving warnings to not even turn on affected units http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/02/playstation-network-status-update/ updates to problem will be on their Twitter page http://twitter.com/sonyplaystation

I don't really use Flickr, so I don't remember this, but possible (and clear) prior art: http://twitter.com/kellan/status/9651902873

Have you thought about going to Canada? I'm stuck in a similar situation, and I'm saving money to head to a decent country. I just lost my job and I'm loosing my place (I think I have 2 weeks left). I have a family and I can't just "give up". Things are difficult, but I have seen that a bunch of people are hiring and I've had some interesting interviews so far. I'm crossing my fingers. I have my AA too, and I haven't found it to always be a problem (depends on the company). Last place I worked at, my manager was a college drop out -- he is doing alright.

Re: medical - go to the ER. If they won't treat you, go to another one and tell them that you don't remember your name or where you are (I remember something about them unable to refuse helping you if you said that) -- no guarantees - just an idea. The way I see it, if you have to lie to stay alive - go for it.

Don't give up. Things are difficult now, but people are hiring. I just came across this today: http://twitter.com/positions.html

Another thing to consider is applying *everywhere*, don't just look in your state -- look in others (even in Canada). I'm not sure how hard it would be to get a Visa to work there (not even sure you need one).

Good luck, I know that you will find something.

Also, from their “Why” page:

The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you're definitely not... home. So here we are; on one end we're leaving lights on when we're going on a holiday, and on the other we're telling everybody on the internet we're not home. It gets even worse if you have "friends" who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That's right, slap them across the face.

The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc. Because all this site is, is a dressed up Twitter search page. Everybody can get this information.

And at the bottom of every page:

Our intention is not, and never has been, to have people burgled.

Unfortunately what you write is correct.
That is, if a corporation decides to do something illegal, then they will just pressure to pass a law to make it legal.
That's the issue, actually. It is a bad thing. You're so smart I don't need to explain that to you.
Or maybe I do, a quick search shows you're retarded: http://twitter.com/quotemstr

Not everyone is a crook and we should all strive to not be crooks, it is better for everyone. There used to be a time when everyone left there doors unlocked and trusted the community to not rob them. [...] We shouldn't have to hide our information, people should just respect each other enough not to steal their stuff.

Yes, yes, pining for the Norman Rockwell version of the 1950's is fun but in reality, the probability of having something stolen from you has never been zero. Some percentage of your neighbors are willing to steal from you no matter where (or when) you live. The only thing that stands in their way is opportunity. If they are able to go in and take something with a very low chance of being spotted or caught, they're going to try it. The rational response of a property owner is to take reasonable steps to secure his or her things to reduce the opportunity for theft, even if they overall relative risk seems low. These are some things that a rational person does not (or should not) do if they care at all about their security and know the consequences of them:

* Go to the store and leave the garage door open
* Give out your personal details to anyone who asks
* Ask a stranger to hold your car keys
* Set an empty or easily-guessed root password
* Put your wallet down in a crowded area
* Broadcast your exact whereabouts on Twitter

If you do any of these things, don't act surprised at the consequences. Not that it would do any good anyway. The criminal has your data or property and you just look foolish for not protecting it. The problem here is that almost nobody using FourSquare understands the consequences of posting their exact physical location to the Internet at large because the media hasn't told them yet. Sometimes it takes a bold statement to get the media to pay attention to an underlying important message and it's hard to get any bolder than a site named pleaserobme.com. The site is just a pretty wrapper around something that's already available to criminals everywhere through Twitter itself. (Does mentioning that fact make me an asshole as well?)

If this kind of thing is wrong, then where is the line drawn? If someone discovers a critical weakness in a popular encryption algorithm with too many vendors to enumerate let alone contact, is it wrong to describe it in public, even though criminals could make use of it to steal data? Doesn't everyone have the right to know that the security of their data is potentially in jeopardy? In forming my own answer, I'm reminded of the old security maxim: Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

... and rob HIS house when he's not home:

>Domain name: PLEASESUEME.COM
>Pruett, Mike mlt@mltgroup.com
>4012 5th Place NW, Rochester, MN 55901

Give him a call to tell him you appreciate being able to track him: 507-281-3490

As I told on my Twitter account..., just a little quick math:

Google's revenues on Q409: $6,6 billion dollars. So $2 millions (0.000299% of that) wasted here and there don't seem much of a problem.

