I grew up with Radio Shack being a DIY shop. Over the years I kept going there when I needed some odd electronic part. I noticed them becoming a mini Best Buy but never articulated that into a conclusion until I read this thread. Yah, bad idea. The bigger shops can do a better job than Radio Shack in that arena.
I don't know if they can go back to the DIY thing for the same reasons. At least in my area there are really big computer shops that also sell all sorts of electronic parts for DIY types. They can probably do it cheaper than Radio Shack.
Anyone remember the old days when you would buy a piece of wire from Radio Shack.? The clerk would fill out a huge receipt, by hand, asking you for your address and all sorts of personal information. That was hated and it took them so long to adjust. Ironic, these days they probably just pull it all off of your ATM/debit/credit cad.
Gosh, remembering how Google disrespected people's privacy with Google Buzz and the stunt they pulled with white washing search results for China on "Tienanmen Square" I would just as soon trust Facebook my social security number and my ATM PIN.
Geeze, I forgot to mention Google and Apple tracking people's location with their mobile devices.
Anyone who trusts their financial information with these companies is being short sighted.
I have been disgusted with liberals who have criticized President Obama for not being 100% progressive in all of his decision. A president is not a king and needs to compromise to be effective.
However, renewing The Patriot Act truly disgusts me.
Oh well, at least it is something that expires and has to be renewed. Too bad the Bush Tax cuts for the wealthy weren't structured that way.
That makes sense. Given Tianamen Square, my expectation would be anyone who would do something like the shoe throwing thing in China would end up with their life ruined or ended really fast.
I've been a programmer for 12 years. I've never even found a use for multiple desktops except for one job I had developing on Red Hat. It was nice to have a desktop devoted to 4 x terminals with various things in them.
I can see a network admin getting a lot of use out of multiple desktops, which you can get even for windows.
Another monitor is just a convenience for having to click another desktop.
Many Facebook users ( at least the smarter ones ) who have their crew of friends have moved on to using aliases and profile pictures of things other than their face.
Interestingly, some foolish people get into pissing contests with their real name and their real pictures as if Facebook never got anyone fired, divorced, etc.
Many usenet readers provided an astonishing number of features that we have lost in the move to web forums. Maybe something was gained, but much was also lost.
Killfiles were useful to stamp out trolls. These days there could be a feature similar to adblock subscriptions that would block known trolls across all forums.
What killfiles had and what web boards lack is the ability to push a button and alter the user's experience to be as if the troll never came to the board.
For some reason, over the years, web board writers have not wanted to do this.
Killfiles weren't perfect. Sometimes you would be left with content free groups if the troll and responses to the troll became the bulk of the content.
I watch the TED and Google Talks youtube channels, where I see idealistic Google employees all of the time giving sanctimonious talks about mixing higher ideals with business.
If they want to continue to be taken seriously they need to clean up some of Google's business practices and apologize for some of the company's more egregious ethical transgressions like suppressing information about Tianamen Square on the Chinese version of Google.
I didn't read the letter, but I did read the article. Google & Facebook's claims about *how* the proposed law was not described clearly.
What was clear, sort of, is how both organizations would lose information that has been used in the past to play dirty tricks on consumers. For example, location, date and time information. In the past, Amazon has charged different prices for the same product based on a customers location.
These two orgs should have been the last to write such a letter. Google and Facebook protesting new privacy laws is a bit like Saleh ( Yemen's dictator ) and Gaddaffi protesting freedom of speech on the grounds that it will interfere with the running of their government.
I think every American owes it to her/himself to read a copy of How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman.
The book is pretty much about the title. Teaching the average person how a doctor thinks so they can leverage that information for better treatment.
Even the best doctors don't have all of the time they would like to keep on medical research. Salespeople from big pharmaceuticals are very aggressive about marketing new drugs directly to doctors and providing them with "updated educations" to go with the drugs. This is discussed in the book and how big pharmaceuticals to pathologize normal occurences in life.
A good example is that past a certain age it is normal for a man's testosterone to slightly decrease every year. Now, there is marketing for testosterone replacement pharmaceuticals......which may actually create problems where there were none.
Programmers might find this book interesting too. The author interviews many doctors about their methods for solving medical mysteries. Doctors spend a lot of time thinking about their thinking, where they went wrong and how they could have done better. I found it interesting that for each doctor who had a "smug story" of walking into a situation to correctly diagnose it quickly, the same doctor had several other stories where s/he ate humble pie by having the evidence right in front of them. Anyone who has ever had to figure out or maintain a poorly designed and poorly documented large application where non-tech people are waiting on results will be able to relate to the book.
My problem with Facebook and privacy is that Facebook changed the rules about what was private, several times, without notice, without permission and without apology.
Had those things been involved I could have chosen what I wanted to reveal like I would with slashdot, another blog or a web board.
