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Playing Killzone 3 on a modded PS3? You may want to rethink your gameplan. In light of Sony's ongoing battle of attrition with hackers, Guerrilla Games has made it clear it will be working with Sony to deal swift justice to players who use a jailbroken system to gain a competitive online edge.
"The ability for one person to ruin people's games is not a good prospect obviously, so we're working with Sony on the moderation side," said studio producer Steven Ter Heide in his chat with CVG, continuing, “We're looking at people misbehaving, being able to follow reports against those so that's all been taken care of - and we're working with Sony to see, even more aggressively, what kind of things are happening.”
Heide explained that Guerrilla will be actively monitoring online leaderboards and player stats for suspicious activity, and taking action when foul play is evident. He also noted the studio was not adverse to issuing continual updates if that's what it takes to keep Killzone 3 unsullied by system modders, adding, “That's the reality now, we have to keep patching the game to make sure we keep getting one over the hackers."
Killzone 3 is only a couple day young, so we'll have to wait and see if Guerrilla can keep a lid on the PS3 tomfoolery. In the meantime jailbreakers, consider yourself...cautioned?
[Source: CVG]
Feb 23, 2011
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"... Just what kinds of innovation are people looking for that they're not getting? ..."
- Data storage: Ways for people, companies to store data for perpetuity
- Power: cheap, pollution free way to generate personal power
- Water: cheap, pollution free way to clean water for drinking
The list can go on.
"... And further, what innovations from decades ago are we still relying on today and not innovating through? ..."
Lets see: operating systems (Linux, Max OSX, Windows), GUI's (Windows), keyboards and other input hardware. These are the tools we use each day and would be recognisable to people who programmed at the cutting edge in say '76, 77. Transportation is another. Inefficient engines that emit noxious gasses. Another practical example would be food storage around the world. In India for example where a percentage say 5-10% is wasted simply because it cannot be stored properly (a combination of cost & lack of expertise) and eaten by rats.
"... But let's call it what it is, instead of predicting gloom and doom. ..."
I'd agree with this. So many negative stories come from angry middle-age white-guys. Innovation comes in spurts which is never really acknowledged. From what I see coming up things are looking up wrt Power generation, water and recycling technologies.
some time later...
"... I want to provide a counter point to your argument, Sometimes innovating for the sake of innovating can be an exercise in futility if current solutions are adequate. ..."
Point taken.
"... NASA spent millions of dollars developing a pressurised pen that Astronauts can use to write in space. The Russians use a pencil ..."
Love that one, as old as the hills. Fisher with the AG7's offered to replace pencils due to fire & graphite inhalation before Apollo 11. I remember back in the dim past when /. was civil in the late '90's, early 2000's. I answered this one but can't find my original post. It went something like this one ~ slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=11747662&sid=140282
a bit later...
"... And mechanical pencils require gravity to feed the lead; a mechanical pencil that would work in micro-g is just as hard to develop as a ballpoint pen that will. ..."
No, mechanical pencils with springs have no problems. All sorts of pencils/pens where used in the space program but the Fisher AG7 and patent # 3,285,228 ~ spacepen.com/about-us.aspx proved to be a good solution to the problems of FOD (foreign object damage), cost, availability, usability and fire. Fisher also invented the "Universal refill" for pens.
some time later...
"... Has fisher innovated the technology behind the universal refill and the spacepen even further, or has it stayed pretty much where it is? ..."
From what I can tell from reading through fisher pens the only further innovation is styling not the basic design ~ spacepen.com/about-us.aspx The Space race really kicked innovation along for lots of things even the simple pen. The engineering is pretty extreme. Imagine building a pen that will work in high PT environments from -35 to 120 degrees C and life of about 100yrs for USD$6. ~ history.nasa.gov/spacepen.html & en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen This is the kind of advances great challenges produce. It's still happening now in the US and the one area I know basic research and innovation can be seen is the X-Prize. Think Bert Rutan ~ news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3676312.stm and Carmac ~ www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_i...
<<< start
PriceRitePhoto's store, photo by Brooklyn Photographer Don Wiss
I received a troubling email earlier today from Don Wiss saying that he received a phone call today from someone telling him that if he didn't leave the country he would be killed. Wiss also reported another call from an anonymous caller accusing him of running him out of business. Don Wiss is a Brooklyn photographer that I have mentioned previously in my posts about sleazy New York bait and switch camera operators operating out of Brooklyn. Wiss has done an excellent job chronicling the actual storefronts of many of the shady camera dealers in Brooklyn and has provided helpful visual information for consumers that might do business with these operators and in some case scam artists.
Wiss posted the photo above of the sleazy camera operator PriceRitePhoto that I had been previously threatened by.
Although I suppose after hearing an actual voicemail of a camera dealer threatening to break a customer's neck that it shouldn't surprise me to learn of Don's calls today it still sickens my stomach. How is it that these criminals can act with immunity right in Spitzer's back yard? How can camera stores get away with death threats here now in the year 2005 in the United States of America.
Printed below is the email Wiss sent me earlier today.
