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Detail of a sculpture titled Doubles by George Sugarman at the Grounds for Sculpture.

Best Viewed Large.

 

Two years ago I published a graphic showing the favicons of places that I'd recently visited on the internet. I thought I'd take some time (a few hours actually) this afternoon to revisit and refresh that graphic. In order to see this graphic best I'd recommend clicking through the image to Flickr and then clicking on the magnifying glass above the graphic on Flickr to view full size. Best viewed large I suppose as they say.

 

If you'd like to add a note with a hyperlink to a url for any site feel free. :)

 

The image above represents only some of the websites that I've visited in the past 2 weeks. The list does not include everywhere I've been on the internet. I've only chosen to share sites in this graphic that have favicons that pop up when you visit them. Probably about half of the sites that I visit (my own included) don't have favicons. The above graphic contains 330 different internet sites that I've visited.

 

Some stats on my internet activity over the course of the past 2 weeks. From May 15 until today I have visited 12,601 pages on the internet on my primary laptop computer (MacBook Pro). I have visited more pages than this because this is not my only computer. In addition to my primary MacBook Pro, I have three other PCs that I use regularly to surf the internet. I estimate that I probably load a little over 1,000 internet pages a day.

 

The number one site that I've visited over the past 2 weeks has been FriendFeed. The number 2 site I've visited over the past 2 weeks has been flickr. These two sites represent over half of my internet activity over the past 2 weeks.

 

Below is a list of sites that are included in this graphic.

 

1001 Noisy Cameras

30 Boxes

Twitter

Adrian's

im.alexcarpenter

Yahoo Answers

Anyone's Guess

iTunes Store

I'm Not Actually a Geek

Big Thoughts from a Small Mind

Eskelin Technology

Compete

Epic Edits Weblog

Flickr Blog

FriendFeed Blog

FriendFeed

Go2Web2.0

High Touch

Magnum Photos Blog

MySpace

Seattle Pi.com

Twitter Blog

Wired

blogoscoped.com

blogs.eastwick.com

photopreneur

blogs.wsj.com / Law Blog

blogs.zdnet.com

Google Blog Search

Bloomberg.com

Blue Side of Life - Dave's Weblog

BoingBoing

Google Book Search

Brightkite

Broadcaster House

Brugo, Your Daily Dose of Bit Rates

Camerapedia.org

CertifiedBanger.blogspot.com

Paying Attention

Colin Walker

Commentful

# Comments

Dotted Line

iCraig

Creative Commons

Davis Freeberg's Digital Connection

del.icio.us

Dembot.com

Mozilla Developer Center

Digg

Dossy's Blog

Ethan Klapper

elbo.ws

Mozilla.com

Firefox 3

Wikipedia

SmartSetr

Failblog.org

fatherroderick.sqpn.com

sarahintampa

flickr

forums.ilounge.com

frederickvan.com

Fred Wilson

Edythe

gas2.org

gawker.com

greenstijl.nl

getsatisfaction.com

gigaom.com

gizmodo.com

Good Experience

Gothamist

Google Groups, FriendFeed

highscalability.com

honest ape

Hype Machine

ifitsgood.wordpress.com

Google Image Search

Instrumental Analysis

internetducttape.com

itafroma

itsmejulia.com

Jonathan Penny

jp.Zooomr.com

J W Horne

All Things Digital

kwerfeldein.de

Confess 2.0

Laserlike

Laughing Squid

Letters Have No Arms

Lifehacker.com

Google Maps

Yahoo Maps

Mashable.com

memes.org

michaelmistretta.com

midPhase

most-expensive.net

mrontemp.blogspot.com

Project Muse

musicisart.ws

mysmithmicro.com

newatlantic.wordpress.com

New Media Fanboy

BBC News

news.cnet.com

news.yahoo.com

next-thing.net

nextup.wordpress.com

notes.torrez.org

officeofstrategicinfluence.com

onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.typepad.com

Powerset

Pandora

parents.berkeley.edu

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

photooftheday.hughcrawford.com

phreadz.com

Pop17

Popdose.com

Pownce

reddit

robinjeanandersen.com

ryansholin.com

pilcrow Lit Fest

Picasa Web Albums

Photobucket.com

saladdaysmusic.net

sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com

sarahmeyers.wordpress.com

scobleizer.com

seanreiser.com

searchengineland.com

Craigs List

SheGeeks

Shirky.com

songsillinoismp3.blogspot.com

suwaowalog.tumblr.com

slashdot.org

techmeme.com

technorati.com

Technosailor

terraminds.com

thedigitallifestyle.com

the Next web

The Pop Cop

tinyurl.com

nytimes.com

trac.zooomr.com

TranceMist

travel.yahoo.com

twittermap.com

upcoming.yahoo.com

userscripts.org

VentureBeat

viaspire

archive.org

weburbanist.com

whois.domaintools.com

wickedstageact2.typepad.com

Dare Obasanjo

360voice.com

AccuWeather.com

Adobe.com

Adorama

Alexa

amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

AppleInsider

AV Club

Blogger

BlogThis!

Box.net

Brave.com

bspcn.com

bugblogger.com

Businessweek.com

cafepress.com

cameraposition.com

canyouseethesunset.com

captainsdead.com

Cartoon Network

CD Universe

centernetworks.com

chilirec

Children's Choice

Chris Brogan

chron.com

Church of the Customer.com

CinemaNow

Compete

cyberjournalist.net

dailymail.co.uk

divinecaroline.com

dogster.com

Duncan Riley

Ed Bott

encyclopediadramatica.com

Engadget

Environmental News Online

eternalstorms.at

Facebook

Fast Company

filmsite.org

fineartphotoblog.com

fogofeternity.com

Forbes.com

fotohacker.com

FoxNews.com

FT.com

Goodreads

Google

Greasespot

guardian.co.uk

Hacking Netflix

HaloScan.com

Hockleyphoto.com

Huffingtonpost.com

Ignite Social Media

IMDB.com

imeem.com

InformationWeek

Inquisitr.com

internetactu.net

istartedsomething.com

iStockphoto.com

jasontavares.name

jaunted.com

jimmyr.com

justsearching.co.uk

kenrockwell.com

KFC.com

khou.com

Kodak.com

kottke.org

last.fm

lastpodcast.net

latimes.com

LinkedIn

Jeremy Toeman's LIVEdigitally

loiclemeur.com

LoJack for Laptops

Louisgray.com

luceromusic.com

lyricsdownload.com

Lyricsfreak.com

lyricsmania.com

lyricsmode.com

lyricsondemand.com

lyricsrocks.com

marketingcharts.com

marketingpilgrim.com

Mark Evans

mathewingram.com/work

mattcutts.com

mediafire.com

mentalfloss.com

metrolyrics.com

micropersuasion.com

microsoft.com

msnbc.com

Netflix

Network Car

Nicole Hanusek

Outside the Beltway

paidcontent.org

parislemon.com

Paul Graham

Plaxo

Podtech.net

Problogger.net

prospect-magazine.co.uk

psfk.com

quantcast.com

Read Write Web

Rob Galbraith

rushisaband.com

sacbee.com

salon.com

sanfranmag.com

sarahintampa.com

SarahLacy.com

Scott Kelby

scribkin.com

sfgate.com

ShermansTravel

sheysmith.com

slashfilm.com

smashingmagazine.com

snopes.com

socialtimes.com

Soundflavor

StumbleUpon

sweetlyrics.com

TechCrunch

the-digital-picture.com

thescreamonline.com

tivo.com

truthout.org

tzplanet.com

Variety.com

veoh.com

Vimeo

Washington Post

Web Strategy

Web Monkey

Webware.com

whoshouldifollow.com

winextra.com

wnyc.org

WPzoom.com

Yahoo!

Robert Seidman

YouTube

Zatz Not Funny

Zeigen.com

Zooomr

zShare

Alexa Sparky

antipolygraph.org

American Express

merkley

B&H Photo

A Photo Editor

Flickrleech

blog.pmarca.com

An awful lot of criticism has been running around the internets today about censorship. Apparently a good chunk of international flickrites including Germans can no longer access anything but photos designated "safe mode" by Flickr.

 

I'll be brief here.

 

Censorship sucks.

 

At yesterday's big Yahoo business annual meeting thing Yahoo rejected an anti-censorship proposal submitted by their shareholders. This was wrong. Yahoo already has a black eye over it's helping to jail Chinese journalist Shi Tao.

 

Part of the proposed anti-censorship proposal presented to Yahoo would have required that they not host data in countries who endorse censorship. In light of what happened to Shi Tao, this would seem to make some sense.