I was much more generous. My Q409 was well bellow that, and I donated $10. That's aprox 0.0024% of that revenues. 10 times more.

Just check his twitter feed: http://twitter.com/Mikepruett. He's not home right now, btw.

Need his address?

MLT Group
4012 5th Place NW
Rochester, MN 55901
US

Domain name: PLEASESUEME.COM
Administrative Contact:
Pruett, Mike mlt@mltgroup.com
411 N Broadway
Lower Level
Rochester, MN 55906
US
507-281-3490

hththxhand

They're also doing nothing more than putting pretty pictures round a Twitter search page: http://twitter.com/search?q=4sq%20-@foursquare.

Dear Fucktarded PR-Challenged Fatty-Haters at @SouthwestAir: Your "apology" blog is insulting, redacted bullshit. FULL details in two hours.

According to TFA Kevin Smith claimed to be sitting in the seat with the armrests down before he was asked to leave the plane. He also claimed to have purchased only one ticket when flying the first leg of his trip. He was kicked off on his return leg.

The Southwest PR people seem to be stretching the truth in their side of the story. I think that the Southwest policy to require the purchase of two tickets when some one cannot fit between the armrests of one seat is generally a good one. However, I think the pilot was overzealous in enforcing the policy. Southwest has not apologized for the mistake they actually made. They merely said, "we're sorry that you don't like our policy." They need to say "we're sorry that we misapplied our policy," in this instance.

This might explain why he was working with AES:

http://twitter.com/brokep/status/7915813818
"@niczar I clocked 12.8Gbps using AES 128 ECB on a dual quad 2.26ghz xeon with HT (= 16 cores). Not cost efficient."

http://twitter.com/brokep/status/7905751784
Is there a fast solution with a graphics card to do #AES within #Linux? I need 10Gbps or so realtime.

This might explain why he was working with AES:

http://twitter.com/brokep/status/7915813818
"@niczar I clocked 12.8Gbps using AES 128 ECB on a dual quad 2.26ghz xeon with HT (= 16 cores). Not cost efficient."

http://twitter.com/brokep/status/7905751784
Is there a fast solution with a graphics card to do #AES within #Linux? I need 10Gbps or so realtime.

Spotify denies that they're losing Warner.

To be clear WMG is not pulling out of Spotify. Media is taking things out of context. So don't worry-be happy :

http://twitter.com/spotify

I find those values highly suspect. Wil Wheaton alone has 1.6 million daily followers. It's extremely unlikely that the remaining 12.4 million are spread out across every other twitter account, unless there is significant overlap to the extent that every follower follows thousands of accounts.

Jeff Jarvis: "Disappointed Google didn't make a new commercial appropriate to the Super Bowl. France? Football? Google?"

I can't say my experience matches yours. There are two testing modules shipped by default with Python. Django has integrated support for them out-of-the-box. Django itself has plenty of tests. There are plenty of good third-party testing modules and people are pretty vocal about using them.

On the other hand, I do very strongly get the impression that the lax attitude of "I tried it in my browser so it works" is omnipresent in the Rails community, coming right from the top. Witness the uproar over the Google web accelerator. Rails was just plain wrong to use GET for unsafe operations. But "it worked in a browser", so they didn't see anything wrong with it, even though it was out of spec. GWA came along and triggered data-loss bugs in Rails applications that used unsafe behaviour for GET requests, including 37signals' applications. Rails developers, rather than simply saying "whoops, our bad, we'll fix this ASAP", called GWA evil and wrote code to block GWA. Roll forward a year, GWA changes its behaviour and the blocks don't work any more, the same things happen all over again, and the Rails developers call GWA "scary" and "malicious". These are not the actions of people who care about writing the best code possible, these are the actions of people with egos chasing features and attention.