"As you no doubt know, someone posted a link to your Brooklyn camera story on Slashdot on 12/1. One of the comments mentioned my donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores web site. I had the most hits ever.
Yesterday donwiss.com had a DOS attack. 497 simultaneous connections. My host cut me off so not to bring down the other clients on that server. I then switched my dns to a backup host.
Today I received two phone calls at work. First one like blaming me for driving them out of business. Says they have already shut it down. But, of course, he didn't disclose what business, and they had caller id turned off.
I then got a second phone call. He told me to watch my back. He said if I don't leave the country I will be killed. Now nowhere at my site do I pass any judgment on the dealers here. So why blame me? My question is have you been threatened? Of course, living here in Brooklyn makes me a convenient target."
To hear the story directly from Don click here to read his post in the rec.photo.digital newsgroup at Google.
I think Wiss has done us all a favor by showing us the actual storefronts of many of the Brooklyn businesses doing business online, and he's right, he makes no judgement as to the credibility of any of these operators. Recently through Wiss' site I found evidence that might suggest the real owner of PriceRitePhoto is an individual by the name of Chaim Pikarski.
Wiss is taking this threat to his life seriously and said he would be filing a police report today.
Why are newspapers so drawn to column layouts when sites like Gawker, Endgaget, Gizmodo, Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, Google, Techcrunch, Arstechnica, and a torrent of others reaping the benefits of the scroll-wheel?
Which one do you want to scroll? (bigger view)
See the blog post for more info: LinuxWorld 2006
This photo is licensed under a Creative Commons license. If you use this photo, please list the photo credit as "Scott Beale / Laughing Squid" and link the credit to laughingsquid.com.
prfect for a great spring day!
fillr
more fillr.
how much fillr do I need to keep the next line from appearing in the summry!!?!?
April Fools'
from the press release:
"Our internal projections say Contextual Dating is going to be unbelievably huge, just a total cash cow," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in prepared remarks placed into the notes section of an executive PowerPoint presentation and intended solely for internal use but promptly leaked onto the web and then roundly mocked on Digg and Slashdot.
Google Romance users who find one another via Soulmate Search™ may then select the Contextual Dating option, which offers an all-expenses-paid romantic evening in exchange for viewing contextually relevant advertising throughout the course of the users' date (learn more).
About Google Inc.
Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. wannabes Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets and a very large number of minor ones. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for those users who haven't tuned out of online commerce altogether. Most Google lava lamps and bean bag chairs are located in Silicon Valley, though numerous such lamps and chairs can also be found in offices throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
The SlashDot PT Cruiser spotted on San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito, California. The car was a promo giveaway from SlashDot (www.slashdot.org) many years ago and they have tried to live it down ever since.
Summary
Exporting a quick news.yc post from my blog engine to Scribd. I found adding to Scribd is batch & broken? Or is it?
I write a lot on startups, badly some say. [0] I also like using my own tools that allow me to write something quickly, then export to external sites like Scribd.
'... I also want to use some sort of online 'editor' to write markup and edit ...'
I really want to be able to post in real-time, preferably using my toolset . I don't know if I'd tolerate using other toolsets but I'll take a peek to see if this is possible. I also want to use some sort of editor, preferably online to write markup and edit online. I realise that not everyone wants to write text online. Scribd appears to be geared to pre-written, edited and formated information in different formats. I accept this. [1] My initial impression is Scribd does not appear to be geared towards real-time, information generation.
So I decided to test my impressions and try to generate information in real-time at the server. Here's what I've found.
Upload
Because I have control of my ng blogging engine [2] I can do tricky things like export content to other sites. The only way I could upload a quick post [3] to Scribd is via an upload form. [4] While you can upload existing files in lots of different formats creating a document online is difficult. In fact I have come to the conclusion that the way scribd has been structured, this may not be possible at all.
Editor
I selected the upload link [5] and found you could either publish a document OR ... edit text in a box. I was surprised by this. I would have thought a more comprehensive option for editing online. There are plenty of tools around. The ideas and technology behind this is well understood. Coming from a slashdot, flickr sort of background I'm used to having tools you can just edit information and get an instant response.
So I added a post by adding an existing post I created for news.yc. The first thing I found was you could not enter any markup. In this case XHTML. It was simply rendered, tags and all. So I drop back to plain text. No tools for adding emphasis, bold, etc. In terms of markup this is pre-historic. Eventually I did find a rich text editor in a link right next to the plain text box. I simply missed this the first time. Why this is not default I'm not sure? My only suggestion is it takes more resources. You certainly need this type of markup to improve the readability of the content.
Editor take 2
Sometimes it is possible to leverage better tools to your advantage. So it was of no surprise that I found the addition of a Facebook application using the newly created API. Facebook is mature, polished and has some slick editing tools so I wanted to see if Scribd had leveraged Facebooks editing tools ? [7] MyNotes in particular. But could not find anything beyond a upload on the Facebook Doc homepage. [8]
Despite the fact I couldn't find a way to create content in Facebook and export to Scribd does not mean it's not there now or in the future if enough users request it.