 

Anyways, as CEO of Zooomr, today Kristopher Tate and I made a decision for Zooomr to formally adopt the anti-censorship shareholder proposal that Yahoo rejected. It's a small thing really. We are just a small little photo sharing site, we're not big like Flickr, but it seemed like the right thing to do and it has us putting our money where our mouth is with regards to censorship.

 

We think it makes good business sense to oppose censorship, but more significantly it is the right and ethical thing to do.

My friends ZeeAnna! and Burnt Umber tipped me off today to a new search engine operating out there called Imagelogr. Only it's not like your traditional image search engine. Most image search engines like Google or Bing include a link back to the images that they search from the web.

 

Not so with Imagelogr.

 

Imagelogr claims to be scraping the entire "free web" and seems to have hit Flickr especially hard, copying full-sized images of yours and mine to their own servers where they are hosting them without any attribution or links back to the original image in violation of all available licenses on Flickr. If people on Imagelogr want to they can manipulate your images, rotate them, see them at different sizes up to 300% and even download the images with a download button directly from the site.

 

Want to know if they've stolen some of your flickr Images? Just go here and type in your flickr name in the search box and see if any come back.

 

I don't know much about the new search engine. There is not much information to identify who is actually behind it. According to their masked domain registation, the site, currently registered with godaddy, was set up there in April of 2010. The site currently boasts to be tracking over 24 *billion* (yes, billion with a B) images. If their numbers are true, this may in fact be the largest image grab in the history of Flickr.

 

At the site under a "legal" link there is a Terms of Service page that reads "coming soon." Under their contact link they provide you the email address: imagelogr [at] gmail [dot] com. I emailed them to ask what is up with their view of image licensing and will report back if I get an answer back from them.

 

Under their main page of the site they have a site description that reads as follows: "Imagelogr.com is an image & picture search engine. We try to index pretty much every picture & image currently available on the free internet. With our powerful search engine finding these images should be fairly easy. We also offer a few image manipulation tools to stand out from the competition."

 

I think it's a bit misleading for them to try and tie their search engine with the "free" internet. It might give people the impression that any images that are on their site can be used for free, which is definitely not the case. People who erroneously assume that they can use the images on this site may end up being liable for copyright infringement if they do.

 

Interestingly enough, it looks like they are even indexing a bunch of Getty Images photographs, which I guarantee you won't last long. In fact it appears that while the thumbnail images for Getty are still there, if you click through to the larger sized images many are already showing as not available on the site.

 

Some users at Flickr started complaining about this in a thread in the Flickr Help Forum, but in usual Flickr fashion they censored the thread by locking it down. Wouldn't want it getting out there now that there was a wholesale rip off of flickr images going on. Thanks alot Flickr!

 

Update: It looks like Imagelogr is rapidly trying to do damage control. Since I wrote this post they have added a disclaimer on images that they may be copyrighted as well as added a source link to images and a link to their site for "image removal" which reads as follows:

 

"If you are the owner of copyrighted content that is displayed on Imagelogr.com, we will gladly remove those images.

 

Please email us the exact links of the image pages where your content is being displayed.

 

Make sure you send us the links to the image page, NOT the search pages.

 

GOOD EXAMPLE: www.imagelogr.com/image/nUE0pQbiY2Mupz00YaA0LKEcLl5zoTywn...

BAD EXAMPLE: www.imagelogr.com/images.php?q=new+york

 

Email your removal URL's to imagelogr [at] gmail [dot] com and we will remove them within 48 hours."

 

I'm not sure why they'd think that giving people a way to have their images removed absolves them from image theft, but we'll see what happens. They seem to be adapting quickly.

 

 

Update #2: Imagelogr is now offline, if you go to their url it is replaced with the following message: "Imagelogr.com is currently offline as we are improving the website. Due to copyright issues we are now changing some stuff around to make people happy. Please check back soon."

 

Update #3: On Slashdot here.

 

Update #4: domainlogr has responded with the following explanation:

 

"What Happened To Imagelogr.com?

 

If you are wondering why you are being redirected to domainlogr.com instead of landing on imagelogr.com, this page is for you.

 

We recently launched a little site called imagelogr.com using the Yahoo! BOSS api. It was a little image search engine that was far from finished. The site was just online, didn't have any traffic, and we didn't actually host any images. The whole site was maybe 50kb of php files :)

 

Because the 'back-to-source' links were still missing, someone started a post on Flickr claiming we stole billions of images. The counter on our frontpage stating (We are now indexing 25.000.000.00 images) was just a number made up by us, and actually didn't mean much. It was a guess number of how many images Yahoo! would have in its database approximately.

 

When the news started to spread that we posted full size images without a 'back-to-source' link, we quickly took action and added 2 source links on each page and added a copyright notice stating that he image shown might be copyrighted. After the news was posted on Slashdot and countless other blog and news sites, the emails with complains were coming in rapidly.

 

In the end we just decided to take the website offline.

 

This whole Imagelogr project was a non-profit website, we did not display a single ad on the site. We simply tried to make a better images search engine than the currently available ones.

 

For now the website will remain offline, and it is our plan to turn it into a Google Images like website (with frames linking to the original source) over the next couple of days. Until that time, we are forwarding all traffic to this domain."

By comparing three consecutive days of seismograms the scale of the Japan earthquake becomes apparent.

 

These are data from the seismogram archives of the The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI).

 

There are three pages. They show 10, 11 and 12 March (left = 10, middle = 11, right = 12).

Each page is 1 day of 24 hours. Each horizontal row is one hour. You can see the first shock was recorded at 6:48 locat time.

 

It is chilling to see that the whole earth vibrated a whole day long after this earthquake.

 

Source:

www.knmi.nl/seismologie/archief.html

 

= = = = = = = = = =

 

I now realize that Flickr could censor this picture just as they did with the Egyptian Secret Police photographs:

yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/13/0055209/Flickr-Censors-Eg...

Taken for a photo contest that they said I can't talk about. By mentioning that I can't talk about it, am I breaking the rules?

 

2009-29-12: Hmm, hello slashdot.

When you start working with Social Media Marketing you need to measure it somehow.

All sites and statistics need a place or category. It just makes it easier to find or gather together.

Danny Sullivan (Guru) made his categorization on his blog.

Here hare his subcategories of Social Media

•Social News Sites

•Social Bookmarking Sites

•Social Networking

•Social Knowledge

•Social Sharing

National Geographic’s subcategories of Social Media are quite similar

•Social News Sites

Digg

Reddit

Twitter

Slashdot

Jaiku

 

•Social Bookmarking Sites

StumbleUpon

Diigo

Delicious

Meneame.net

Propeller.com

 

•Social Networking

Facebook

MySpace

Orkut

Care2

 

•Social Knowledge

Wikipedia

Yahoo Answers

Squidoo

Ask Metafilter

 

•Social Media Sharing

YouTube

Flickr

Tumblr

DevianArt

 

Recently I made my own categorization of Social Media and it looks like this.

 

•Social Aggregators/Pushers

Ping.fm

Friendfeed

Hello.txt

Popurls

Posterous

Utterli

Disqus

 

•Social Bookmarking/Link sharing

Diigo

Delicious

StumbleUpon

Mister Wong

Yahoo! Bookmarks

 

•Social Collaboration

Acrobat

Skype

 

•Social Experience Reporting

Flixter

Digg

Reddit

Yelp

 

•Social Location

Blogloc

Fire Eagle

IRL Connect

Loki

Plazes

Tripit

 

•Social Media News

Chirps

Jaiku

Koornk

Plurk

Twitter

Wordpress

Blogger

Xanga

 

•Social Media Sharing

23

72 Photos

Bebo.com

Blip.tv

Buzznet

Drop.io

Dropshots

Fliggo

Moblog

Twitpic

Viddler.com

YouTube

Zoomin

 

•Social Live Broadcast

Ustream

Bambuser

 

I will continue to work on my categories and post changes after evaluation.

You can also look at the well known “The Coversation Prism” categorys

 

Image address farm4.static.flickr.com/3009/2735401175_fcdcd0da03.jpg?v=0

Brians blog www.briansolis.com/2008/08/introducing-conversation-prism/

    

that doesn't restrict to slashdot anymore.

 

taken for active assignment weekly - resolutions.

 

what it took

1. cup of black tea

2. ironing out the newspaper

3. making the paper sepia from color

4. re-tries which saw to it that i finish my tea by the time am done with the shot :)

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Over 1,400 Vulnerabilities Found In Automated Medical Supply System - Slashdot

108 glossy black comment bubble Social Media/Social Bookmarking/Social Networking Icons. AIM, Blinklist, Blogger, Blogmarks, Delicious, Design Bump, Design Float, Digg, Diglog, Diigo, Dzone, Facebook, Fark, Favorites, Feedburner, Flickr, Friendfeed, Gmail, Google, HI5, iGoogle, LastFM, Linked In, Mail, Mister Wong, Mixx, MSN, Myspace, Netvibes, Netvous, Newsvine, Orkut, Picasa, Propeller, Reddit, RSS, Shout Wire, Simpy, SlashDot, Spurl, Stumbleupon, Swik, Technorati, Twitter, Wordpress, Yahoo, Yahoo Buzz, and Ziki.

