Its a shame that the/. article is colored by hyperbole, because the nut of google's screwup here is worth paying attention to. Google Reader had an excellent "share" function prior to this new feature which encouraged users to provide friends/colleagues with an obfuscated URL or feed of any posts the user selected to share. The user was warned explicitly to only share that URL selectively if they wanted to keep their shares private.
The new feature automatically took what users had previously been sharing selectively and broadcasted it to "friends" concocted from gmail contacts - where "friends" equates to anyone the user chatted with or exchanged x number of emails with. Many of these friends might include ex-employers, relatives, strangers from mailing lists, people you had flamewars with, or others whom you might not wish to share with. The only way to "un-friend" those people is to find and delete them in gmail (though often the share name doesn't match up) or delete all previously shared posts and discontinue sharing. For some "power users" of the old sharing regime this has created some awkward situations and necessitated a great deal of troubleshooting. Google's tone deaf response so far to legitimate user issues accounts for some of the anger and hyperbole in that thread.
Google seems to be bootstrapping its existing services into a new social network by making broad assumptions about who your "friends" are and leaving users limited or oblique means of opting out.
I suspect many users of gmail have no desire to be automatically enrolled in a new social network whose only opt-out involves abandoning the original service. If this Reader tempest is an indication of how Google plans to charge ahead in the social networking space, gmail users should start considering migrating to a new service.
In addition to hosting PIHKAL and TIHKAL, Erowid is the largest and broadest resource online for information relating to psychoactive plants and chemicals. I'm sure alot of folks reading this thread use erowid alot... I strongly encourage people to donate to keeping it alive and healthy. They put out an amazing newsletter for members - membership starts at $25 and donations of $200 or higher are currently being matched under a summer matching grant. Signed copies of the Shulgins' books are available at the $150 level.
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What might someone who's been a chef, a writer, a materials engineer, and a chemist bring to a new job?
Well, presuming that this person is now 100 or so years into the future, what will a career mean? What nightmare will the rat race have morphed into when you are on your 800th revision of your resume? Advances in AI and robotics could replace humans for alot of stuff, but in all likelyhood humans will continue to be a cheaper resource - wages would no longer need to reflect a goal of retirement (if they even still do). You'll live forevor in the saltmine of an off world colony eating a slurry of artifically flavored squid-meal in the service of a trillionaire with 6 penises and laserbeam eyes.
Now if only someone would offer a prize for extending the lifespan of our biosphere for an extra couple of hundred years...
just installed it on my old 233mhz iMac (running OS9.2) and am having color issues. I get weird horizontal and vertical bars of color loss or big blocks of no color in the movie. Had no such problems with quicktime 5...
Any other non-unix'd mac geeks lurking (and willing to out themselves) having similar troubles?
Can we build a new internet and start over? This one is starting to smell funny...
I've been trying to get my parents online for a couple of years now. Not an easy task when I live thousands of miles away and can't provide much in the way of instruction. So far its been a nightmare. Machines pre-installed with the full trojan-horse marketing one expects from a windows machine. Their doors to the web, AOL, MSN... all of it making their experience feel like getting 500 new cable channels that are all just different versions of the Home Shopping Channel. Email with a GUI that looks like Mickey Mouse has hacked your pop mail account. Lots of shiny clunky flashy advertising for people that really don't buy shit anyway...
The desperation with which corporations and their advertising machines come after us makes me very uneasy about the stability and future of our economy. The pyramid scheme can't hold... I can't afford/don't need any more crap.
The brilliant thing about DoCoMo's i-Mode service in Japan is the way they encourage independant content providers. Several thousand i-mode specific websites are able to take micropayments/subsciptions that appear as very small charges on customer bills. Its a cottage industry that gives consumers some really innovative options and lets many small content providers earn a living. Imagine that!
Wired ran a nifty story on these a few months back: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.09/doc omo_pr. html
But expect ATTW to hoard all the marbles and dole them out to the likes of AOL...
A truly great wireless web service will give incentives to local small-time content developers. But most of what we are seeing in the pipeline will be more of the big boys duking it out for turf that consumers are wary of entering. And losing tons of money in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
Its a shame that the /. article is colored by hyperbole, because the nut of google's screwup here is worth paying attention to. Google Reader had an excellent "share" function prior to this new feature which encouraged users to provide friends/colleagues with an obfuscated URL or feed of any posts the user selected to share. The user was warned explicitly to only share that URL selectively if they wanted to keep their shares private.