Editing
I continued. Saved the content, added a title, summary and tags (looking good) and hit enter and go to edit. What, "you can't edit the saved file?". You can edit the title, summary and tags. What about the content? Now that's a bummer. I happened to make a simple mistake so I could find no way to make changes once saved? [6]
Save, view, oddities
I also noted some oddities in the final saved document with URL links. I would have thought links would be converted to clickable urls. This problem can be avoided using the rich editor and only applies to the basic editor. Another oddity is saving the document. A document is recorded with title + summary + tags and other meta data. Finally the document itself. So I didn't bother adding the title, summary or any other references to the document. Why? I've already added them once. But I got a surprise when I find no title, summary or tag information in the downloadable text file.
No DRY storage of information here [9]. There is an assumption the document or information uploaded is discrete and contains all required meta information. A duplication. I'll have to be more mindful of this for future uploads. To me adding the title, summary again in the text will initially look funny to the reader who will see two titles, two summaries and then the content.
Things I like
There are some aspects of Scribd I really like, including
* unique url for a document
* text metrics (text statistics)
* view metrics (traffic analytics)
* selective licensing
* various download formats
* community feedback (view information, comments & voting)
These alone make Scribd useful both users and authors. Especially the feedback loop from logged in readers.
Real-time ready?
At the moment the focus appears to be on pre-existing documents and wisely so. I initially thought the tools are a little primitive but quickly found some alternatives. I'm still confused about the inability to edit saved documents. This one for me is a bit of a killer. For small snippets of information the inability to import the added meta data (title, summary and tags) may cause confusion when reading. If left out confusion in downloaded documents. I'm also surprised there is no upload for XHTML or any path to import HTML like documents at all. The one thing I really miss is an API. With an API I could simply create the text, export it dispensing with the UI supplied altogether.
Will I use Scribd? Yes. But the question is I will have to adapt my approach taking into account the short comings I've discussed. [10]
Reference
[0] google search, "A simple selection of posts to news.yc"
<http://www.google.com/search?q=site:http://news.ycombinator.com+bootload>
[Accessed Tuesday, June 5th 2007]
[1] Sometimes I have to do it the dumb way way using CUT + PASTE. Especially if sites don't allow API access or 'RSS feed hoovering' like Facebook does so well.
[2] nextgen or ng, "my blog engine testbed"
<http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/ng>
[Accessed Tuesday, June 5th 2007]
[3] To me a quick post is less than 100 words. A title and some text, maybe a link. A really short post say to twitter is only 140 characters (about summary size) and not worth posting.
[4] Scribd, "upload link for content"
<http://www.scribd.com/upload/>
[Accessed Tuesday, June 5th 2007]
[5] Scribd, "upload link for adding new documents"
<http://www.scribd.com/upload/>
[Accessed Tuesday, 5th June 2007]
[6] If you know of a way to edit saved document leave a comment.
[7] Facebook, "Editing tools"
<http://www.facebook.com/notes.php>
[Accessed Tuesday, 5th June 2007]
[8] Facebook, "Scribd Application Doc on Facebook"
<http://apps.facebook.com/scribd/home>
[Accessed Tuesday, 5th June 2007]
[9] DRY, "Do Not Repeat Yourself"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_repeat_yourself>
[Accessed Tuesday, 5th June 2007]
[10] Document metadata
* Author: Peter Renshaw (bootload)
* Date: 2007JUN060039
* Title: Scribd is batch & broken?
* Url: <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/531106994/>
* Comments: First appeared on my 'bootload' flickr blog, 2007JUN051514
* License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You can read more about the license here.
Due NERD a spasso per il centro di carbonia
Nerd è un termine della lingua inglese con cui viene chiamato chi ha una certa predisposizione per la ricerca intellettuale (magari associata a un quoziente intellettivo superiore alla media), ed è al contempo tendenzialmente solitario e con una più o meno spiccata predisposizione per l'asocialità. Il termine 'nerd' è usato nella lingua inglese con accezione negativa, ed in italiano può essere tradotto, generalmente, con secchione o, per certi versi, con sfigato.
LA RIVINCITA DEI NERD:
Negli anni novanta il concetto di nerd iniziò ad avere delle connotazioni positive nell'ambito della società della rete e dei tecnici dei computer, per descrivere orgogliosamente una persona tecnicamente preparata. Per estensione si iniziò a parlare di nerd anche in relazione a chi aveva avuto un successo finanziario in quei campi. Bill Gates stesso si è spesso definito un nerd. Il popolare sito di notizie relative all'informatica Slashdot si definisce "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."
Fonte WIKIPEDIA
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 To download this icons set visit:
webtreats.mysitemyway.com/154-matte-black-social-media-ic...
Looking to find Forklift Licence Nsw or Forklift Licence? Dial today 9609 1888, our forklift licence agent train you with the proper training and lessons here at the Ultimate Driving School.
Who's pushing their data to 'the cloud'?
"... Just ordered a new laptop and I've decided to try to push as much of my data online as I can to make life more flexible. I'm just curious to see who here does this and what do you use if so? ..."