 

Click here to see the complete set: webtreats.mysitemyway.com/108-glossy-black-comment-bubble...

 

TechCrunch is reporting that Flickr has cited "Community Guidelines" for censoring an Egyptian blogger's uploaded photos of Egyptian Secret Police. The photos in question were originally uploaded by Hossam Hamalawy, aka Arabawy to his Flickr account here.

 

According to Arabawy these photos were taken from State Security Police headquarters in Nasr City which he says "hosted one of Mubarak's largest torture facilities." Attention was raised over this deletion yesterday after NPR's Andy Carvin tweeted out concerns about the removal.

 

According to Techcrunch, Flickr issued the following statement to them regarding the content removal:

 

“The images in question were removed because they were not that member’s work. As stated by the Community Guidelines, ‘Flickr accounts are intended for members to share original photos and video that they themselves have created.’

 

Flickr isn’t a place for members to just host images but a place where members share original photos and video; and the Flickr community is built around that. For this reason, when we discover images that violate this provision, we may remove such images from the account and, in some instances, delete the account altogether.

 

While we regret that this action has upset the user, he must understand that this is not a decision we ever take lightly but only as necessary to ensure that Flickr remains a great place to creatively post and share original photos and videos with friends, family and the world.”

 

Personally I think that this is one giant cop out on Flickr's part. Flickr knows that Flickr is *full* of photos that are "not a member's work." In fact Flickr staff themselves routinely upload photos to their own personal photostreams that are "not their work." For example, is this Flickr Maps screenshot of a Rev Dan Catt photograph really Flickr Chief Matthew Rothenberg's own work? What about this screengrab of an AOL advertisement? Is this Rothenberg's "own work?" How about this screengrab of a Valleywag page? While I suspect that this "flickrhq masturbating dinosaur award for excellence in the field of community abuse and advocacy," is in fact Rothenberg's own photograph, his own stream, as well as the streams of many other flickr staffers are full of photos that are not "their work."

 

Withdrawing Arabawy's photos of suspected torturers by citing a technicality that the photos were not "his own work," is disingenuous. The photos were pulled because Flickr was pressured to pull the photos and chose to respond to that pressure rather than to take a stand for freedom. Flickr knows that Flickr is chock full of photographs in photostreams that are not a members own work and this act on their part simply points to another act where they have selectively applied one of their rules to suit their needs using their overly ambiguous Community Guidelines as justification. Flickr should apologize to Arabawy and restore his photoset.

 

Certainly there might be times that Flickr ought to consider enforcing a policy of a user "not uploading their own work." Blatant copyright infringement. An account by someone simply hosting eBay graphics. Etc. But using this technicality to remove politically sensitive and important public domain images from a Flickr user's photostream is not one of them.

 

Update: While looking closer at the photo "flickrhq masturbating dinosaur award for excellence in the field of community abuse and advocacy" in Rothenberg's stream, it looks like it actually also isn't "his own work" either. At least according his tags, the photo was taken by Heather Champ. I suppose when you're the boss of flickr you can get away with this sort of blatant community guidelines violation. If you're a journalist exposing torturers from a corrupt government on the other hand, well, not so much.

 

Update #2: on Slashdot here.

 

Update #3: It looks like the photos that were taken down off of Flickr have been republished. Anonymous Operations posted a new link to the photos and tweeted that they are a "gift to the Egyptian people."

What does an Onna Otaku look like?

 

10 Ways to Identify an Onna Otaku

 

Hair: No chestnut dyes, no colored highlights, minimal brushing.

 

Wardrobe: Generic jeans, shirts, and sneakers (with price tag left on, Minnie Pearl-style). Jacket from store at train station. For more formal occasions: school uniform, kimono, or Dhoulmagus costume. (He's the mysterious jester from Dragon Quest VIII. Duh!)

 

Pets: Six virtual pups on her Nintendo DS or iPhone. (She feeds and walks them hourly.)

 

Phone: Worn clipped on pocket to look "technical." It's got a 3-megapixel camera, built-in smartcard purchasing, TV tuner, MP3 player, and browser.

 

Storage: Cute bags are OK for jaunts, but she prefers wheeled luggage for comic cons and epic shopping trips.

 

Magazines: Four different anime monthlies, Cosmode (for cosplayers), and Dolly Dolly (for figurine fans).

 

Diet: Why cook when 7-Eleven has beef bowls and habanero snack chips?

 

Recent Purchases: Action figures and manga galore. Spool of DVD-Rs for, uh, "backup" copies of her fave shows.

 

On her laptop: Script for Sailor Moon/Anakin Skywalker doujinshi (fan comic), links to manga release schedules and 2ch.net (think Slashdot).

 

Under her mattress: Boy's Love comics, which depict romantic, tragic, and hot pretty boy-on-pretty boy action.

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It's no Slashdot effect, but it's still fun to watch traffic ramp up after a mention in Wired magazine!

Tonight's presenter, NASA's Daniel Laughlin (aka Greyark Hightower in Second Life). Info here and here... And about the Kuurian Expedition (Indiana University). More:

 

Slashdot's coverage

International Spaceflight Museum

 

(Ichiume Okawa)

 

Slashdot "decided to subtly tweak Slashdot's design and content to widen our appeal to [women]" for April Fools Day.

my participation....

 

We dont need no photo contol

  

English:

If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off.

In other words that means, that german users can not access photos on flickr that are not flaged "safe" ... only flowers and landscapes for the germans ...

We will not let this happen! Copy and upload this picture to your account - show flickr who we are!

 

Español:

Si tu Yahoo! ID está basada en Singapor, Alemania, Hong Kong o Corea sólamente verás contenido llamado seguro basándose en nuestros términos de servicio locales y no podrás deshabilitar el modo de búsqueda segura..

En otras palabras esto significa, que usuarios alemanes p.ej. ya no podrán acceder a fotos en flickr que hayan sido "flagged", es decir marcadas como no seguras y para todo público... solamente flores y paisajes para los alemanes ...

No permitiremos que ésto suceda! Copia y carga esta foto a tu cuenta de yahoo por favor para mostrar a flickr quienes somos!

 

Deutsch:

Flickr sperrt uns aus! Und auch dich!

Seit gestern werden für deutsche Nutzer keine Bilder mehr angezeigt, die als 'moderate' oder 'restricted' markiert sind! Es gibt keine Möglichkeit das umzustellen - das ist eine grobe Unverschämtheit und Frechheit von Flickr!

 

Füge das Bild zu deinen Favoriten hinzu und poste es!

 

Italiano:

Se il vostro account Yahoo flickr e' localizzato in Singapore, Germania, Hong kong o Korea vi sara' solo concesso di vedere foto dal contenuto ritenuto SAFE, e non avrete opzione di scelta alcuna se vedere o no le foto in questione, senza la possibilià di inibire il controllo safe-search.

Aderite tutti contro la censura su flickr!

  

More info:

www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/91085

www.flickr.com/groups/404938@N23/discuss/72157600347681500/

www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/42597/

  

At yesterday's big Yahoo business annual meeting thing Yahoo rejected an anti-censorship proposal submitted by their shareholders. This was wrong. Yahoo already has a black eye over it's helping to jail Chinese journalist Shi Tao.

 

Part of the proposed anti-censorship proposal presented to Yahoo would have required that they not host data in countries who endorse censorship. In light of what happened to Shi Tao, this would seem to make some sense.

 

Anyways, as CEO of Zooomr, today Kristopher Tate and I made a decision for Zooomr to formally adopt the anti-censorship shareholder proposal that Yahoo rejected. It's a small thing really. We are just a small little photo sharing site, we're not big like Flickr, but it seemed like the right thing to do and it has us putting our money where our mouth is with regards to censorship.

 

We think it makes good business sense to oppose censorship, but more significantly it is the right and ethical thing to do.

  

yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/13/1315230&from...

www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/24/business/yahoo.php

blog.zooomr.com/2007/06/13/zooomrs-stand-on-censorship/

 

China is a likely winner of the information age supply chain through ecommerce

 

Peace and Ecommerce, A Global Systems View

 

Attending a required Masters class “Policy, Law, and Ethics in Information Management” it was only ethical to admit that I worked three months drafting and publishing policy documents for Microsoft, which was now our current class assignment, to research Web based privacy policies and other related documents such as terms of use, conditions of use, code of conduct and learn more about them, with a diary of examples in the wild, and related materials.