I use Facebook now with the assumption that everything will be public, in time. I was looking forward to a "privacy aware" alternative to FB so I could relax and socialize more with my friend via the web. Now, I rarely post and when I do I don't say anything interesting.
I think you are right in that most people enjoy Facebook and have learned to look the other way about privacy concerns.
Then there are ignorant people who keep those stories about Facebook getting people fired and losing divorce cases coming.
No offense to anyone, but I have my doubts that this is real.
A gas tax wold be far simpler and beneficial, but politicians of both parties have known for decades that it would be political suicide. The tax from the blurb would be even more offense to Americans and President Obama is not dumb. On top of that he is easing into reelection mode. In other words, all common sense points away from this being real.
Remember that con-man Andrew Breitbart editing that speech from the African American woman from the USDA to make it sound like she was screwing white people over even thought she was speaking against it?
Give me an aluminum foil hate, but I wouldn't be surprised if something similar wasn't going on here.
How disappointing. With all of the hype about uber geeks contributing serious money to the project I was expecting a Facebook alternative that respected privacy.
I wonder if Diaspora fizzling out had anything to do with Mark Zuckerberg contributing to it.
Realistically, probably not.
College is the last time in a person's life where flaking out is okay and college students have large demands on their time. Zuckerberg probably knew this and knew his donation wouldn't produce any results beyond making him look like a sport.
I know a woman who goes shopping with her iPhone. Before she buys anything she checks out the prices on the same item on the web. Smarts and gadgets combined.
"With EIGHTEEN public diaspora pods available, each with TENS of seeds, I think it's safe to say that everybody who's anybody is on Diaspora by now."
I guess I am not anybody then. I am on their Facebook fan page and I had no idea they were up and running. I hope they don't that attitude and that they work harder about letting ordinary people know about the service or they will not even make a dent in replacing Facebook.
Slashdot Mirror
I grew up with Radio Shack being a DIY shop. Over the years I kept going there when I needed some odd electronic part. I noticed them becoming a mini Best Buy but never articulated that into a conclusion until I read this thread. Yah, bad idea. The bigger shops can do a better job than Radio Shack in that arena.
I don't know if they can go back to the DIY thing for the same reasons. At least in my area there are really big computer shops that also sell all sorts of electronic parts for DIY types. They can probably do it cheaper than Radio Shack.
Anyone remember the old days when you would buy a piece of wire from Radio Shack.? The clerk would fill out a huge receipt, by hand, asking you for your address and all sorts of personal information. That was hated and it took them so long to adjust. Ironic, these days they probably just pull it all off of your ATM/debit/credit cad.
Zuckerberg could maximize his respect for animals by not eating them at all and do many other positive things with that one change as well.
If anyone is interested in reading about the many ethical, environmental and healths benefits of vegetarianism go to the site below.
Even if you have no intention of giving up meat, you will have a good idea why people do it, without having to invest a lot of time reading.
http://www.tryveg.com/
Maybe the doomsday preacher John Camping was right about the end of the world coming and he was just wrong with the date.
Texas is doing something that sounds progressive.
If that isn't a sign of the apocalypse I don't know what is.
Gosh, remembering how Google disrespected people's privacy with Google Buzz and the stunt they pulled with white washing search results for China on "Tienanmen Square" I would just as soon trust Facebook my social security number and my ATM PIN.
Geeze, I forgot to mention Google and Apple tracking people's location with their mobile devices.
Anyone who trusts their financial information with these companies is being short sighted.
I have been disgusted with liberals who have criticized President Obama for not being 100% progressive in all of his decision. A president is not a king and needs to compromise to be effective.
However, renewing The Patriot Act truly disgusts me.
Oh well, at least it is something that expires and has to be renewed. Too bad the Bush Tax cuts for the wealthy weren't structured that way.
That makes sense. Given Tianamen Square, my expectation would be anyone who would do something like the shoe throwing thing in China would end up with their life ruined or ended really fast.
I've been a programmer for 12 years. I've never even found a use for multiple desktops except for one job I had developing on Red Hat. It was nice to have a desktop devoted to 4 x terminals with various things in them.
I can see a network admin getting a lot of use out of multiple desktops, which you can get even for windows.
Another monitor is just a convenience for having to click another desktop.
I guess this means more groping and less radiation.
If they were smart, they could turn it into an income source. Just hire really attractive guards, play some Barry White music, etc.
Is Android basically modified Linux? If it is, does mean that I might be able to use a Linux + PC combination with Netflix someday?
They started out like that many years ago. Trust me, there are only so many times you watch the reruns.
Unexpected good news is always welcome and always refreshing. Nice to see the courts doing something right for the people.
aren't they called "biscuits" ? :)
Many Facebook users ( at least the smarter ones ) who have their crew of friends have moved on to using aliases and profile pictures of things other than their face.