WHY
I do. Any post I make I have squared away. This allows me to make my site the definitive collection of my data. It also allows google to index it. I have control over my own content and if for some reason a third party site wants to exert control I still have my stuff. Unlike slashdot who didn't allow any tools to save posts. Hence I lost from about 1996 to 2002's worth of comments. [0]
HOW
There are 2 ways of looking at this. You can either generate you "stuff" from a single point [0] at your machine, save it and pump it out OR use the web apps as clients and suck the data back via RSS, Atom, JSON etc.
I've been doing a bit of both. Pushing stuff from my blog engine after I've cached it and now I'm beginning to suck up the various websites I frequent. So for pushing out I have:
* OUT: flickr (blog, tags, images) , twitter (snippets), hackerid (hackernews data), links (various links I save including links to hackernews & export to delicious)
* IN: hackernews (all posts every 15m, friends),
* IN TODO: wordy (words I use), spock (tags), colourlovers (colours), librarything (my library), amazon (new books), lastfm (what I'm currently listening to), delicious (new links I find), twitter (friends), flickr (friends, processed images, text, tags)
Now as you can see that's a lot of data. Some of the things I'm finding:
* It's easier to push than pull if you want an accurate copy because you save before you export
* pulling data means you don't have to write firstly the interface to capture the data and simply call RSS
* not every site has an API or good RSS feed
* Linking data together is not easy except by time though you could try to match by friend (ie: friend is on twitter, flickr, hackernews)
* displaying the data effectively is difficult simply because of the volume and complexity of it. A good example of how to do this is http://friendfeed.com Clear, simple and pretty much allows for good reading.
I'm now at a stumbling block with a templating engine I'm using and so I'm pretty keen to just extract the data as Atom, RSS and JSON as individual feeds or a mashed feed by date and write a Javascript based website to avoid having to deal with heavy weight blog engines. Let the data go free and see how people use it.
The key thing to realise is when you are compiling your data timestamp it at DB level (if you are using one) ISO1606 format, maybe add a tag layer over the top so you can get the benefit of tagging across data layers.
It's turning out to be an interesting project.
Some time later ...
"... I've heard of ISO 8601 timestamps but never 1606 (and neither has google it seems). What is that? ..."
You are dead right. I was wrong. I meant "ISO 8601". Late night post and I should have checked ~ http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3339.txt
Some time later ...
"... From this RFC I learned that: ..."
The bit I use is a bastardisation of "1985-04-12T23:20:50.52Z". A shorter version as a string, say "20070202T1422" stripping out the hyphens, colons and Zulu.
And the another reply ...
"... Actually I don't believe "20070202T1422" is a legal 8601 timestamp ..."
20070202T1422 - but close enough for me in 1 timezone and limited space for display. I have a double use as both a (8601 hack) and as a human readable title. Adding extra "-" and "Z" makes it harder to read and the accuracy for seconds is simply not required. Trade-offs I'm willing to make.
Prat.
Reference
[0] http://goonmail.customer.netspace.net.au/2005DEC131709.html
<<< start
No plates.
We went back again last night. Those pickles are so good. The "dirty" chicken burger was surprisingly good too.
Let's talk about plagiarism.
Roy's desk had different crap all over it every week, and a different thing on the screen. (IIRC there was Slashdot and BoingBoing among others. On the screen above you can see Sean's beloved dog Kennedy)
The episode underway here was the first shown, though the fifth shot.
Webtreats' 108 free high resolution Simple Black Magic Marker Social Bookmarking 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/108-free-black-magic-marker-soc...
Facebook: Why the end of the line is my destination, not the city
You might also like to read:
It's been a strange start to the year so far. I'm running across people I haven't seen or heard of for many years and I'm not sure quite why. Now it seems every time I run into someone and I mention are they online they respond more than likely with, "yes on Facebook".
I've had an account for a long time, but I never use it. Why? I'm certainly not that interested in having to learn the ins and outs of the interface and permissions. But faced with an increasing number of people I know using it I've come up with a plan.
It's pretty simple. Grab all my open content and funnel it back to Facebook. Just find a content aggregation site, Add all the sites you want to collate and point the RSS file to Facebook. Instant content without having to touch the site.
"... Facebook is to the Internet, what Microsoft was to the PC ..."
This solves a couple of problems in one hit. Firstly it means I don't have to worry about my *stuff* being sucked up and dictated by any one company. The other is I still appear on Facebook to anyone I know who lives there. Facebook reminds me of the large shopping malls. You can see people walking around at a lower level, call them over if you
want to or simply ignore them if you feel like it. That kind of behaviour is creepy. I know it happens but ... Even creepier is closed pages. People want to exist in Facebook (or travel through the mall) yet remain anonymous. Anonymity in a computer system is an illusion.
Pumping my open content into Facebook has some interesting side effects. Because the information is search-able on the open web, I don't need to close access to most things. I don't bother putting phone contact details. I simply use phones for outgoing calls. The rest of the time it's turned off. So what else is there to put up?
Anyone can view my page. They just can't edit or comment without my permission. Pretty much as it exists on the Open Web. The only thing exposed is my friend network. Have to think about that. On the other hand these networks are exposed on other sites but not to the same degree.