 

The educational idea is that we would then be able to contribute meaningfully to creating policy statements and understand their underlying implications to end users and companies. But I had already done this work professionally, so it would be of questionable value for me to do the coursework on the same topic as if I had never done it before.

 

The instructor of the class, Glenn Von Tersch assigned me to present information on freedom of speech, a topic I fell in love with, and wanted to research more. But for my final research, I needed something else.

 

One of my favorite things to discuss in job interviews, or with anyone in earshot, is that I believe that the networked spread of ecommerce over the Web, filtering into even the poorest nations will aid in understanding through communication; that ecommerce leads to peace. In effect I believed that ecommerce contributes in a direct way to peace because it provides the fuel to grow and maintain the Internet. Also it seemed obvious that people and countries that are invested in and perform transactions with each other are less likely to go war against their own interests. Von Tersch said, “These topics you are interested in have more research value than freedom of speech, because 1st amendment rights have been heavily legislated, written about, and researched.” He mentioned something called “The McDonald’s Effect”, how having a McDonald’s outlet or franchise appears to contribute to peace between countries. So peace and ecommerce became my topic.

 

What I did not expect to discover is in human society war is considered the norm and peace the exception. I did not expect to learn about how ugly the 3rd world poverty creating monster of WTO became according to one economist, even though I live in Seattle where the initial protests were. I was surprised to know how Reganomics theory hangs on, like an old B-grade movie on late night TV, because someone somewhere in the supply chain makes money. I did not expect to find that privacy and intellectual rights are so tightly interwoven, or how they relate to conflict, security, potential world dominance and growth.

 

I had no way to guess that I would enjoy the study of economics – statistical, yes, nicely so, but dull no; as a global topic it is juicy-rotten, full of international spies, botched security, with rogue pirate computer chips, and unintended consequences.

 

Who can accurately predict how patterns of global economics relate to peace, privacy, property rights, policies and their outcome in the one breath away from today, the next 20-40 years? Who would think that China - the nation, McDonalds - the corporation, and Chicago crack dealers and their foot soldiers share so much in common when you view their information through these fascinating multi-dimensional facets?

 

One must be educated to search effectively for information. My knowledge about the nature of search is not just intellectual knowledge; this is conditionalized through my own experience of failure to produce relevant search results within massive library databases.

 

My education began with a simple query on the Web “peace + ecommerce” which returned from Google “Theses on the Balkan War,” by Mike Haynes, from the International Socialism Journal, “Capitalism is inherently a competitively expansionist and therefore conflict-ridden system” , effectively laying the blame for war on the US and Western capitalist nations and on anyone claiming to be fighting a war with good intentions. I read it, thinking I would not see this relate to my project – also surprising very similar material was presented in the global economic books I read later.

 

As mentioned the pursuit of ‘education justifies anything’, like looking at any results, so I also clicked on an article entitled “Dinosaur Extinction linked to change in Dinosaur Culture” I read it, and it made sense that something like author Daniel Quinn’s theory of “The Law of Limited Competition” is an operant factor in global markets today, with war being genocide, and countries struggling to win economically laying waste to the very place they live. A notable example is Beijing, the air pollution capital of the world struggling to host the Olympic Games this year. I stored that URL for future reference. The theory and the reality imply that in the race to catch up and compete in global economics, the Chinese are killing themselves off before they arrive at their desired goal.

 

Then I queried in several of the University of Washington interconnected and extensive library databases on the same thing “peace + ecommerce” and found in all of them, zero returns, “0 Results”. My teacher was surprised and advised me to extrapolate and offer conjecture on what was likely, if few sources were available. I notified a friend studying economics who emailed related articles. Very frustrated I tried related queries and turned up articles on the economies of war . How perverse, I thought. I contacted a librarian through the online tool and chatted with her, explaining my quest. She suggested I query on “economics and public policy”. “How is public policy related to peace and ecommerce?” I asked. “Try Conflict Resolution” she replied.

 

Thus the reason I couldn't find 'peace' is because the term used, in educated facet writers’ metadata which is designed to expose information to search, is 'conflict resolution' or ‘conflict prevention’. Oddly the social implication is that war is the norm. Maybe peace doesn’t exist anywhere. A reason I used 'ecommerce' instead of 'global economics' is due to consulting in that field for technology firms. Searching again returned few meaningful results -- the user interface was strange, very slow, and clunky. I longed for Google .

 

Then I remembered the “McDonald's Effect” our teacher mentioned, and quickly I located a reference on the Web, but it was deeply nested in a staggering number of oddly worded articles. I stopped without uncovering where the concept originated. The next night I searched again, and found the author Thomas Friedman and his related books. I briefly scanned all the related Wikipedia articles. I realized quickly that to become educated enough on my two topics, I had to some understanding of economics. This is because even to scrape by enough to search among the many interrelated topics one needs to know the central facet. Very esoteric topics require specialized language and deep knowledge of the subject.

 

More searches turned up substantial evidence that China lags behind other nations in ecommerce.

 

For years I worked in ecommerce designing interfaces (for Microsoft 2003 and Amazon 2007-2008), and working with supply chain software (as a director of an ecommerce company). But because I didn't realize that one could understand it better, and that it is not as dull as computer science and its requisite cash register receipts , I never tried.

 

The "McDonald's Effect" is named after "The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention" created by the author Thomas Friedman's slightly in cheek comments and his book, “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” (the update now titled "The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization").

 

Those books led me to order Amazon ecommerce overnight book delivery, and I read, 'The World Is Flat?: A Critical Analysis of New York Times Bestseller by Thomas Friedman', 'Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything' , 'Making Globalization Work' which reports that there is hope in the world for peace. The Nobel Prize winning author helps the reader extrapolate based on significant knowledge of statistics and global economic analysis through his personal, professional, and academic connections.

 

Common Name Academic Name Book Title

 

McDonalds Effect Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention,

 

aka democratic peace theory Lexus and the Olive Tree

 

Dell Theory The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention The World is Flat, A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

 

peace conflict prevention

 

ecommerce global economics

 

"In his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman proposed The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, observing that no two countries with a McDonald's franchise had ever gone to war with one another, a version of the democratic peace theory."

 

"The Dell Theory stipulates: No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell's, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain."

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Readings

 

The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Friedman

 

Larry Page, Google Co-Founder quoted by Thomas Friedman, p. 179, entire paragraph. “The more global Google’s user base becomes, the more powerful a flattener it becomes…”

 

From Friedman’s conversation with Google’s director of operations in China, Kai-Fu Lee, p. 181 entire paragraph ”In time individuals will have the power to find anything in the world at any time on all kinds of devices – and that will be enormously empowering.”

 

The Quiet Crisis, entire pages 368, 369, chapter on research in China, beating out American innovation in research. “The Chinese government gave Microsoft the right to grant post-docs.” “They work through their holidays because their dream is to get to Microsoft.”

 

“What are those?” She said the researchers get them from Microsoft every time they invent something that gets patented. How do you say Ferrari in Chinese.”

 

p. 370 “… whether we are going to implement or China is going to beat us to our own plan.” Council on Creativeness, regarding the Innovate America report, comment to Friedman by Deborah Wince-Smith.

 

Introduction p. X, Thomas Friedman, “Of course the world is not flat. But it isn’t round anymore either. I have been using the simple notion of flatness to describe how more people can plug, play, compete, connect, and collaborate with more equal power than ever before – which is what is happening in the world. … the essential impact of all the technological changes coming together in the world today. … My use of the word flat doesn’t mean equal (as in ‘equal incomes’) and never did. It means equalizing.”

 

The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas Friedman

 

Forward to the Anchor Edition, Thomas Friedman, “… my Golden Arches Theory – that no two countries that both have McDonald’s have ever fought a war again each other since they each got their McDonald’s.”

 

p. 7 “When I say that globalization has replaced the Cold War as the defining international system, what exactly do I mean?”

 

p. 8 “The cold war system was symbolized by a single word, the wall … “You can’t handle the truth,” Says Nickleson. “Son we live in a world that has walls…”

 

p. 8 “This Globalization system is also characterized by a single word: the Web. … we have gone from a system built around divisions and walls to a system built around integration and webs.”