As for the word "professional" in particular, that's a dirty word in the Rails community.

The over one hundred thousand apps speak otherwise. Some examples of truly innovative apps would be welcomed.

Of course 99% is crapware, in what kind of app store would be that different? But don't deny there are also great, innovative, and useful applications: Guitar Toolkit, Tap Tap, Ocarina, Remote, Shazam, Wobble, ...

I also love how Apple basically ripped off the 'classics' app guy, but that's another story.

FYI that classics guy asked Delicious Library creator Wil Shipley for his blessing before Classics was released because of the similarities between both applications. Wil recently twittered:

I guess it's not enough Apple has hired every employee who worked on Delicious Library, they also had to copy my product's look. Flattery?

and also

Pages. Numbers. Keynote. iTunes. All these started out as products at tiny companies, not Apple. Innovation comes from them.

Follow your favourite band's twitter RSS feed, or get Google Reader to scrape their sites for you. I'm just sayin', twitter ain't designed for aggregation.

He did a google search of 'dandaman32' probably and followed the link results. That is what I did and found out a bit more about the project.

Though, it seems that Enano CMS has a professional-looking website, a Freshmeat page, an ohloh page, a BitNami stack page, and a Twitter feed.

Did I miss anything? ;-)

Jason Calacanis got his tablet 10 days ago

http://twitter.com/jason

Highlights:

- $599, $699, $799 depending on size and memory
- iPhone OS with multitasking
- OLED screen (no size given)
- Verizon and ATT for 3G, WiFi
- Front and back cameras for video conferencing
- Thumbpad on each side for mouse gestures
- Fingerprint scanner for login with up to five profiles
- TV/Monitor output and wireless keyboard
- HDTV Tuner with PVR
- Solar panel for recharging (more a gimmick)
- Battery life is "great" in ebook mode, 2-3 hours otherwise
- No word on name

Something odd someone pointed out in the comments of that article - Mark Mulligan says he never spoke with torrentfreak
http://twitter.com/Mark_Mulligan/status/8074993556

RT @flypapertv Pirates are most valuable customers. http://vf.cx/jlB $$ Only problem with my quotes: I didn't even speak to the journalist!!

You might want to reconsider that. That would be a definite show stopper for me, were I looking for an FB framework. Until Paypal is regulated as the bank they are instead of allowing them to play bank, I won't be using them. Seems to me this would be a negative selling point for the source as well.

From http://twitter.com/wikileaks WikiLeaks now accept credit card donations without paypal. thanks! http://bit.ly/wldonate https://tipit.to/wikileaks.org Unfortunately tipit is down at the moment i write this.

They will ship them to the US, they have just been selling out as soon as Amazon restocks. Watch their Twitter for updates.

If you check the other uploaded videos on youtube by the same guy (who's name appears to be "Ben Lindquist", the CEO of Green Phosphor, found on blogger and twitter), there is an introduction to Green Phosphor's Glasshouse. So yeah, Slashvertisement done in the style of Lost.

Welcome to the future of advertising. /sigh.

...then go back to CoD4. Hell, that's what Joel Gardiner did IRL...if it's good enough for the cueball it's good enough for anyone, I say.

+1 Insightful, with some exceptions.

+1 Insightful, with some exceptions.

I have no problem with bomb threats being illegal. There's a lot of time and expense involved in evacuating people, tracking down if there is a bomb, time lost (for business/school/whatever), etc. My problem comes when the "bomb threat" is a single tweet that a person makes undirected at anyone.

Of course, they needed to investigate it, but all they needed to have done was read the rest of his tweets to see whether or not there was any pattern. Checking his Twitter page ( http://twitter.com/pauljchambers ), I see it is protected. He likely did this after the arrest, but if it was this was before the arrest, they could have come in and had him show them his Twitter page.

Unfortunately, they didn't seem to know anything about Twitter. From http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-joke-led-to-terror-act-arrest-and-airport-life-ban-1870913.html:

"I had to explain Twitter to them in its entirety because they'd never heard of it," he said.