The people I list on Facebook I have know some since I was age 4, all before the age of 18. All except Yotam, a fellow nerd. I give him stick about being mossad while he gives me cheek for eating bacon and asks why I have a cross on neek?
So If you can imagine all the sites I add stuff as being far-flung towns away from the city. What I'm doing is sending all my *stuff* in neat little RSS packages into the city to be unpacked and displayed for others to look at. The problem is it's just more interesting on the edges.
I've been living and working on the Internet for a long time. I like the open web. You don't need to ask permission to do interesting things If you own your data you simply do stuff. You don't have to worry that much about the owners of the malls changing the internal walkways, making you pay to get in. For example over the years I've been a member of the "bluesnews", "slashdot", "perlmonks", "reddit", "joelonsofware", "hackernews", "twitter", "flickr", et.al. Each had or will have their day and wane. You simply end up leaving because the friction using them becomes to great.
I fear this will also happen with Facebook and all those contacts you make are going to be broken. Just like a High School, you go there, complete a certain number of years then disappear along with people you know only to find it's been torn down if you return years later.
I live at the edges away from the city in the Open.
next >>>
STK screen shot showing a family of relatively high altitude satellites passing into the Earth's shadow just after midnight on 5 September 2006. Yellow indicates in sun, blue or no track indicates in shadow.
For the full story, see: slashdot.org/~DisownedSky/journal/143168
I never have understood why this is one of my most-viewed images without a single comment. How about a little feedback in the comments?
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Want to know how long it takes a sleazy online retailer to get relisted with Yahoo! Shopping after being delisted for abusing their customers? Give or take a little about three months.
Back on November 29th I wrote an article entitled PriceRitePhoto: Abusive Bait and Switch Camera Store. If you missed it on my blog then you may also have seen it on Slashdot or Boing Boing or on Digg where it was the most dugg story of all time. The story was also picked up by both The New York Post and that other little New York publication called The New York Times.
At the time when the story got all of the attention PriceRitePhoto was delisted from all of the major shopping comparison sites -- and rightfully so. Not only had they been abusive to me, but when the story spread many others came out of the woodwork to corroborate the retailer as a first class abusive bait and switch camera shop.
Yahoo! Shopping delisted the retailer at the time, of course, and Yahoo! Vice President Rob Solomon explained in an article by Forbes that PriceRitePhoto had "rigged Yahoo's feedback system."
What was interesting to me at the time when the PriceRitePhoto story was going on was that PriceRitePhoto had supposedly been delisted a year earlier from comparison shopping site PriceGrabber. What I never could get is how after being delisted on PriceGrabber that PriceRitePhoto ended back on there a year latter to try and rip me off. Of course that first delisting didn't get the visibility that mine did, but not to worry, not only is PriceRitePhoto back in business at Yahoo! Shopping, they are back in business on PriceGrabber as well. This after being delisted there at least twice that I know of.
Click through to read more. thomashawk.com/2006/03/yahoo-shoppers-beware-priceritepho...
Blast from the past ... I discussed Pub interaction model at slashdot journal and jos social interface design forums way back in 2004SEP09.
Summary
Pub interaction model aids scanning of topic information. Is it good enough to copy existing models?
Message
In my many travels into SIC (Social interactive community) sites that I have noticed a re-occuring interaction model that takes advantage of everyday interaction models most would be familiar with. I call it the 'Pub interaction model'. It probably has some fancy technical name [0]. But for the sake of argument, Pub [1] will do.
What was the last time you went to a Pub (party, class or lunchroom are equally good alternatives)? Imagine walking into the Pub for the first time. Think of the questions you ask yourself as you enter the room?
- How do you choose which group you want to join?
- How do you strike up a conversation with complete newcomers?
- How do you splice a question into the discussion?
The list goes on. Can you see the similiarity between entering a Pub, finding a suitable group, topic and engauging in conversation AND choosing what group, topic to reply in a JOSSID forum? [2]
But how does this relate to software design and SID? [3] Well I actively look for 'Pub' like interaction models as a way to quickly choose what forum I might be able to interact. I can quickly scan the room visually (whos in the room, what topic groups are operating) and aurally (who is saying what) then dive in.
In terms of software lets look at some examples.
Applications
Email clients are a common example. In Thunderbird [4] and Outlook Express for example you can filter your inboxes (walk into the pub and label social groups), then scan the number of topics (listen to the conversation) to see number of emails. FogBUGZ [5] also uses the Pub model when showing a customer problem. Allowing the person(s) responsible to see the whole discussion at a glance (though in the past) to resolve a customer support issue.
Websites
Social interaction sites such as Slashdot or Perlmonks the Pub model I look for here is the slashdot front page [6] or Perlmonk Monastery gates [7]. Both mechanisms allow me to see what groups are discussing what threads and allowing me to make decisions.
Another example where this model is used is blogs (soap box sites). The example here is Monologue [8]. I can quickly scan the site with the Pub model to see if theres a worthy topic to read. There is no feedback on this site (hence the term soap box) but I can see the person talking, scan the topics and skip the noise [9].