 

p. 19 “What is information arbitrage? Arbitrage is a market terms. Technically speaking, it refers to the simultaneous buying and selling of the same securities, commodities or foreign exchange in different markets to predict from unequal prices and unequal information. The successful arbitrageur is a trader that knows…”

 

Chapter 3, p. 29. The Lexus and the Olive Tree

 

Photo: Jerusalem, December 29, 1998: Simon Biton places his cellular phone up to the Western Wall so a relative in France can say a prayer at the holy site. (Photo: Menahem Kahana, Agence France-Presse) [caused my spontaneous tears]

 

p. 47 “advertising jingle “Let us put a bank in your home” … office … newspaper … bookstore … brokerage firm … factory … investment firm … school in our homes.”

 

The World Is Flat?: A Critical Analysis of New York Times Bestseller by Thomas Friedman by Ronald Aronica and Mtetwa Ramdoo

 

Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

 

Chapter 5 “Why do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?” p. 89 “So how did the gang work? An awful lot like most American businesses, actually, though perhaps none more so than McDonald’s. In fact, if you were to hold a McDonald’s organizational chart and a Black Disciples org chart side by side, you could hardly tell the difference.”

 

p. 46 “There is a tale, “The ring of Gygnes,” … could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed?”

 

p. 58 “Attendance at Klan meetings began to fall … of all the ideas Kennedy thought up to fight bigotry, this campaign was clearly the cleverest. … He turned the Klan’s secrecy against itself by making its private information public: he converted heretofore precious knowledge into ammunition for mockery.”

 

Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz

 

My favorite – the entire book was used to write this paper.

 

Web Resources

 

Please view attached Appendix www.crito.uci.edu/pubs/20... regarding the reasons one study concludes that hold China back in ecommerce.

 

[1] Waiting until the time is right, one is good at something, or has collected all the facts, without making any attempts isn’t effective. I had to begin someplace even if it is incomplete so I started with the World Wide Web. “If something is worth doing well, at all, it is also worth doing poorly.” I am not sure where that quote came from but I read it in an article where someone presented their reasoning.

 

[2] You never know where something will come from in free rights actions or what it will mean later. For example the person at the center of the Alaskan “Bong hits For Jesus” case, Frederick Morse, now teaches English to Chinese students in China. As an adult it appears he has his head on straight in his wish to help others communicate, more so that those he fought in court.

 

From the CNN news article, published June 26, 2007, “In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said, "This case began with a silly nonsensical banner, (and) ends with the court inventing out of whole cloth a special First Amendment rule permitting the censorship of any student speech that mentions drugs, so long as someone could perceive that speech to contain a latent pro-drug message." He was backed by Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/06/2... downloaded March 13, 2008

 

[3] Pentagon attack last June stole an "amazing amount" of data” Joel Hruska Published: March 06, 2008 - 07:13PM CT Pentagon attack last June stole an "amazing amount" of data... from “blueton tips us to a brief story about recent revelations from the Pentagon which indicate that the attack on their computer network in June 2007 was more serious than they originally claimed. A DoD official recently remarked that the hackers were able to obtain an "amazing amount" of data.

 

We previously discussed rumors that the Chinese People's Liberation Army was behind the attack. “CNN has an article about Chinese hackers who claim to have successfully stolen information from the Pentagon.” Quoting Ars Technica: "The intrusion was first detected during an IT restructuring that was underway at the time. By the time it was detected, malicious code had been in the system for at least two months, and was propagating via a known Windows exploit. The bug spread itself by e-mailing malicious payloads from one system on the network to another." Via email from Jeremy Hansen on Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters

 

[4] “Chinese backdoors "hidden in router firmware" Matthew Sparkes, News [Security], Tuesday 4th March 2008 3:17PM, Tuesday 4th March 2008 Chinese backdoors "hidden in router firmware"... The UK's communication networks could be at risk from Chinese backdoors hidden in firmware, according to a security company.

 

SecureTest believes spyware could be easily built into Asian-manufactured devices such as switches and routers, providing a simple backdoor for companies or governments in the Far East to listen in on communications.

 

"Organisations should change their security policies and procedures immediately," says Ken Munro, managing director of SecureTest. "This is a very real loophole that needs closing. The government needs to act fast."

 

"Would they buy a missile from China, then deploy it untested into a Western missile silo and expect it to function when directed at the Far East? That's essentially what they're doing by installing network infrastructure produced in the Far East, such as switches and routers, untested into government and corporate networks."

 

Late last year MI5 sent a letter to 300 UK companies warning of the threat from Chinese hackers attempting to steal sensitive data. Reports at the time suggested that both Rolls Royce and Royal Dutch Shell had been subjected to "sustained spying assaults".

 

The issue has been debated by government for some time. In 2001, the then foreign secretary Robin Cook, warned that international computer espionage could pose a bigger threat to the UK than terrorism.

 

[5] Chip Piracy Might End With Public Key Cryptography. A Web Exclusive from Windows IT Pro Mark Joseph Edwards, Security News, InstantDoc #98491, Windows IT Pro “A group of researchers from two universities have proposed a way to prevent chip piracy. The technique uses public key cryptography to lock down circuitry.

 

In a whitepaper published this month, Jarrod A. Roy and Igor L. Markov (of the University of Michigan) and Farinaz Koushanfar (of Rice University) outline the problem and details of how their proposed technology will help solve it.

 

Chip designers sometimes outsource manufacturing and that opens the door to piracy, should someone copy the design plans. The copied plans are then used to created 'clone' chips for a wide range of devices, including computers, MP3 players, and more.

 

"Pirated chips are sometimes being sold for pennies, but they are exactly the same as normal chips," said Igor Markov, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. "They were designed in the United States and usually manufactured overseas, where intellectual property law is more lax. Someone copies the blueprints or manufactures the chips without authorization."

 

The groups propose the use of public key cryptography, which would be embedded into circuitry designs. Each chip would produce its own random identification number, which would be generated during an activation phase. Chips would not function until activated, and activation would take place in a manner somewhat similar to that seen with many applications in use today. Via email from Jeremy Hansen.Original source - EPIC: Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits Jarrod A. Roy, Farinaz Koushanfar‡ and Igor L. Markov, The University of Michigan, Department of EECS, 2260 Hayward Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2121, Rice University, ECE and CS Departments, 6100 South Main, Houston, TX 77005 www.eecs.umich.edu/~imark... March 06, 2008

 

[6] Chapter 5 “Why do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?” p. 89 “So how did the gang work? An awful lot like most American businesses, actually, though perhaps none more so than McDonald’s. In fact, if you were to hold a McDonald’s organizational chart and a Black Disciples org chart side by side, you could hardly tell the difference.”

 

[7] Mike Haynes, Theses on the Balkan War, “Capitalism is inherently a competitively expansionist and therefore conflict ridden system” Issue 83 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL Published Summer 1999 Copyright © International Socialism, pubs.socialistreviewindex... accessed March 3, 2008.

 

[8] Readings p.7 “When I say that globalization has replaced the Cold War as the defining international system, what exactly do I mean?” p. 8 “The cold war system was symbolized by a single word, the wall … “You can’t handle the truth,” Says Nicholson. “Son we live in a world that has walls…”p. 8 “This Globalization system is also characterized by a single word: the Web. … we have gone from a system built around divisions and walls to a system built around integration and webs.”

 

“What is information arbitrage? Arbitrage is a market term. Technically speaking, it refers to the simultaneous buying and selling of the same securities, commodities or foreign exchange in different markets to predict from unequal prices and unequal information. The successful arbitrageur is a trader that knows…”

 

[9] Shared by miles on Feb 13, 2006 3:39 pm that I located through a Gmail...

 

[10] “As it gears up to host the 2008 Olympic Games Beijing has been awarded an unwelcome new accolade: the air pollution capital of the world.Satellite data has revealed that the city is one of the worst environmental victims of China's spectacular economic growth, which has brought with it air pollution levels that are blamed for more than 400,000 premature deaths a year” Satellite data reveals Beijing as air pollution capital of world

 

[11] “What we call ‘war’ is not all bad,” according to Virginia Johnson a former governmental planning consultant, who reminded me, “Without conflict there is no life. You don’t want 'perfect peace' there is no movement. The human standard is actually what we broadly call 'war'; because without conflict, change, motion, growth we would learn nothing, we would have nothing, we would be dead.” Personal conversation, March 14, 2008, Seattle, Washington

 

[12] Readings Larry Page, Google Co-Founder quoted by Thomas Friedman, p. 179, entire paragraph. “The more global Google’s user base becomes, the more powerful a flattener it becomes…”

 

[13] Ranganathan, faceted classification, Five Laws of Library Science, S. R. Ranganathan - Wikipedia, www.boxesandarrows.com/vi... Personality, Matter, Energy, Space, and Time. (PMEST)

 

Personality—what the object is primarily “about.” This is considered the “main facet.”

 

Matter—the material of the object

 

Energy—the processes or activities that take place in relation to the object

 

Space—where the object happens or exists

 

Time—when the object occurs

 

[14] www.crito.uci.edu/pubs/20...

