DISQUS

Damn them, they took their whoppers to Romania and fed them to our farmers. BK, keep your crap in the States. I don't need you getting Romanians fat and diseased on your fast food. I wish McDonald's would get the heck out of Romania as well.

Personally, I like Time Tamer.

Location-based advertisements are a benign use of tracking data when
compared with the possibility of realtime-tracking by the government.
Here in the US, AT&T has opened up its pipes to the government for a
long time. How easy do you think it'll be for them to track the
movements of any iPhone owner, should they choose to do so, now that
the GPS chip is in there? It would be a trivial switch in terms of
effort.

But really, this applies to just about any phone with a GPS chip out
there, not just the iPhone. The funny thing is, if the government had
actually tried to get people to carry GPS devices so they could be
tracked, they'd have never succeeded. But people have readily adopted
them and have opened themselves to that possibility simply because
they got some benefits out of it as well. Interesting how that worked,
no?

:-)

R.

Photography geeks are able to tell right away by the size ratio of the photos. The 5D shoots in 3:2 format, and the Nokia shoots in 4:3 format. Plus, when you mouse over the photos, you get their titles, where you included the camera make... :-)

Right on.

Thanks Chris! Gotta love your description of me!

Please correct the link in my last comment, it's not displaying properly. Thanks.

Mathew, I don't know why you would characterize my actions in protecting my copyright and hard work as "extreme". I've had no success in asking the people at Shyftr to remove my feed from their site via email. They're not responding. And don't let this latest policy change fool you. My feed is still on their site in its entirety, with all posts displayed unabridged, in full.

I for one don't care what they call their service, or how they want to couch their actions in words that make it seem less outrageous, but to me, what they're doing is simply theft. It's illegal, and it's copyright infringement. I keep full copyright on my work, and on my site, it's clearly marked as "All Rights Reserved". What part of "All Rights Reserved" don't they understand? How screwed up do they have to be to think they can build a business around my content (and others' as well) without paying for the right to use it or even asking permission, or allowing people to opt in?

I have no other recourse but to submit a DMCA take-down notice. I'm not going to let them get away with wholesale copyright infringement.

It's refreshing, and somewhat ironic to read this. Before this whole web "revolution" took place, it was quite normal for businesses to charge for their products. As a matter of fact, it was the only way to do things. Now it seems that we're coming back to that practice. I can't help but smile. Who'd have thought, right? You pay for a service that you enjoy using... How novel! :-)

Quite a change in stance since yesterday's post on this same gathering...

Thank you Nick! Finally, a more thoughtful look at social networks and their privacy implications. I was getting pretty fed up with all the hype I've seen lately, and it's nice to see someone being able to look at things from the other side of the fence.

Incidentally, I would volunteer to be the MySpace outcast (if I were still in school)... I don't like sites that replicate the cliques of real life. There's no diversity when you clump together online because of peer pressure or other silly reasons, the same way that it happens in real life. If the Internet can't encourage diversity in both association and point of view, what's the point?

I have a healthy amount of disdain for social networks, and every time someone begins to identify themselves with one, I wonder if they've really grown up. I associate them with the cliques of high school, or with the fraternities/sororities of college. Anyone so tied into a social network that they can't begin to imagine the Internet without it hasn't matured yet.

Social networks are nothing more than platforms that allow you to do various things. I might also add that many of those "things" are exaggerated and overvalued. It's important to see them as such, and nothing more. You can use them, but the moment you identify yourself with them, just as some might identify themselves with a brand, I have to question if that person can think independently and has developed a healthy personality.

All I can say is that the recent photos you've posted to Flickr blew me away. Keep what you're doing, I can't wait to see what you'll come up with.

Pretty cool! What do you think of the new, unlocked phones that T-Mobile will sell in Germany? Is the price ridiculously more expensive than the locked phones? Last time I checked, I read 999 euro, which would be crazy. What's your take on that?

Robert, you need to re-read my comment. I wasn't talking about growth in numbers, as you suggest. I was talking about market valuation and media presence -- the hype that journalists aided and abetted through their coverage.

And yes, I still stand by my words, regardless of whether you think my opinion is qualified or not.

I honestly hope they didn't fork out billions for Facebook. That would be absolutely ridiculous. I don't use it, I don't want to use it, and I think all the hype about Facebook is just that -- hype, and nothing more.

It's just a social site where people can choose to waste their time -- as if there aren't enough of them already. If all of the Silicon Valley journalists (including you) hadn't talked it up so much, Facebook would be nowhere near the valuation it has today, and rightly so. They don't deserve it.

It's nice to hear the truth, thanks. I don't like bloggers who blog for the sole purpose of getting on Digg every time they put something out. Writing for traffic may or may not be worth it, but we do know it comes with plenty of headaches. I'd rather have a steady stream of visitors that sometimes click on my ads or on my affiliate links and buy something. That converts to profit and rewards me nicely for my hard work.

Yes, I've been affected, and no, it hasn't changed my comment strategy. I've always preferred quality over quantity, so I'm pretty strict with the comments that I approve. I have pretty simple guidelines regarding comments, and it tends to work out well. Only people who have something worthwhile to say make it through to the live site.

I wanted to add that I tried using Jaiku as my primary microblogging service, but ended up coming back to Twitter, even though I thought the Jaiku interface was nicer. I also did an in-depth comparison of both Jaiku and Twitter in a two-part post -- see here and here. I really think Google's decision had to do with cost more than anything else. True, Jaiku seems to be more reliable than Twitter, but it also doesn't have the scale problems that Twitter has, with its many users.

I use both Twitter and Jaiku. I wonder why Google didn't buy Twitter, but I have a feeling it had to do with cost. Jaiku must have been a whole lot more affordable than Twitter. The infrastructure was all there, but Google didn't have to pay for all the users that Twitter has.

I wrote this post back in January of this year, and said pretty much the same thing. It's nice to see the big boys agreeing with me.

Too bad people in the US are so litigious, and the laws are so ridiculously strict. In other countries, a perfectly acceptable thing to do to those two teens would be to slap them around a bit. I have a feeling that would have knocked some sense into them. We're so touchy-feely here in the US, and then we have to deal with our due share of personality disorders. If we were more cut and dry about things, people would be more respectful.

I certainly wish WordPress or Akismet would introduce a CAPTCHA option for comments. That would make it a LOT harder to spammers to leave comments in the first place.

Robert, perhaps if you suggest it to the folks at WordPress, they might listen?

Hah! I hear (pun intended) little plugs of raw potato stuck in your ear overnight are supposed to draw out the infection and help cure it. Never tried it myself, but a friend of ours who's into natural remedies said it worked all the time on his daughter and son, and no, there were no side effects. In other words, infection gone, hearing good.

I think it's lame. What's the value of owning virtual property? I just don't see it. I suppose we each assign some value to the stuff we like, but I wouldn't waste my money buying up virtual property when I can purchase the real, physical kind that I can actually use. The site is clearly based on speculation, and is designed as a money-making mechanism for its owner. I fail to see what value (if any) it brings to its customers.