But is copying existing models good enough?
'... a particular state of the neurones in the brain is more likely to be followed by another specific state than by a random state ...' [10].
Edward de Bono argues in his book, 'New thinking for the new millennium' [10], that patterns or paths that are built you are less likely to change.
Conclusion
'... the downside of patterns is that once we have set them up we are trapped by them ... we also need the ability to challenge these patterns from time to time in order to set up better patterns ...' [11]
This may be a new field of software development so avoid the trap of simply replacing existing social models, roles or modes of interaction. While you have the chance, don't be constrained by 'old' patterns or paths we observe. Experiment and develop better group interaction models instead. While I find the Pub model advantageous to use and software developer continue to implement them, are we are missing out on designing better social interactions instead of accepting some possibly inferior alternative(s)?
References
[0] Aggregator (eg: news aggregator)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_aggregator
[1] Public house or Pub.
[2] 'Joel On Software Social Interface Design' forum.
[3] Social Interface design
[4] Mozilla Thunderbird email client
www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
[5] FogBugz customer screencap
www.fogcreek.com/FogBUGZ/KB/images/customerCase-large.gif
[6] Slashdot front page
[7] Current monastic discussions on Perl
www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=131
[8] Mono blog is Monologue
[9] For example, Todd Berman: Responding to a Response
codeblogs.ximian.com/blogs/tberman/archives/000330.html
[10] New Thinking for the New Millennium, Edward de Bono, P14 Viking Press, 1999.
[11] New Thinking for the New Millennium, et.,al. PP14-16.
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update
DAY 2 - reflections of day 2
DAY 2 - Making a dork of myself
DAY 2 - I explore walking...
DAY 2 - A busy area with tutorials
DAY 2 - Meeters & greeter - I dont get it?
DAY 1 - first contact
DAY 1 - Body mods
DAY 1 - Uninstall, configure, login
DAY 1. My virtual self
In this site you wont see many images of myself. Its not the focus of the site. Software, talking about the software development process in a startup doesn't require *me too* images.
But SL is different. I try to portray my virtual self pretty much an extension of my current life. I like this idea. Me walking around in shorts, shirts & kicking a footy in a virtual world. (now I've got to work out how?) Its not an original idea... see Cory Doctorow at his virtual book signing. I've just created a demo, test account to see if the experience is worth the money. Here's my virtual story.
DAY 1. Warning ... trying some alpha software
Been playing around with some alpha software, secondlife. The software works with Gnome GTK, KDE and is new enough so that theres not that many people using it. Most are Windows or Mac weenies. Lindens intent is to make the Linux client using open technologies with possible access to the source at some time in the future. I'd settle for software that just works.
Hello world
After reading the Businessweek article I decided have a closer look at this SL stuff. Its a OpenGL based virtual world. Sort of like an advanced version of Adventure I first played with back in the late '70s at school on the only computer in the school, a PET.
Verne inspired?
So I started to read the articles by Wagner James Au. Hired by Lindon, Wagner writes about second life as a real world journalist looking for stories filling in the gaps. It reads like a foreign country, though the natives are, well different. Like a alternate Science fiction location with a Jules Verne flavour.
Opportunity or threat?
So why have I chucked this into the startup lot? Well I remember back when I started on the Internet back in early '94. The Internet was all shiny & new. Not many people knew about it. I like getting in and having a look early. Well this might be the next development phase of the Internet. Where theres new tech, there is always a business opportunity. Software in particular. It may fizzle. But then again who knows.
Running on Ubuntu
The SL Linux client is about 33Mb for a download and is a simple tar zipped file.
'... dont even bother downloading the stuff unless your graphics hardware is supported. (mostly NVIDIA) ...'
You simply untar the file in non root in a local directory and run a shell script. The first install failed mainly due to some Gnome Ope
Blast from the past ~ "CAR + COMPUTER = COMPUTER"
I Discussed CAR + COMPUTER = COMPUTER, Joel On Software social interface design forum in 2004SEP09
'... So then the question becomes, why do BMW designers design a car that they themselves would not want to drive? ...'
It is a fundamental misunderstanding that ... CAR + COMPUTER = COMPUTER Alan Cooper discusses this in 'Inmates Are Running the Asylum' where BMW outsourced the software design.'
... continued ...
'... Still, once on the computer, the programmer and nonprogrammer basically have the same goals in their social interactions. ...'
I would never make the mistake of assuming anything. Programmers are good at making things possible in software. I wouldn't for one minute agree they are good at defining user goals. What are the goals of an arab speaking student blogger in say Iran or Irag? [1],[2] I wouldn't presume to try and second guess their goals.
But I'd be more happy letting programmers develop useful tools to let users achieve their goals by finding out what their goals are[3] then and help them achieve this through software applications. This is a critical idea of Alan Cooper [4] who argues programmers (homo-logicus) are the last people on earth to improve in this case, 'social interaction' of users. Read the book(s) to get a better sense of why.
