God, I'm old. This was 5 months after I graduated high school.

I know it's /., but please at least RTFS (read the f'ing SUMMARY), which explains that this is a NEW Facebook feature, which works DIFFERENTLY from the OLD Facebook feature. You've just described the OLD Facebook group feature. This one works differently.

Well, no. I'm FB friends with my younger brothers. The youngest is in high school, and has the sense of humor one expects to find in bright, 16 year old boys... rather juvenile. I'm not going to de-friend my brother. I work at helping to teach him what's appropriate and what's inappropriate, but of course that's not always successful. If he were to add me to some group because of some childish whim of his, that doesn't mean he's not my friend... just that he's exercised some bad judgment.

Do you immediately ditch all your friends the instant they do something against your wishes? If so, I doubt you have many left. Most of us have at least a few friends who on occasion act a bit like an asshole, but are our friends nevertheless.

The REAL problem here is Facebook failing to let its users have control over what other users do to an aspect of our account. I can un-tag myself from pictures. I can turn off the ability of others to tag me in photos. Why can't I turn off the ability of other users to tag me in (i.e., make me a "member" of) groups? I should have complete control over all aspects of where my FB identity is linked in FB.

Fair question. How do you know they're suffering? Have YOU spoken to them?

The green color for asteroids does NOT indicate that the orbit has been "confirmed." It indicates that the orbit never crosses or approaches the Earth's orbit. And the green color for the planets as well as some of the asteroids hardly causes real confusion in watching, as the planets have their orbits permanently displayed with circles.

I think you need to watch the video again, in 1080p resolution. It DOES show plenty of Jupiter trojans, but they don't stand out as much because not as many of those individual objects have been formally observed and catalogued (a requirement to be displayed in this particular video).

If you were reviewing this for publications, I hope you would read (and understand) the caption provided with it a bit more thoroughly, and watch the highest resolution version, before making your evaluation.

Yes, but.... as the (by far) oldest of a family of 7 kids (12 years between me and my closest sibling, 29 years between me and the youngest one), I have some experience in this area myself. The thing with your insight about the anxiety of the new parent being useless is that there are also a fair number of studies which show that birth order DOES make a difference in the personality of children. I think there is plenty of room to wonder whether the lessening anxiety you describe (like the old joke... first kid, the pacifier falls on the floor, you sterilize it before giving it back; 2nd kid, you rinse it off then stick it back in his mouth; 3rd kid's lucky if you wipe it off before you give it back) does have a significant impact in how the child develops.

Huh? An entirely voluntary, on-line program pays so little that nobody in their right mind would do it, and this is evidence about working wages in western countries?

Maybe its evidence that there are some really stupid people out there who volunteer to work in the "sweatshop" of their own house and have deluded themselves into thinking that they'll ever earn any real amount of money with the Mechanical Turk program. OR maybe this money is being earned by folks living in third world countries for whom making $0.60 an hour at home or in a cool computer room is a previously undreamed of luxury.

Seriously... if you can't find better-paying work than this as a JANITOR, then you truly are utterly unemployable and ought to consider yourself grateful to be able to find this kind of work.

ALL iPhone 4s come with a 30-day, no-questions-asked return policy for a full refund. Have for a long time. This is Apple's policy, not something required by U.S. consumer law. The antenna "issue" was discovered and widely reported within about 2 days of the product ship date.

What the fuck more do you want from a return policy? "Keep your iPhone with this issue for a year, and if you decide after that that you don't like it, will give you a full refund on the product you've used for A YEAR"? 30 days is ample time to test out the phone and see if the antenna "issue" bothers YOU in your ordinary use. Me, it doesn't. My reception is about identical to what I got with my iPhone 3G, haven't noticed any significant difference at all. Maybe you think Apple should have MADE me give up the phone and give me my money back, whether I was pleased with their product or not?

If I recall correctly, Civ 4 required 256Mb of VIDEO memory, not of overall RAM.