Interestingly, some foolish people get into pissing contests with their real name and their real pictures as if Facebook never got anyone fired, divorced, etc.
What killfiles had and what web boards lack is the ability to push a button and alter the user's experience to be as if the troll never came to the board.
For some reason, over the years, web board writers have not wanted to do this.
Killfiles weren't perfect. Sometimes you would be left with content free groups if the troll and responses to the troll became the bulk of the content.
I seem to remember reading some very old sci-fi stories by the late Arthur Clarke that had this possibility as a theme.
I watch the TED and Google Talks youtube channels, where I see idealistic Google employees all of the time giving sanctimonious talks about mixing higher ideals with business.
If they want to continue to be taken seriously they need to clean up some of Google's business practices and apologize for some of the company's more egregious ethical transgressions like suppressing information about Tianamen Square on the Chinese version of Google.
I didn't read the letter, but I did read the article. Google & Facebook's claims about *how* the proposed law was not described clearly.
What was clear, sort of, is how both organizations would lose information that has been used in the past to play dirty tricks on consumers. For example, location, date and time information. In the past, Amazon has charged different prices for the same product based on a customers location.
These two orgs should have been the last to write such a letter. Google and Facebook protesting new privacy laws is a bit like Saleh ( Yemen's dictator ) and Gaddaffi protesting freedom of speech on the grounds that it will interfere with the running of their government.
I think every American owes it to her/himself to read a copy of How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman.
The book is pretty much about the title. Teaching the average person how a doctor thinks so they can leverage that information for better treatment.
Even the best doctors don't have all of the time they would like to keep on medical research. Salespeople from big pharmaceuticals are very aggressive about marketing new drugs directly to doctors and providing them with "updated educations" to go with the drugs. This is discussed in the book and how big pharmaceuticals to pathologize normal occurences in life.
A good example is that past a certain age it is normal for a man's testosterone to slightly decrease every year. Now, there is marketing for testosterone replacement pharmaceuticals......which may actually create problems where there were none.
Programmers might find this book interesting too. The author interviews many doctors about their methods for solving medical mysteries. Doctors spend a lot of time thinking about their thinking, where they went wrong and how they could have done better. I found it interesting that for each doctor who had a "smug story" of walking into a situation to correctly diagnose it quickly, the same doctor had several other stories where s/he ate humble pie by having the evidence right in front of them. Anyone who has ever had to figure out or maintain a poorly designed and poorly documented large application where non-tech people are waiting on results will be able to relate to the book.
Sort of reminds me of lyrics from the Talking Heads song "Once In A Life Time"
" under the rocks and stones there is water"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1wg1DNHbNU
Several weeks ago the failure of the Japanese reactors was "upgraded" to a Chernobyl level disaster.
My problem with Facebook and privacy is that Facebook changed the rules about what was private, several times, without notice, without permission and without apology.
Had those things been involved I could have chosen what I wanted to reveal like I would with slashdot, another blog or a web board.
I use Facebook now with the assumption that everything will be public, in time. I was looking forward to a "privacy aware" alternative to FB so I could relax and socialize more with my friend via the web. Now, I rarely post and when I do I don't say anything interesting.
I think you are right in that most people enjoy Facebook and have learned to look the other way about privacy concerns.
Then there are ignorant people who keep those stories about Facebook getting people fired and losing divorce cases coming.
No offense to anyone, but I have my doubts that this is real.
A gas tax wold be far simpler and beneficial, but politicians of both parties have known for decades that it would be political suicide. The tax from the blurb would be even more offense to Americans and President Obama is not dumb. On top of that he is easing into reelection mode. In other words, all common sense points away from this being real.
Remember that con-man Andrew Breitbart editing that speech from the African American woman from the USDA to make it sound like she was screwing white people over even thought she was speaking against it?
Give me an aluminum foil hate, but I wouldn't be surprised if something similar wasn't going on here.
No harm done.
How disappointing. With all of the hype about uber geeks contributing serious money to the project I was expecting a Facebook alternative that respected privacy.
I wonder if Diaspora fizzling out had anything to do with Mark Zuckerberg contributing to it.
Realistically, probably not.
College is the last time in a person's life where flaking out is okay and college students have large demands on their time. Zuckerberg probably knew this and knew his donation wouldn't produce any results beyond making him look like a sport.
I know a woman who goes shopping with her iPhone. Before she buys anything she checks out the prices on the same item on the web. Smarts and gadgets combined.
"With EIGHTEEN public diaspora pods available, each with TENS of seeds, I think it's safe to say that everybody who's anybody is on Diaspora by now."
I guess I am not anybody then. I am on their Facebook fan page and I had no idea they were up and running. I hope they don't that attitude and that they work harder about letting ordinary people know about the service or they will not even make a dent in replacing Facebook.