theStorminMormon - Slashdot User

Submission + - EBay Limits PS3 Sales

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theStorminMormon

on Friday November 17, 2006 @05:47PM

theStorminMormon writes: "If you managed to get your hands on a new PS3 and are hoping to sell it on EBay, you better have an established record already. In order to crack down on fraud, EBay has issued a slew of restrictions for those trying to sell a PS3. Here are some of the restrictions:
Only established eBay Inc. vendors — those who have racked up comments from at least 50 previous customers and have positive ratings of at least 98 out of 100 points — can list PS3s before Friday. Each vendor can only list only one PS3 per eBay account.
Article from CNN. There will be restrictions on Wii sales as well."

Submission + - Earth's Protective Magnetic Field Declining

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theStorminMormon

on Wednesday October 25, 2006 @10:23AM

theStorminMormon writes: "According to yesterday's NOVA documentary Magnetic Storm the protective magnetic field surrounding the earth is on the decline. The research is based on analysis of iron atoms in clay or ceramic:

By examining pots from prehistory to modern times, geologist John Shaw of the University of Liverpool in England has discovered just how dramatically the field has changed. "When we plot the results from the ceramics," he notes, "we see a rapid fall as we come toward the present day. The rate of change is higher over the last 300 years than it has been for any time in the past 5,000 years. It's going from a strong field down to a weak field, and it's doing so very quickly."

Although it scared the secretary at work into thinking we were all going to die within the century, there are actually three scenarios: either the field regains strength, it dissipates entirely, or this is just the precursor to an over-due reversal in the polarity of the field. What are the potential effects of a reversal or a dissipation?"

Submission + - Facebook Creator Mark Zuckerberg Responds

Submitted by

theStorminMormon

on Friday September 08, 2006 @08:29AM

theStorminMormon writes: ""We really messed this one up." begins an open letter from Mark Zuckerberg to the Facebook community responding to uproar over the new Feeds functionality added to Facebook a few days ago (original story). The letter goes on to say: "we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now."

As covered in the Washington Post as well, users will now have full control in whether or not they participate in the Feeds. In addition, Mark will be in the Facebook group he started (Free Flow of Information on the Internet) Saturday at 4pm to field questions from Facebook users.

Full text of letter below:

An Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg:

We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now.

When I made Facebook two years ago my goal was to help people understand what was going on in their world a little better. I wanted to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted, but also have control over whom they shared that information with. I think a lot of the success we've seen is because of these basic principles.

We made the site so that all of our members are a part of smaller networks like schools, companies or regions, so you can only see the profiles of people who are in your networks and your friends. We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings — to give you even more control over who you share your information with.

Somehow we missed this point with Feed and we didn't build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I'm sorry for it. But apologizing isn't enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends' News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over.

This may sound silly, but I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn't made so many of you angry, I am glad we got to hear you. And I am also glad that News Feed highlighted all these groups so people could find them and share their opinions with each other as well.

About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet, because that's what I believe in — helping people share information with the people they want to share it with. I'd encourage you to check it out to learn more about what guides those of us who make Facebook. Tomorrow at 4pm est, I will be in that group with a bunch of people from Facebook, and we would love to discuss all of this with you. It would be great to see you there.

Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Mark"

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