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Comment News websites vs. Aggregators vs. Blogs (Score 3, Insightful) 299

disclaimer : I was an admin for fark.com.

The problem as I see it is that news sites started adding the ability for user comments to try to make their websites more 'sticky'. They wanted people to keep coming back ... but the ones that do are the trolls.

Unless you've modeled your whole site around people commenting, and build up a community, you don't tend to get useful comments -- you either get trolls, people advertising 'work at home', or someone with a follow question about the article that no one every responds to. Once in a while you might get some actually useful information from the general public, the 'I was there' accounts and such ... but it's few and far between.

(note, I'm not commenting on how Fark handles things ... most of their measures were implemented after I left, and I only know some of it; my experience comes with managing other websites)

Allowing anonymous posting that immediately gets shown to the public is just plain stupid. It's begging for trolls. At least with accounts you can monitor the new users, as in most cases you either have the throw-away account (which might have been registered months ago, specifically for use later), or the person who's just constantly obnoxious.

If I ever set up another website, I'm going to the model of 'invitations' where you have to know someone already in the community to get an invite -- because then if we get someone being an ass, we can suspend their friends' accounts, too (giving them some external pressure to not be a dick), or prune the whole tree of accounts if that doesn't help.

So, anyway, my basic categories:

  • News websites : people go there for the new, original news.
  • Aggregators : people go there to participate in commentary about other things found on the internet, but the focus isn't on original content (slashdot, digg, etc.)
  • Blogs : personal journals, run by a person or small group, with commentary on whatever they feel like (includes people's facebooks pages, and sites like Jezebel)

There are some successful hybrids out there ... but if you're going to allow comments, you have to know how to handle them ... and I don't want to say too much, because I don't want to give the trolls info on how to bypass some of the more interesting systems I've seen.

Comment Public libraries buy ebooks from Amazon (Score 1) 165

There's actually been a bit of discussion among the library community -- most libraries who offer ebooks get them via Overdrive, which has some major ties (is owned by?) Amazon.

But most libraries have privacy policies, but there's now a third party that can track their citizen's reading habits. There's also complaints about how Amazon sends e-mails to people who have 'checked out' ebooks that tells them to buy the book when it's about to 'expire'.

See, for example, the comments from Librarian Black. (it's in video form, but she raises issues about state laws on keeping lending info private, and most library's policies of not endorsing companies). It's possible that it's changed; I refuse to check out ebooks from my local library, as it's using Overdrive.

Comment commissioning & Phase E (Score 3, Informative) 143

The launch of the spacecraft is effectively the start of 'Phase E' (operations) for the instruments ... but there's a lot of things that still have to happen:

  • They have to deploy any solar panels (unless it's got an RTG), and align with the sun
  • They have to check out the spacecraft health, to make sure that nothing shook loose during launch, and they can talk to it.
  • The spacecraft has to get to the right place. (which takes *years* for missions to the outer planets)
  • They test the instruments against a known source (calibration lamp or similar)
  • They deploy antenna or instrument booms, remove covers, etc.
  • They take real measurements (aka. "first light")
  • They may perform maneuvers (eg, take an image, roll the spacecraft over, take an image again ... or take an exposure whole rolling) for flat fielding (aka. "calibration")
  • They compare the results from the new sensor against other measurements to determine how (aka. "validation")

They refer to this whole period as "commissioning". They're not always run in order (eg, for the missions to the outer planets, which might take *years* to get to, they try to check on the health of the instruments before they get to the planet). For some instruments, it might take years to validate the data.

There's also typically a press conference with the "first release" of the data, after the first calibration is done, but that's more to do with scientists on the ground than the spacecraft itself.

disclaimer : I work for a NASA center, but I don't deal with spacecraft directly; I just manage the data after it's downlinked & processed.

Comment It's been done. (teergrube) (Score 4, Informative) 100

There's even a term for this, teergrube.

An ISP that I worked for in the 1990s used to do this (dcr.net, owned by Drew Curtis, of fark.com fame).

We had some code that would look for blatant e-mail harvesters, and would SLOWLY return random bogus e-mail addresses ... wait a couple seconds, spit out an address ... etc. The page at the top even had warnings that the page was completely bogus.