 

[15] I learned about supply chain management mainly from the supply chain wizard Marc Lamonica, Regional Chief Financial Officer at Sutter Connect, Sutter Shared Services, and our mutual friend Web entrepreneur and ecommerce product engineer Adam Kalsey, and Sacramento State University teacher Stuart Williams, of Blitzkeigsoftware.net, <a href="http://blitzkriegsoftware.net/St..." blitzkriegsoftware.net/St...

 

[16] Introduction to Computer software classes in the 1970s consisted of FORTRAN cash register receipt programming, which is by implication is what ecommerce actually does.

 

[17] Freakonomics is a must read book of comedy and connections.

 

[18] Golden Arches, definition on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Golden Arches - Wikipedia, accessed March 13, 2008

 

[19] Readings “The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century” by Thomas Friedman, p. 421

 

[20] Readings p. 19 “What is information arbitrage? Arbitrage is a market term. Technically speaking, it refers to the simultaneous buying and selling of the same securities, commodities or foreign exchange in different markets to predict from unequal prices and unequal information. The successful arbitrageur is a trader that knows…”

 

[21] “Conservation groups say acid rain falls on a third of China's territory and 70% of rivers and lakes are so full of toxins they can no longer be used for drinking water.” Satellite data reveals Beijing as air pollution capital of world, Jonathan Watts in Beijing The Guardian, Monday October 31 2005, Satellite data reveals Beijing as air pollution capital of world

 

[22] “…After watching Jobs unveil the iPhone, Alan Kay, a personal computer pioneer who has worked with him, put it this way who has worked with him, put it this way: "Steve understands desire." ... Fortune CNN Magazine March 5, 2008, http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/......

 

accessed March 5, 2008

 

[23] Mac Margolis, “How Brazil Reversed the Curse, Latin America used to suffer the deepest gap between rich and poor. Now it is the only region narrowing the divide. Upwardly Mobile: Middle-class Brazilians” How Brazil Reversed the Curse NEWSWEEK Nov 12, 2007 Issue

 

[24] Mike Haynes, Theses on the Balkan War, “Capitalism is inherently a competitively expansionist and therefore conflict ridden system” Issue 83 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL Published Summer 1999 Copyright © International Socialism, pubs.socialistreviewindex... accessed March 3, 2008. “The optimism that the end of the Cold War might lead to a new world order has been shown to be false. The hope that it would release a peace dividend that would enable a new generosity in international relations has been belied by experience, as some of us sadly predicted it would.3 Though the arms burden has declined, there has been no outpouring of aid to Eastern Europe, no new 'Marshall Plan'. The result has been that the burden of change has fallen on the broad masses of the population, wrecking lives across the old Soviet bloc in general and in one of its poorest components in south eastern Europe in particular. According to the World Bank, the number of people living in poverty (defined as having less than $4 a day) in the former Soviet bloc has risen from 14 million in 1990 to 147 million in 1998.4 Worse still, the advanced countries have continued to reduce further the miserly sums they devote to aid to the even poorer areas of the world. The OECD countries are rhetorically committed to an aid target of 0.7 percent of their output. In 1990 they gave 0.35 percent, and by 1997 the figure had fallen to 0.22 percent, with the United States under this heading giving 0.09 percent of its output, a figure in startling contrast to the expenditure devoted to destruction.”5

 

[25] Readings p. 46 “There is a tale, “The ring of Gygnes,” … could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed?”

 

[26] Readings p. 58 “Attendance at Klan meetings began to fall … of all the ideas Kennedy thought up to fight bigotry, this campaign was clearly the cleverest. … He turned the Klan’s secrecy against itself by making its private information public: he converted heretofore precious knowledge into ammunition for mockery.”

 

Some of the research in this paper on piracy was provided by Jeremy Hansen of Seattle, Washington, USA. Mr. Hansen's email regarding economics served to inform me on this topic. Teacher: Glenn Von Tersch.

'... Things had changed a bit from my undergraduate years. Gone the mainframes, punch cards, deck writers. It was light years away from doing mainframe (similar to this one) , batch card (info for purposes of understanding how batch works only) processing in Fortran, editing mainframe text files in Ed and writing desktop GIS graphical and console applications in pascal during undergrad. ...' [0]

 

Punchcards

Trying out some new hardware. So I scanned a Job card from my computing past. It's a punchcard with map data believe it or not. We used to sit on the deckwriter and manually punch in the co-ordinates for contour lines.

 

I can't find the cards I used to program Fortran. The programs where simple calculations forget exactly more than likely map projections and plotting, well suited to Fortran. I've written about this previously, here I think.

 

The thing is you could carry you programs around in a deck with a rubber band. Great stuff. Don't miss it a bit :)

 

Reference

[0] slashdot.org/~goon/journal, '10 years on the Internet, Early Internet - what information can I find?'

slashdot.org/~goon/journal/62860

[Accessed Wednesday, 20 September 2006]

memcached is an open source distributed memory caching system originally created by Danga Interactive for LiveJournal, now used by many high-volume Internet sites, including Facebook, Wikipedia, Slashdot, and Digg among others. according to Facebook, they are now head of the dev branch and contribute much of the new updates.

This particular Kroger is slightly newer than the glassy greenhouse-style affairs; probably hailing from some indeterminate point in the very late 1980s or early 1990s when architectural lattices and triangles were in vogue. The brick building wall actually bends back and upward where it falls behind the wedge-like slanted overhang.

 

I often rely on municipal website assessment data for steering me straight on the relative ages on buildings, but Kanawha County isn't exactly known for putting public data online...

Rocking out on the finished guitar! W00t!

Thanks To Valve, More Than 1,500 Games Are Now On Linux - Slashdot

Deviantart, Devmarks, Drupal, Friendster, Gtalk, Izeby, Joomla, Meneame, PF Buzz, Script and Style, Skype, Soundcloud, Tipped, Tumblr, Vimeo, Wikimedia, Wykop, Xing, Yellow Pages, Yelp, You Tube, AIM, Blinklist, Blogger, Blogmarks, Delicious, Design Bump, Design Float, Digg, Diglog,

Diigo, Dzone, Facebook, Fark, Favorites, Feedburner, Flickr, Friendfeed, Gmail, Google, HI5, iGoogle, LastFM, Linked In, Mail, Mister Wong, Mixx, MSN, Myspace, Netvibes, Netvous, Newsvine, Orkut, Picasa, Propeller, Reddit, RSS, Shout Wire, Simpy, SlashDot, Spurl, Stumbleupon, Swik, Technorati, Twitter, Wordpress, Yahoo, Yahoo Buzz, and Ziki. Visit here to download:

webtreats.mysitemyway.com/orange-grunge-stickers-social-b...

This particular Kroger is slightly newer than the glassy greenhouse-style affairs; probably hailing from some indeterminate point in the very late 1980s or early 1990s when architectural lattices and triangles were in vogue. The brick building wall actually bends back and upward where it falls behind the wedge-like slanted overhang.

 

I often rely on municipal website assessment data for steering me straight on the relative ages on buildings, but Kanawha County isn't exactly known for putting public data online...

Yesterday I posted an image here for my article on the abusive sales practices taking place at PriceRitePhoto in New York. Interestingly enough, the camera that two days ago they told me was "out of stock" when I refused to buy their overpriced accesories is still showing even with today's date on their website.

 

As an update to my photo from Tuesday, since then here is what has gone on with the attention that this story has received:

 

Update #1: Found this text on their eBay store ad: "We guarantee our customers to have the best quality products and the best customer service! Our customers love us for our friendly attitude, buy with confidence!"

 

This just makes me sick. If you want to Digg this story you can here.

 

Update #2: Well I just received a call back from Steve Phillips at PriceRitePhoto. He said that I should be expecting a call from the "FBI" shortly and that "my tactics" of flooding his store's phone lines was "illegal." When I asked him to hold on as I wanted to turn on my recorder to record our conversation he hung up on me.

 

Of course I have not called his store at all but I'd imagine that the attention that his abuse has recieved from Digg and other places on the internet may have something to do with that.

 

My boss did have a conversation with me about the fact that this guy called him yesterday and was very understanding about the situation.

 

Update #3: Also since calling my boss, Steve Phillips has called my boss' assistant several times this morning as well. Contrary to Steve Phillips claims, I still have had no police officers show up at my office to "arrest me." Nor have I been contacted by the "FBI."

 

Last night when I called AMEX it appeared that PriceRitePhoto had not charged my card yet. My guess is that when I refused to buy their high priced accessories that they never had any intention of sending me the camera at their advertised price. I blocked the card with AMEX and will be getting a new number to prevent them from further abusing my credit card.