Yes! I played many, many hours of Balance of Power. As I recall, it was actually a Windows game, and came with a customized version of Windows 1.0 or Windows 2.0 which could be used only to load BoP.

"You have initiated a global thermonuclear war. No, you will not be rewarded by cool graphics of the earth exploding." Or something like that. Wish I could play it again.

Did you by any chance play Sun Tzu's The Ancient Art of War (or its sequel, TAAoW at Sea), which was out around the same time?

Recursive sigh... Yes, under the Kelo decision, a state could take private property for a "business park." This had NOTHING to do with "interstate commerce," as it was the local government, not the federal government, taking the property. The Kelo decision thus does NOT say anything about the "IC Clause" trumping anything.

PLUS, the town government taking the property had to pay JUST COMPENSATION for the property. They couldn't just take it away and not pay for it. Sheesh. The ignorance of the law on /. is simply breathtaking.

Um, not that it's usually worthwhile to respond to Anonymous Cowards, but what the hell are you talking about, "pirated material"? The guy specifically licensed the photos to be used for "non-commercial" purposes. My question was whether my site, as described, qualified as "non-commercial" or not, under the terms of the license he used for the photos. If my site is "non-commercial," then if I were to use it, it would NOT be "pirated," because it would be an authorized use. If you wish to take the position that ANY ads makes a page "commercial," then say so directly and tell Creative Commons to incorporate that express statement in their license terms. If you read the link I posted, you'll see that even the CC researchers understand that their license terms are vague in this area. Sheesh...

See this discussion about the varied understandings of the term "non-commercial" as used by Creative Commons:

While it would take a more focused and exhaustive study to conclude that these seemingly fortunate attitudinal differences are correct, strong, and global, they do hint at rules of thumb for licensors releasing works under NC licenses and licensees using works released under NC licenses — licensors should expect some uses of their works that would not meet the most stringently conservative definition of noncommercial, and licensees who are uncertain of whether their use is noncommercial should find a work to use that does unambiguously allow commercial use

BoingBoing MAY be violating the terms of the license. But they may not be. The actual legal language of this particular clause of the Creative Commons license is fairly ambiguous, to my reading.

Here's the relevant definition (from CC ver. 3):

You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The exchange of the Work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-sharing or otherwise shall not be considered to be intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation, provided there is no payment of any monetary compensation in con-nection with the exchange of copyrighted works.

Is the use of the photo to illustrate a story "primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage"? My own blog has ads on it, but those ads have never paid me enough to even meet the expenses of hosting the blog. Would I be using the image for "commercial advantage" if I posted it on my blog?

Worse, the phrase "commercial use" has a fairly standard meaning in photography law, as the use of the image basically in an advertisement. Thus, when the National Enquirer runs a photo of some celebrity, that use is an "editorial" use rather than a "commercial" use; it illustrates the editorial story. They still have to pay the photographer ("non-commercial use" by itself is hardly enough to allow a copyright violation), but they don't have to pay the subjects of the photo anything... even though the whole point of running the photo is to sell more copies of the Enquirer, a for-profit organization. But if they wanted to use the very same photo in an ad for, say, a watch company advertising in the Enquirer, then that ad would be a "commercial use" of the photo, and they would have to have the permission of the subjects of the photo to use it for that purpose. Media companies are VERY familiar with that distinction, so if they see a "non-commercial use only" clause, then they will automatically assume that just means that you can't use it in an actual ad.

So when the CC non-commercial clause is used, does that mean "commercial" versus "editorial" as the law has defined those concepts in an important area of photography law? Or does it mean something entirely different? The definition should be MUCH more clear. As a lawyer, I wouldn't have a problem representing BoingBoing here, and I'm sure the vagueness of the clause would at the VERY least allow them to get off with only paying a nominal charge for the use of the images, and may very well result in them not having to pay a dime.

Go rant at Lawrence Lessig and the lawyers who drew up the Creative Commons license for not writing clearer license terms.

Dura-cell is PEOPLE! (said in best Charlton Heston voice)