References
[1] ABC Foreign Correspondent, "Iran - Cyber Dissidents summary, 10/08/2004, Mark Corcoran"
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2004/s1169929.htm
[2] ABC Foreign Correspondent, "Iran - Cyber Dissidents transcript, 10/08/2004, Mark Corcoran"
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2004/s1177788.htm
[3] Jakob Nielsen Alertbox, "Q How do I find out what their goals are? through based usability culture? 'Why Consumer Products Have Inferior User Experience, March 15, 2004'"
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040315.html
[4] Alan Cooper, "About Face 2.0 and Inmates Are Running the Asylum"
next >>>
or, How to Completely Destroy Your Reputation in 24 Hours or Less.
Once upon a time, the Left Party (née Socialist Unity Party of East Germany, and later known as the Party of German Socialism) had a member of parliament from Lübeck named Lutz Heilmann. In 2005, the national news magazine Der Spiegel published an article pointing out that Mr. Heilmann had kinda sorta forgotten to tell people he once worked for the Stasi. As in, was actually employed by the Stasi, rather than just being an informant (The latter would be nothing new; there are multiple representatives from a certain party who may or may not have literally ratted out their own mothers to the secret police to get ahead. Seriously.). For what it's worth, Mr. Heilmann apparently worked for the Stasi equivalent of the Secret Service, which was primarily responsible for securing the Politbüro compound north of Berlin as well as the daily convoy into the city, despite some moonlighting in spying and repression. This discussion seems to have died down a bit in the last three years, but then Mr. Heilmann committed the third of the classic blunders: he messed with the Internets.
You see, the German Wikipedia had an article that mentioned his alleged Stasi ties, and he was unhappy about this. In true German fashion, he sued for libel. Wait, you say, he can do that? Yes, unfortunately. In the US, libel law as such applies almost exclusively to private citizens. The general legal precedent is that freedom of the press outweighs privacy concerns for public figures, and the threshold for libel against a government official is very, very high. In particular, the author of libelous speech publish information that he knows to be false. German courts, on the other hand, are much readier to quash potentially libelous speech on privacy grounds. You can already see how an American-style political campaign would be sued out of existence before it even got off the ground.
On Thursday, November 13, Mr. Heilmann won his suit, and the court ordered Wikimedia Deutschland to remove the link between wikipedia.de and de.wikipedia.org. I think you already see the problem here. The Wikipedia servers are in Florida, and the wikipedia.org domain is way beyond the jurisdiction of German courts. Germany is also not (yet) China, so when wikipedia.de stops working, people go looking for a reason why, and find it. Before this weekend, Mr. Heilmann's article was being viewed about 20 times per day, making him about as interesting as central Asian steppe rodents or the finer points of Klingon poetry. Today, (partly due to the story making Slashdot), he got 240k hits and counting, and his article has been translated to at least 6 other languages. So, now, there a few hundred thousand people who know nothing about Mr. Heilmann other than that he was once a member of the Stasi, and that he reacts to criticism with heavy-handed censorship. Way to go there, Slugger!
It never ceases to amaze me how such a wide variety of people, from corporate goons to Stasi stooges, fail to understand the Web. Nerds react very poorly to censorship, no matter what the justification may be. If you wish for something to remain quiet, leave it alone! If you try to censor the Web, it will blow up in your face.
Stats provided by stats.grok.se/de/200811/Lutz_Heilmann.
I caught this from a Slashdot article about a university moving their entire email system to WindowsLive, which (of course) doesn't work on a Mac, but the webpage describing the system is using a Powerbook. You'd think that they would use Windows machines for that, but I guess they're too ugly for advertising. :)
Normally I don't like to talk about stories from other blogs, but this
one really caught my attention. Slashdot put out a story on Lloyd Case. A geek in Northern
California who installed a 6kW PV solar system on his house six months
ago and is now a little disappointed with the performance. His most
recent power bill was still $200 despite having a $60,000 PV setup
tied to the grid.
A few tips to folks who are considering a PV system.
1. Roof Mounted Panels Suck - They often have limited or no tilt
control and clumsy to maintain. This means that you will likely get
strong performance in summer or winter, but not both. Finding the
average latitude tilt for your region and mounting the panels at that
angle is your best option for roof mount. Trackers can bring your
performance up by 1/3rd, but will include extra expense and
complexity. Consider a manual tracking system which you just push with
your hands through out the day if you need a early morning or late
afternoon boost. This is ideal for the off-grid / unemployed eco-geek.
2. Grid Tie has issues too - Although grid-tie allows a PV install to
greatly reduce their installation time and costs they also have some
drawbacks. Continuing to buy power from a power company can result in
relatively high monthly fees if the system purchased was undersized.
Many grid-tie installations have no battery backup so when the grid
dies, you lose all your juice too. In remote towns many power
companies only pay the customer a 1/4 of what they charge the customer
for power. My town being unusually behind the times refuses to
purchase any power from their customers.