 

I have also filed a complaint with the New York Attorney General's office regarding their behavior and have left negative reviews on my experience with their company on most of the shopping comparison services that they are included in. Hopefully from the attention that this story has received they will reflect on the appropriateness of their sales tactics going forward.

 

If anyone has a contact at Yahoo! Shopping it would be nice to learn from them that they were being delisted or at least investigated over this.

 

Interestingly enough, it was just two weeks back that Yahoo! made an announcement about an overhaul to their shopping service. It would seem that they plan to include more social networking type reviews on products and vendors in the future. Hopefully whatever new system they put in place will help weed out the bad apples like PriceRitePhoto.

 

Of course even as late as today, they still have the camera that they told me as out of stock on their internet site for sale for $2,899.

 

Update #4: Received this email back from the New York State Attorney General's Office today: "Dear Consumer:

 

Thank you for your submission to the New York State Attorney General's Internet Bureau. On behalf of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, I want to thank you for taking the time to alert us to this matter. Your assistance is vital to our efforts to serve the people of the State of New York.

 

We have added your submission to our files. It is through complaints such as yours that we learn of patterns of fraud and illegality. If you have any questions about this matter, please call us at (212) 416-8433. For other consumer-related matters, please call our consumer hotline at (800) 771-7755.

 

Thank you for contacting us."

 

Update #5: Thanks to a complaint by Digg User loker269, PriceGrabber has now delisted PriceRitePhoto. Nice to see PriceGrabber do the responsible thing here.

 

Update #6: This story has risen to the number one dugg story on Digg this year with 5439 diggs so far today. Thanks diggers!

 

I also received this email today from Joe Lazarus, Director of Marketing for Yahoo! Inc.: "Tom, I wanted to follow up on a comment I added to your post on PriceRitePhoto. I work at Yahoo! Shopping. I passed your issue along to our Customer Care team who will investigate and take the appropriate action per our merchant Guidelines and Terms of Service. I covered some more details in my comment. Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions. ~ Joe"

 

Update #7: This story just made the front page of Slashdot. It was also on Boing Boing and Metafilter today along with many, many other blogs. I truly hope that this attention shines a light on the abusive bait and switch tactics that so many of you have also unfortunately experienced and shared in your comments.

 

The support is overwhelming and very much appreciated. And, yes, yes, yes, I do know that I was stupid and should have known better and done my homework before buying from these guys -- but that doesn't negate the fact that their sales tactics are wrong and deserve to be stopped.

 

Update #8: Although I have not heard directly back from Yahoo! or their Marketing Director Joe Lazarus. It would appear at least that for the time being, today, PriceRitePhoto is not operating on Yahoo! Shopping. They are still listed as a mechant there and there is a link to their store but when you do a search by their store for products for sale through Yahoo! you get the following message: "We didn't find any product results for mid:1016578." I'm not sure if Yahoo! pulled their listings or if PriceRitePhoto did or if that is just part of what happens when Yahoo! investigates a company. I hope that if after investigating Yahoo! concludes that this company is acting unethically that they will in fact delist them altogether. I will update as I hear more on this.

 

Also, fortunately, my server has held up remarkedbly well with all of the traffic being sent to this story from the above sources. I recently had to move from a shared server to a dedicated server with lots of excess capacity because I've had many highly ranked Google Images that had been eating through my bandwidth in the past. Also it helps keep my bandwidth usage down as the photos that are included as part of this story are actually hosted by Flickr my favorite site on the internet and as I oft like to repeat, "almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world." Ironically, of course in all of this, Flickr is owned by Yahoo!

 

Below is an image of the company's website this morning. As you can see, the camera that was supposedly "out of stock" when I refused to purchase their high priced accessories is still being shown for sale at the $2,899 price even still today. I suspect that they do actually have the camera in stock but that they only sell it to those who load up on expensive accessories and warranty plans from them.

  

Free icons set includes AIM, Blinklist, Blogger, Blogmarks, Delicious, Design Bump, Design Float, Digg, Diglog, Diigo, Dzone, Facebook, Fark, Favorites, Feedburner, Flickr, Friendfeed, Gmail, Google, HI5, iGoogle, LastFM, Linked In, Mail, Mister Wong, Mixx, MSN, Myspace, Netvibes, Netvous, Newsvine, Orkut, Picasa, Propeller, Reddit, RSS, Shout Wire, Simpy, SlashDot, Spurl, Stumbleupon, Swik, Technorati, Twitter, Wordpress, Yahoo, Yahoo Buzz, and Ziki. To download the 154 icons visit: webtreats.mysitemyway.com/154-glowing-pink-neon-social-ne...

Webtreats' 108 Antique Glowing Copper orbs social media icons includes AIM, Blinklist, Blogger, Blogmarks, Delicious, Design Bump, Design Float, Digg, Diglog, Diigo, Dzone, Facebook, Fark, Favorites, Feedburner, Flickr, Friendfeed, Gmail, Google, HI5, iGoogle, LastFM, Linked In, Mail, Mister Wong, Mixx, MSN, Myspace, Netvibes, Netvous, Newsvine, Orkut, Picasa, Propeller, Reddit, RSS, Shout Wire, Simpy, SlashDot, Spurl, Stumbleupon, Swik, Technorati, Twitter, Wordpress, Yahoo, Yahoo Buzz, and Ziki. To download the full set, visit: webtreats.mysitemyway.com/108-antique-glowing-copper-orbs...

Webtreats' 154 free worn cloth social networking icons includes AIM, Blinklist, Blogger, Blogmarks, Delicious, Design Bump, Design Float, Digg, Diglog, Diigo, Dzone, Facebook, Fark, Favorites, Feedburner, Flickr, Friendfeed, Gmail, Google, HI5, iGoogle, LastFM, Linked In, Mail, Mister Wong, Mixx, MSN, Myspace, Netvibes, Netvous, Newsvine, Orkut, Picasa, Propeller, Reddit, RSS, Shout Wire, Simpy, SlashDot, Spurl, Stumbleupon, Swik, Technorati, Twitter, Wordpress, Yahoo, Yahoo Buzz, and Ziki. Visit here to download the full set:

webtreats.mysitemyway.com/154-worn-cloth-social-networkin...

I read an interesting article the other day about screenshots as art and it got me thinking; what is to stop that from being the case?

 

One game I've been playing a lot since I bought it is Blur which contains a photo mode. Pause the game (which is a somewhat awkward action given the fast pace of the game), and you are treated with a "Photo Mode" that allows you to construct a photo snapshot of the action at that moment.

 

You can tweak the obvious things like contrast and brightness, but you can also controll shutter speed and aperture, thus controlling the aount of motion blue and depth of field in the shot. It really is well done!

 

There are some special 'meta' settings for the various options, with the 'shutter speed' setting having a special setting that ensures that the background blurs according to velocity but the cars are sharply focused. This somewhat equates to a panning-shot of the vehicle.

 

I believe I will be trying to play a little more with the idea of posting screenshots here, as there's nothing saying they aren't a type of photography.

Webtreats' 154 free glassy space social networking icons includes AIM, Blinklist, Blogger, Blogmarks, Delicious, Design Bump, Design Float, Digg, Diglog, Diigo, Dzone, Facebook, Fark, Favorites, Feedburner, Flickr, Friendfeed, Gmail, Google, HI5, iGoogle, LastFM, Linked In, Mail, Mister Wong, Mixx, MSN, Myspace, Netvibes, Netvous, Newsvine, Orkut, Picasa, Propeller, Reddit, RSS, Shout Wire, Simpy, SlashDot, Spurl, Stumbleupon, Swik, Technorati, Twitter, Wordpress, Yahoo, Yahoo Buzz, and Ziki. To download the full set, visit: webtreats.mysitemyway.com/154-free-glassy-space-social-ne...

Slashdot is reporting on the Guardian's article that Yahoo and Flickr are censoring "porn". Could this be a reason to discontinue my flickr pro account?

Multiple journalism media report that Twitter has been hacked earlier this week.

 

1. Guardian: Technology: 2013-02-02: News: Twitter says 250,000 accounts have been hacked in security breach: Anonymous hackers were able to gain access to usernames, email addresses and passwords in 'sophisticated' operation www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/02/twitter-hacked-...