Now, I know some here don't have a high opinion of Twitter, but I think most folks have heard of it and have a general inkling of what it is. If the police department doesn't have anyone that knows what Twitter is, perhaps they need to hire some more Internet-savvy officers to help them in cases like this one. This should have been looked into, quickly determined to have been a joke, and then dropped (with a warning if it'd make the police feel better) for more important cases.

The guy makes a joke on twitter, which is public

His tweets are protected.

Obviously the police didn't take the threat seriously at all:

A week after posting the message on the social networking site, he was arrested

If it takes the police to find Paul J Chambers when there a PICTURE of him on his Twitter profile AND it tells you he's from Doncaster, England.

Now, I'm not the police, but I think that if I had access to a phone book of Doncaster, I could probably find the guy in a few hours. Given that he's 90% likely to have a drivers license, it's not like it'd make it any more difficult to find him.

Geez!

link.

You're welcome. We take pride in being very transparent with our customers. You can see that on our company site (dyn.com) and on our twitter pages (http://twitter.com/dyninc and http://twitter.com/dyndns).

When you screw up in the auto industry, the company faces the massive expense of a product recall. That helps to keep you honest with your engineering quality.

A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. source

"Son, people will always try and fuck you. Don't waste your life planning for a fucking, just be alert when your pants are down." source

Minimum amount of effort for maximum amount of reward.

someone else will come along and will replace it, and there'll be a mass migration to the latest thing.

Yes, and then that new someone will have an overload of visitors and they'll need to buy more servers and bandwidth. The "customers" won't want to pay for it, just like they don't pay for it now. To keep the site from going under the new guy, who will by now have burned through most of their venture capital, will open up the floodgates on the massive data collected to advertisers. Then another new guy, who is pissed because the "site sold out", will create a new site and the whole thing starts over again.

Now personally I don't really understand the whole "social networking" thing. Message boards are just fine, though I really miss usenet, as I can share ideas with people I'd never meet in real life and learn something interesting. But if I want to tell you about my trips, or what I'm doing in my day, or show off some really embarrassing photos, I'll tell my actual real friends whom I've met face to face thank you very much! Though I will admit I've done the "twitter" thing a bunch of times and no, I've never figured out the point to it either.

Nope, I'm not some teeny bopper trying to be cool, nor am I a mid thirties person trying to relive a stylized nostalgic fantasy of my high-school days. I mean seriously people, are you really so deluded as to pretend the guy who shoved you into lockers between periods, while making you look like a dork in front of the cute girl from your fourth period English class you were crushing on since freshman year and never had the guts to talk to, is now your bestest awesomest friend?

But if Facebook is so important to people, they should be willing to pay a fee to cover the expense of those servers and the costs of having real security. But what? Pay!? For something on the internet?!?! No way!

I don't know what we can do to get people to pay for stuff online, I know I would switch websites in a hurry if Slashdot went to subscriber only, but if a site has become such a big part of a person's life, like Facebook has for some people, they should pay for it. Otherwise, they shouldn't complain when they have to trade their time freeloading on the site for some lost privacy.

As for me, I am in my mid thirties and I have absolutely no illusions that High-School was some wonderful bed of roses whose absence leaves a gaping hole in my heart, it was a hell we all wanted to get the frak out of. Yet for those precious few that I cared about, that I could actually call "friends", I certainly still do have contact with them in real life. I don't need a Facebook or a MySpace or a Flickr or any other nonsense social networking crap. E-mail and my trusty old land line with an el cheapo GE answering machine work just fine...

...well, okay, I do have a Twitter too. ;-)

Now get off my lawn ;-)

Meh, the only halfway decent thing I've seen on twitter is http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays

Other than that, the only time I appreciate it is when people make fun of it, and when it helps me know when to stop paying attention to the news because they're talking about it.

Of course, while there are interesting things on twitter:

http://twitter.com/search?q=conan

There is also some amazing crap:

http://twitter.com/search?q=%23imtiredof

Of course, while there are interesting things on twitter:

http://twitter.com/search?q=conan

There is also some amazing crap:

http://twitter.com/search?q=%23imtiredof

The best use case for twitter to me really sounded like machine updates. Mostly because its the only application that seemed sustainable.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

A person twittering sounds great and all, until that person suddenly is too busy to update and then its worthless to any followers.