The new feature automatically took what users had previously been sharing selectively and broadcasted it to "friends" concocted from gmail contacts - where "friends" equates to anyone the user chatted with or exchanged x number of emails with. Many of these friends might include ex-employers, relatives, strangers from mailing lists, people you had flamewars with, or others whom you might not wish to share with. The only way to "un-friend" those people is to find and delete them in gmail (though often the share name doesn't match up) or delete all previously shared posts and discontinue sharing. For some "power users" of the old sharing regime this has created some awkward situations and necessitated a great deal of troubleshooting. Google's tone deaf response so far to legitimate user issues accounts for some of the anger and hyperbole in that thread.
Google seems to be bootstrapping its existing services into a new social network by making broad assumptions about who your "friends" are and leaving users limited or oblique means of opting out.
I suspect many users of gmail have no desire to be automatically enrolled in a new social network whose only opt-out involves abandoning the original service. If this Reader tempest is an indication of how Google plans to charge ahead in the social networking space, gmail users should start considering migrating to a new service.
The epic story of Victrola's wifi issues as told by their master coffee roaster and self-confessed 'net junkie: http://tonx.org/index.php/archives/coffee-wi-fi-an d-the-decline-of-western-civilization/
In addition to hosting PIHKAL and TIHKAL, Erowid is the largest and broadest resource online for information relating to psychoactive plants and chemicals. I'm sure alot of folks reading this thread use erowid alot... I strongly encourage people to donate to keeping it alive and healthy.
They put out an amazing newsletter for members - membership starts at $25 and donations of $200 or higher are currently being matched under a summer matching grant. Signed copies of the Shulgins' books are available at the $150 level.
---
What might someone who's been a chef, a writer, a materials engineer, and a chemist bring to a new job?
Well, presuming that this person is now 100 or so years into the future, what will a career mean? What nightmare will the rat race have morphed into when you are on your 800th revision of your resume? Advances in AI and robotics could replace humans for alot of stuff, but in all likelyhood humans will continue to be a cheaper resource - wages would no longer need to reflect a goal of retirement (if they even still do). You'll live forevor in the saltmine of an off world colony eating a slurry of artifically flavored squid-meal in the service of a trillionaire with 6 penises and laserbeam eyes.
Now if only someone would offer a prize for extending the lifespan of our biosphere for an extra couple of hundred years...
---
The author of the Wired article, Richard Manning has an excellent new book out Against the Grain : How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization
His recent piece in Harper's The Oil We Eat is highly recommended and can be found online here
-this is a recording.-
This photo was giving Elena too much attention. Do you think she is single?e .JPG
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/fac
_
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"Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."
- Tyler Durden
.
This is the second time they have gone all dual proc. in their pro lines. They did this briefly back in 2000.
Any other non-unix'd mac geeks lurking (and willing to out themselves) having similar troubles?
- - - -
an interesting, detailed perspective on Palladium from someone who worked inside MS on some related stuff. TCPA and Palladium: Sony Inside
-- -- -- --
Can we build a new internet and start over? This one is starting to smell funny...
I've been trying to get my parents online for a couple of years now. Not an easy task when I live thousands of miles away and can't provide much in the way of instruction. So far its been a nightmare. Machines pre-installed with the full trojan-horse marketing one expects from a windows machine. Their doors to the web, AOL, MSN... all of it making their experience feel like getting 500 new cable channels that are all just different versions of the Home Shopping Channel. Email with a GUI that looks like Mickey Mouse has hacked your pop mail account. Lots of shiny clunky flashy advertising for people that really don't buy shit anyway...
The desperation with which corporations and their advertising machines come after us makes me very uneasy about the stability and future of our economy. The pyramid scheme can't hold... I can't afford/don't need any more crap.
The brilliant thing about DoCoMo's i-Mode service in Japan is the way they encourage independant content providers. Several thousand i-mode specific websites are able to take micropayments/subsciptions that appear as very small charges on customer bills. Its a cottage industry that gives consumers some really innovative options and lets many small content providers earn a living. Imagine that!
c omo_pr. html
Wired ran a nifty story on these a few months back:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.09/do
But expect ATTW to hoard all the marbles and dole them out to the likes of AOL...
A truly great wireless web service will give incentives to local small-time content developers. But most of what we are seeing in the pipeline will be more of the big boys duking it out for turf that consumers are wary of entering. And losing tons of money in the process.
going to have to pull USB's butt out of the fire AGAIN?