 

2. Slashdot: IT: 2013-02-02: Reporting the incident on the company's official blog, Twitter's manager of network did not specify the method by which hackers penetrated its system, but mentioned vulnerabilities related to Java in Safari and Firefox, and echoed Homeland Security's advisory that users disable Java in their browsers. Looks like bad things do happen in threes — Twitter's report comes on the heels of disclosures of hacking attacks on the WSJ and NY Times. it.slashdot.org/story/13/02/02/0340220/twitter-hacked

 

3. Wired: Threat Level: Kim Setter: 2013-02-01: Twitter Hacked; Company Says 250K Users May Have Been Affected: www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/twitter-hacked/

 

4. TechCrunch: 2013-02-01: Drew Olanoff: Just Go Change Your Twitter Password Now. techcrunch.com/2013/02/01/twitter-hacked-250k-affected-ju...

 

“Twitter Hacked: 250k accounts affected” #security #socialmedia

/ SML.20130202.SC.PublicMedia.Twitter.Hacked

/ #SMLScreenshots #CCBY #SMLPublicMedia #SMLUniverse #SMLNET #SMLTwitter

/ #Twitter #hacked #public #media #journalism #hacks #Anonymous #technology security socialmedia #us #Slashdot #Wired #TechCrunch #Guardian #news #world

I'm now sharing these books with fellow students via bookabooka! - a great online service that was recently attacked by the Finnish antipiracy lobby.

 

Sure, my first edition copy of "Logic and computer design fundamentals" by Mano and Kime is more than twelve years old, but in pristine condition, still perfectly relevant and still recommended reading for the course. Why pay $100 for the shiny 4th edition hardback? Just rent my copy for 1€ per month and you'll pass the course. It's doing nothing on my shelf but gather dust, so why not share it. The only thing I need from it is the ASCII character code table, and you know, I've already copied that. Yeah, what a nasty pirate I am.

 

Other books here:

Computer Networking - A top down approach featuring the internet, Kurose & Ross

Data structures and algorithm analysis in Java, Mark Weiss

 

- uploaded by ShoZu

["DJ Goodbeats", the synthesized male voice of a Macintosh text reader, 'raps' entire song; the beat is Mac 'beep' sounds Quack, Chord, Monkey Cheep, and Water Droplet]

 

You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.

Straight outta CompUSA

A translucent DJ named Goodbeats

I gut your sucker MC's, empty all their good leads

Then motherf*ckers must die when I get fettered

No surge protector will protect my surge

Because I'm off the cuff and I'm sick of this shit

Acting out these pussy-ass white-boy pricks

Smoke my stash, kick rhymes 'til I crash

I f*ck girly MC's in their backside cache

 

I'm the f*cking mack daddy

Not a candy-ass Tandy

DJ perpetrators, they can't even stand me

Gonna kill your crew with my CPU

My FPU means f*ck you too

Goodbeats got the biggest damn cock

And a hundred thousand shares of Apple stock

I'm large and in charge like Paul Sorvino

Kick your ass back to Cupertino

F*ck 486's when I get jungle fever

Get them all panting like golden retrievers

...It's getting that time to plug-and-play

I f*ck a 68K and then I blow her away

 

[ lyrics transcribed by me off the album (let's skip the 3rd verse) | buy to hear (Amazon) | VisWiki entry on band (with a video link) ]

 

There was a news item on TV the other night saying that CompUSA is feeling the sting of the economic downturn and is closing some stores. We here in the Puget Sound shrugged because corporate closed the stores here two years ago. Been there, done that, attended the liquidation sale. There was one amusing item out of this particular store near the Tacoma Mall closing... In the timeframe between the store closing and the building being emptied, one of the employees made a cardboard sign that was on the door (to the left of the yellow For Lease sign) that said "404 - Not Found".

 

It's weird how hard this track is to find now since it was huge when the "K-Minus Initiative" album came out. It's all geek-rap by "the sixth most downloaded white Jewish rappers", according to their website (which is also gone), and some of their songs were available online for free -- with links on Slashdot to them. Also missing is the video for "Foam", which had been on their website and other places. And then these guys came up 404 as well. (Hey Professa, give HMO another lime rickey, willya?)

I was having an out-of-browser experience.

"Your privacy is an illusion" - Allegedly, anyway, given a recent story that a laptop with 33,000 Clear system users' passport and biometric data (reportedly unencrypted and "in the clear", if you will), went missing - presumed stolen and perhaps found again according to recent reports - at SFO airport.

 

Update: The laptop has been found in the locked office it was originally in, but not in the exact same location. Some, but not all data was stored on the laptop, and is reported to be protected by not one, but two passwords.. ;)

 

Update, June 22nd, 2009: The service is going away. Well, that was relatively short-lived.

(Quoting flyclear.com):

Clear Lanes Are No Longer Available.

 

At 11:00 p.m. PST on June 22, 2009, Clear will cease operations. Clear’s parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has been unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to continue operations.

Photo by Vincent Ferrari

 

[I am CEO of Zooomr Inc.]

 

Broadway Photo's Sheisty-Looking Business Addresses - Consumerist The Consumerist is out with a post today on Broadway Photo and their related businesses.

 

Here's a snippet from why they have an unsatisfactory report with the BBB.

 

"Please understand that complaints may concern more than one issue

Complaint Issue Last 12 Months Last 12..36 Months Total

Advertising Issues 21 64 85

Contract Disputes 4 2 6

Credit or Billing Disputes 39 54 93

Delivery Issues 19 29 48

Guarantee or Warranty Issues 11 11 22

Product Quality 11 14 25

Refund Practices 23 41 64

Repair Issues 3 3 6

Selling Practices 90 223 313

Service Issues 5 11 16

TOTAL 226 452 678"

Vincent Ferrari, a blogger and friend, decided to go out and actually take photos of the various locations on record with the BBB for Broadway photo and in addition to the shot above, click through to the Consumerist to see more.

 

I, of course, had my own infamous run in with another one of these sleazy retailers, PriceRitePhoto (now operating as Barclay's Photo) a little over a year ago.

 

Sleazy camera retailers, unfortunately, are nothing new and seem to persist despite the attempts on our part to shed light on the cockroaches.

 

But one of the things that really bothers me is that somehow these sleazy companies seem to make it back on the shopping search engines over and over and over again.

 

After I wrote my post on PriceRitePhoto, perhaps the most trafficked post of all time on sleazy camera retailers resulting in stories in the NY Post, NY Times, the top Dugg story of 2005, boing boing, Slashdot, and hundreds of blogs, PriceRitePhoto was able to change their name and get right back on Yahoo! Shoppping within three months.

 

Subsequently when I pointed this out in another blog post they were dropped from Yahoo! Shopping again.

 

But today when I go and look up Broadway Photo, the photo store with an unsatisfactory BBB rating and the complaints listed above, guess what? Yep, not only are they on Yahoo! Shopping but they are listed as a three star merchant. How does a company with an unsatisfactory BBB rating, hundreds of complaints with the BBB able to get a three star rating? And with product reviews on Yahoo like this:

 

"Buyer beware!!!!!! False advertising on product inquired. What was shown on web site was not the real total product expected. Upon calling for confirmation, product advertised wasn't available but was for an inferior version of the same product that you have to buy extra accessories that normally are included in the advertised product. Sales person would insist of purchasing extras that would jack up the price of the order. Very dissapointed!"

 

Flickr, by the way, recently instituted this "cool" new "camera finder" feature where they will send you directly to Yahoo Shopping to buy your camera. That sucks.

 

I'm sure this will be taken down by the time I get this post up (I did take screen shots though and can always share those later) but try this. Go to Flickr's camera finder for the Fuji FinePix S9100. Now click through and sort by price. Who has the lowest price? Yep, you guessed it, Broadway Photo. Thanks Flickr, thanks Yahoo.

 

Take this advice if you want to buy a camera. AVOID YAHOO SHOPPING. AVOID Flickr's camera finder. Instead go to B&H Photo, Amazon.com, Costco, or a local retailer where you can walk into their store and trust them. I understand that Yahoo needs to monetize their social networks, but this is NOT the way to do it.

 

Although Yahoo Shopping may not bear a legal responsibility to prevent bad merchants from getting on their site, they bear a moral responsibility to do at least a modicum of due diligence before letting someone like Broadway on board.

I made this graph by aggregating data from Google Trends for about 150 domains, including the Alexa Top 100.

 

There is an interactive version, which uses this same data, here:

 

www.coverpop.com/bigpicture/

 

The lines are colored according to the slope - red when going up, and blue when going down.

 

The graph is logarithmic, so that low traffic websites can be shown together with high traffic ones.

 

The line at the top is yahoo.com. Google does not provide traffic data for it's own websites, such as google, youtube and orkut.

 

The extra bumpy line in the top section is Mozilla.com, whose traffic gets big spikes when there are new releases of Firefox.

 

The section near the middle, where all the lines turn blue, appears to be the Christmas holiday.--

More stuff by jbum:

Sudoku Puzzles by Krazydad

Wheel of Lunch

Whitney Music Box

The Joy of Processing

 

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