At first, all of the e-mail addresses were all in our domain (but not our real mail server), but I went and added some code that would look up the connecting IP's network (I think I used whois.ra.net), and would also include '{abuse,postmaster}@(network)' and again for the network's upstream providers.

I can't remember if the bogus mail server was also the box that we had set up so that if *anything* tried touching it, it'd blackhole the connecting IP at our external router, if it was a teergrube itself.

Comment ... when they want to (Score 1) 166

... and I've known some who just didn't want to.

Personally, when I worked at a university, I kept a shirt and tie hanging in my cubicle for when I had meetings. As I never wore jeans in, when given 5 min warning, I was prepared.

Unfortunately, one day, I was dealing with server problems with our team lead, and my (new) manager came in and insisted we had to go to a meeting. I said I needed to grab my shirt & tie, but he insisted we were already late.

It seems that the executive director (3 levels above my boss) had decided that we were going to have an 'introduce the different groups within the IT department to each other', and the chairs were set up as rings of concentric circles ... and all of the free chairs were in the middle ... so I'm wearing a t-shirt that says "some people are alive simply because it's illegal to kill them".

Then they started cracking down on the dress code. Of course, the memo from the executive director on this "interpretation of the dress code" included no logos, so the staff shirts were actually not compliant with his interpretation. It also said "shirt with a collar", without qualifying "dress collar" (so therefore, my crew-necked t-shirt was compliant). They also insisted on 'no large text', without defining a specific letter height. (I hung up my White Zombie "More Human than Human" shirt to show that the "some people..." shirt had medium-sized letters.)

I was later fired ... it had to go before the unemployment office as they claimed I quit , but refused to make a formal statement (where I could've then sued for libel ... of course, I likely also had a case for "constructive dismissal" anyway, as my project manager had been told to harrass me 'til I quit)

But ... as my job was all about problem solving, I found a number of ways to comply with the wording of the 'interpretation' of the dress code:

  • took the sleaves off of dress shirts. (not a good luck for me, as I'm rather hairy)
  • added 'A COLLAR' with an embroidery machine
  • borrowed a steel gorget from a friend in the SCA (along with the rest of the platemail)
  • bought a number of 'club shirts' (effectively, hawaiian shirts w/ comic book characters on 'em)
  • wore the same shirt for almost 5 weeks straight (2 weeks, 1 day gap, then almost 3 weeks without washing it, only febreeze)
  • obnoxious ties ... but that was a problem when crawling around the machine room (I was also a sysadmin)

If I had it to do all over again ... I'd have tried to find a priest's collar. Or a dickie. I mean, hell, I worked in a locked room -- it's not like anyone saw me except for when I went to meetings, lunch, or the bathroom.

So instead, I work at NASA ... about the only government agency (unless you're at HQ) that prefers you to *not* wear a tie (I was threatened with bodily harm by a small, 60+ year old woman if I continued wearing one to work). Unfortunately, a while back my employer got bought out by a military contractor, and they started pushing down dress codes on us ... so I've been trying to get a definition of exactly what a "graphical t-shirt" is. My co-workers all just ignore it, but I'm doing my best to point out what a pointless, stupid rule it is w/ ASCII art and stylized text.

Comment command-click when submitting (Score 2) 278

Always use command-click when submitting a form, or whatever the key combination is to create a new window or tab. (might be shift-click, or control-click ... or right click, and select from the menu)

I admit, this won't always work in the 'one page' applications built exclusively in JavaScript, but when it does, it means that the failure page is in a new window, and you can go back to copy & paste the content after you re-authenticate.

Some of the nastier JavaScript 'enhanced' forms will try to make callbacks as you're typing, and when THOSE time out, they redraw the screen and you lose everything ... but luckily, in the case of HR applications, most of those were written 10+ years ago and never updated.

Comment Volunteer to be an Election Judge (Score 1) 190

Most elections rely on citizens who run the election who aren't government employees. I say 'volunteer', but most municipaliies will pay you for your time (including any training time).