I think you just missed my point, though -- take the imaginary cocktail party again. Some people will have to go to the bathroom, some will get sick or tired and go home. That doesn't mean the conversation ends, unless you have such a sad social life that you're only talking to that one person.

Again, think of it not as microblogging, but as a slightly slower but MUCH bigger IRC.

Technologically, I actually despise Twitter. There have got to be a dozen different ways it could be done better, relying on existing standards and properly distributed. Socially, I despise the fact that people seem to have picked up on it as the Next Big Thing, much like Facebook, Myspace, blogging, or the Internet itself. Think about it -- "ExecTweets" is a real thing, and it's completely missing the point.

Oddly enough, the best demonstration of Twitter I have seen is fictional. Just remember, it's not a blog, it's a conversation -- you have to actually pick apart the threads to get some of the humor.

The best use case for twitter to me really sounded like machine updates. Mostly because its the only application that seemed sustainable.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

A person twittering sounds great and all, until that person suddenly is too busy to update and then its worthless to any followers.

I think you just missed my point, though -- take the imaginary cocktail party again. Some people will have to go to the bathroom, some will get sick or tired and go home. That doesn't mean the conversation ends, unless you have such a sad social life that you're only talking to that one person.

Again, think of it not as microblogging, but as a slightly slower but MUCH bigger IRC.

Technologically, I actually despise Twitter. There have got to be a dozen different ways it could be done better, relying on existing standards and properly distributed. Socially, I despise the fact that people seem to have picked up on it as the Next Big Thing, much like Facebook, Myspace, blogging, or the Internet itself. Think about it -- "ExecTweets" is a real thing, and it's completely missing the point.

Oddly enough, the best demonstration of Twitter I have seen is fictional. Just remember, it's not a blog, it's a conversation -- you have to actually pick apart the threads to get some of the humor.

The best use case for twitter to me really sounded like machine updates. Mostly because its the only application that seemed sustainable.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

A person twittering sounds great and all, until that person suddenly is too busy to update and then its worthless to any followers.

I think you just missed my point, though -- take the imaginary cocktail party again. Some people will have to go to the bathroom, some will get sick or tired and go home. That doesn't mean the conversation ends, unless you have such a sad social life that you're only talking to that one person.

Again, think of it not as microblogging, but as a slightly slower but MUCH bigger IRC.

Technologically, I actually despise Twitter. There have got to be a dozen different ways it could be done better, relying on existing standards and properly distributed. Socially, I despise the fact that people seem to have picked up on it as the Next Big Thing, much like Facebook, Myspace, blogging, or the Internet itself. Think about it -- "ExecTweets" is a real thing, and it's completely missing the point.

Oddly enough, the best demonstration of Twitter I have seen is fictional. Just remember, it's not a blog, it's a conversation -- you have to actually pick apart the threads to get some of the humor.

The best use case for twitter to me really sounded like machine updates. Mostly because its the only application that seemed sustainable.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

A person twittering sounds great and all, until that person suddenly is too busy to update and then its worthless to any followers.

I think you just missed my point, though -- take the imaginary cocktail party again. Some people will have to go to the bathroom, some will get sick or tired and go home. That doesn't mean the conversation ends, unless you have such a sad social life that you're only talking to that one person.

Again, think of it not as microblogging, but as a slightly slower but MUCH bigger IRC.

Technologically, I actually despise Twitter. There have got to be a dozen different ways it could be done better, relying on existing standards and properly distributed. Socially, I despise the fact that people seem to have picked up on it as the Next Big Thing, much like Facebook, Myspace, blogging, or the Internet itself. Think about it -- "ExecTweets" is a real thing, and it's completely missing the point.

Oddly enough, the best demonstration of Twitter I have seen is fictional. Just remember, it's not a blog, it's a conversation -- you have to actually pick apart the threads to get some of the humor.