3. PV Batteries - New batteries are easy, but old ones can be fixed.
Our world is hemoraging so called "dead cycle batteries". Try talking
to your local golf course, marina, or auto parts store. As you learn
to test cells and repair lead acid batteries through desulfation you
can save yourself a fortune in batteries and store large amounts of
energy. Keep in mind that batteries are much like people. They like
72F temperatures and a little exercise. Do not cycle the batteries
below 50% on a regular basis. I try to stay over 70% capacity on my
battery array at all times.
4. Heat - My panels tend to have a pretty big drop off in performance
during the summer. This is partly due to my not adjusting the PV array
to be almost flat during June. It is also related to our monsoon
season bringing in lots of rain and cloudy weather. However, the real
killer of performance is the temperature. High temperatures drop my
panel performance by 30%. Our temps in June sit peak around 100F in
June which is enough to dramatically reduce the performance on a
polycrystal PV cells. The monocrystal cells are supposed to handle the
higher temperatures better.
update
DAY 2 - reflections of day 2
DAY 2 - Making a dork of myself
DAY 2 - I explore walking...
DAY 2 - A busy area with tutorials
DAY 2 - Meeters & greeter - I dont get it?
DAY 1 - first contact
DAY 1 - Body mods
DAY 1. My virtual self
In this site you wont see many images of myself. Its not the focus of the site. Software, talking about the software development process in a startup doesn't require *me too* images. But SL is different. I try to portray my virtual self pretty much an extension of my current life.
I like this idea. Me walking around in shorts, shirts & kicking a footy in a virtual world. I've just created a demo, test account to see if the experience is worth the money.
Here's my virtual story.
Warning ... trying some alpha software
Been playing around with some alpha software, secondlife. The software works with Gnome GTK, KDE and is new enough so that theres not that many people using it. Most are Windows or Mac weenies. The intent is making the Linux client using open technologies with possible access to the source at some time in the future. I'd settle for software that just works.
Hello world
After reading the businessweek article I decided have a closer look at this SL stuff. Its a OpenGL based virtual world. Sort of like an advanced version of Adventure I first played with back in the late '70s at school on the only computer in the school, a PET.
Verne inspired?
So I started to read the articles by Wagner James Au. Hired by Lindon, Wagner writes about second life as a real world journalist looking for stories filling in the gaps. It reads like a foreign country, though the natives are, well different.
It sort of reads like a alternate Science fiction with a Jules Verne flavour.
Opportunity or threat?
So why have I chucked this into the startup lot? Well I remember back when I started no the Internet back in early '94. The Internet was all new, not many people knew about it. I like getting in and having a look early. Well this might be the next development phase of the Internet.
Where theres new tech, there is always a business opportunity. Software in particular. It may fizzle. But then again who knows.
Running on Ubuntu
The SL Linux client is about 33Mb for a download and is a simple tar zipped file. You simply untar the file in non root in a local directory and run a shell script.
next >>>
<<< very start
Given that he seems to have appeared in an xkcd strip the other day, and given that he's obviously part of the team who are going to destroy the Earth, this kind of had to be done... ;-)
Diet to be followed in the morning includes drinking of 2 Scoops (full) of Afresh mixed in 600 ml of hot water, As they say well begin is half done, If you start your day with these two herbal products you are half way through your mission for the day. Take a half an hour gap after your tea and then have a formula one protein shake. Put 3 spoons of f1 and 2 spoons of proteins in 400 ml of water or Skimmed milk to prepare the formula one protein shake, if your weight is way too high then you should not mix protein with F1 or only take half a spoon of protein in your shake. Allow this shake to digest and then with a small break of 1 hour in between prepare your-self an herbal tea( Afresh) again. The tea can be drunk warm or cold as per convenience. This completes the perfect morning herbal intake.
Visit: slashdot.org/submission/3441943/herbalife-weight-loss-res...
Brent was good...and he even helped me out by pulling his "signature move" a few times. Yep, his scratching on the eight ball really improved my game. Ha ha ha ha!
Remove Chinese government trusted authority from your Safari browser. www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=1616924
yro.slashdot.org/story/10/02/02/202238/Mozilla-Accepts-Ch...
I chose to shoot Christian Kreibich who is a computer science researcher in the field of network security. I was drawn to him because while network security is often seen as an obscure topic best left to people who get most of their daily uv dosage from their monitors rather than the sun, his group makes it accessible to everyone. He is involved in the freely available netalyzr tool which anyone can use to asses the security and health of their network connection. This tool has been highlighted on the internet news site slashdot as well.
This was interesting to light because he wanted a shot of him in a server room which gives a great relevant background but creates horrible logistical problems. Namely the area to fit lighting gear is only three feet wide.
There was no way I was going to fit in any sort of umbrella or softbox in the area next to him without it intruding into the shot. To solve this, I setup a 60" round diffusion screen in front of the rack camera left, and stuck a 580exII in one of the empty spaces in the rack on the other side of the diffusion screen.
That created the key light, and to round out the two light approach I put a lp120 in a orbis ring flash in line with the lens.
strobist info:
580exII at 1/4 behind a diffusion screen camera left, triggered with oc-e3 equivalent cable.
lp120 at 1/16 out of an orbis ring flash in line with lens, optical trigger.
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