I was a 'Chief Judge' for 4 years of my town, and actually had a lot of say in how the election was run -- based on complaints about previous elections, I ended up designing the ballots, having them printed, considered if it was worth getting mechanical voting machines as hand-me-down from the county (would've done it, if we had the storage space ... those things are HUGE), and other stuff that I would've expected there to have been specific rules for.

There are laws about how the election must be run, but the chief judge may have some latitute around how they actually run the election. If you're an election judge, and you find something in the laws that doesn't mesh with electronic voting, you might be able to get the whole thing halted.

As another option, volunteer to be a poll sitter for a candidate; if your area allows them, they're someone who sits in the polling area to observe that the election is being run correctly by the election judges. (and it's important to look into what your rights are as one; if they give you the right to examine the cast ballots, you can likely complain that there's no way to examine the electronic ballots, and get the whole election thrown out).

Comment How do you know they bought the CD? (Score 0) 317

I think the lawsuit is stupid, as they'd have to prove that the 'primary' reason for this device is to be able to rip music.

But your claim that they're the owner of the CD isn't necessarily true. You could borrow a CD from the library, or a friend. How's the device to know if you actually own it?

And what happens if you *did* own the CD, but you then sold or gave it away? Do you still have the right to have the music in your car?

What if you haven't sold the CD, but it's now scratched or melted, and therefore unplayable? Do you still have to keep the physical copy to have the continued right to listen to it from your ripped backup, or can you dispose of the physical item?

Personally, I hope this goes to trial, and that the car manufacturers refuse to settle. I'd like a judge to finally weigh in on what is or isn't legal, so that these groups can't threaten legal action just to try to get settlements.

Comment Phone Scoop's Phone Finder (Score 2) 544

Phone Scoop's Phone Finder allows you to search for cell phones by feature (eg, hours of standby, hours of talk, OS, display resolution).

Set 'U.S. Carrier Availability' to 'Available' and 'Form Factor' to 'Slide', and you get:

  • Alcatel Sparq II
  • HTC Merge
  • Kyocera Milano / Jitterbug Touch
  • Kyocera Rise
  • Kyocera Verve / Contact
  • LG Cosmos 2 / Cosmos 3
  • LG Enact
  • LG Enlighten / Optimus Slider / Optimus Zip
  • LG Extravert 2 / Freedom II
  • LG LX-290 / 290c
  • LG Mach
  • LG Optimus F3Q
  • LG Rumor Reflex S / Rumor Reflex / Freedom / Converse
  • LG Xpression / Xpression 2
  • Pantech Renue
  • Pantech Vybe
  • Samsung Array / Montage
  • Samsung SGH-T301g
  • Samsung Stratosphere / Galaxy Metrix 4G

Took me less than a minute, and I didn't even had to visit any stores. And if you turn off the 'US Carrier Availability' but require 'World Roaming', you can find other phones that you might be able to get. (as HP never released the Palm Pre3 in the US, so I had to get mine from other sources)

Comment Re:$23k isn't crap to an oracle shop... (Score 1) 97

So I used to be a DBA + sysadmin at an Oracle shop ~10 years ago.

Someone even managed to talk Oracle into selling us a site license for *everything* for $1mil/year. (a steep education discount; this was a university).

Unfortunately, they couldn't get the various schools and departments to agree to pool their money to buy the site license, so instead we paid more for restrictive licenses and were prone to auditing. The only reason I saw for not buying into the site license was if departments were planning on jumping ship entirely. (and as we were using Oracle Financials, and the system for class registration was tightly bound to Oracle, I have no idea why it was such an issue ... unless there were people individually getting kickbacks who would now be cut off)

Comment ...by hiring them. (Score 1) 98

When I used to work for a university (mid-1990s), our department's sysdmin had gotten in trouble at the engineering school because he had written a script that would log into every machine multiple times until all ttys were exhausted ... so he could run his ray-tracing jobs undisturbed. I heard he got away with it for quite some time before one of their sysadmins came in early and realized something wasn't right.

They told him not to do it, but instead of banning him, they put him to work ... he wrote some pretty impressive software to make it easier for us to manage users, and a menu system for the non-technical users (a gopher-like interface that'd run elm / pine / news / lynx / gopher / etc.)

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