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Comment Re:Rural Rich? Bullshit. (Score 1) 372

This. I live in a rural area, and I'm fairly well-off, but there are people out here who are far less fortunate. But this isn't really an issue of rich vs. poor. This is an issue of everyone needing access to essential services. Land lines remain an essential service in rural areas, especially since there are areas out here that do not have any cell phone coverage at all. Land lines are also often the only source of internet access besides satellite - I'm fortunate enough to have DSL, but I know people still on 56k who just can't afford the high cost of a satellite ISP, and who have no cell network coverage.

Comment Re:Skype Alternatives (Score 1) 218

The big problem I have with Google Talk is the lack of a simple image sharing function. In WLM it's really easy, and appears in-line and in a picture sharing window off to the side of your contact's IM window. You can view the images together so you know you're looking at the same thing.

This is particularly useful for sharing and discussing interesting pornography. Something that I do quite often.

I have yet to find a solution that is the equal of WLM for this function.

Comment I have to pay for this junk (Score 1) 338

In order to save money, I don't have a text messaging plan on my phone. Generally this works fine - I barely use the cell phone for calls, and never for texting (this has more to do with my lack of good friends than my use of technology). But I do have to pay money every time one of these jerks sends me a text message. I think if I have to pay to get their spam messages, I should be paid the cost of the message, plus a small fee, say $5 per message, in order to cover my trouble and any bank fees associated with cashing a $0.10 check. If he were willing to pay, it might have the advantage of making the language I use as I delete the thing without reading it a bit less foul.

Social Networks

Geomapping Racism With Twitter 409

Hugh Pickens writes "Megan Garber writes that in the age of the quantified self, biases are just one more thing that can be measured, analyzed, and publicized. The day after Barack Obama won a second term as president of the United States, a group of geography academics took advantage of the fact that many tweets are geocoded to search Twitter for racism-revealing terms that appeared in the context of tweets that mentioned 'Obama,' 're-elected,' or 'won,' sorting the tweets according to the state they were sent from and comparing the racist tweets to the total number of geocoded tweets coming from that state during the same time period. Their findings? Alabama and Mississippi have the highest measures followed closely by Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee forming a fairly distinctive cluster in the southeast. Beyond that cluster North Dakota and Utah both had relatively high scores (3.5 each), as did Missouri, Oregon, and Minnesota. 'These findings support the idea that there are some fairly strong clustering of hate tweets centered in southeastern U.S. which has a much higher rate than the national average,' writes Matthew Zook. 'But lest anyone elsewhere become too complacent, the unfortunate fact is that most states are not immune from this kind of activity. Racist behavior, particularly directed at African Americans in the U.S., is all too easy to find both offline and in information space.'"

Comment Re:Verizon (Score 1) 375

Where I live (Northeast Arkansas) AT&T coverage is pretty spotty. Verizon is much better, though there's a big dead zone right on the AR/MO border. Once you cross into Southeast Missouri, Verizon coverage starts getting spotty. I'm with Verizon because my AT&T phone wouldn't ring when I was at home. Took the phone back within 2 days and got out of contract. AT&T still tried to bill me $640 early termination fee, though, took over an hour on the phone to sort THAT out.

Comment Re:Answer in the question (Score 2) 257

This. Don't expect your family to know how to get into your digital copy, and don't expect it to last as long as good, old-fashioned paper. A safety deposit box is great for long-term documents, and a small fire-proof safe at home is good enough for keeping frequently-changed things like passwords. Note that you should not keep REALLY important documents in a home safe, especially a small one, as a thief can simply pick it up, walk out, and drill the lock at his convenience.

Comment I still use the optical drive (Score 1) 440

Of course my notebook doubles as entertainment when I travel, and I usually have a handful of DVD's or Blu-rays to watch. If I didn't have an optical drive, I'd have to convert my collection on my desktop and transfer to my notebook, a time consuming proposition considering how large my collection is and how lazy I am.

Comment Re:How about eradicating PDFs instead? (Score 1) 257

PDFs are great when you want to save a document for later, offline use. Like a product manual, which one may refer to once in a while. You can refer to your local copy, and not have to download it every time.

PDF's are also great for preserving the formatting on documents. It takes a lot of effort to get the formatting to appear exactly the way you want it to in HTML in every browser. Now imagine you have 5,000 separate product manuals, which one can either simply and easily export to PDF, or have the headache of converting to HTML (and losing portions of the formatting in the process), and it's an easy choice.

Using PDF's for major portions of websites is stupid, but they do have their place. It's all a matter of using the right tool for the job (or at least the least bad tool).

Comment Re:My First Online Experience (Score 1) 169

My first experience going online was also with Prodigy, which my parents promptly cancelled after they got the telephone bill with all the long distance charges. It wasn't till 97 when I turned 18 and moved out of the sticks that I was able to get on again, with a 56k dialup modem.

Comment I noticed this. (Score 1) 211

I used reCAPTCHA on a small phpBB board. Because of the small number of users, I activate any accounts manually, However, since the first of the year I must have gotten 40 attempted registrations. Very annoying, because I got an e-mail for each of them. Switched to a question that only someone familiar with my board would be familiar with, seems to have stopped that stuff.

Image

Police Investigating Virtual Furniture Theft 103

krou writes "Finnish police are involved in the investigation of up to 400 cases of theft from virtual world Habbo Hotel, with some users reporting the loss of up to €1000 of virtual furniture and other items. Users were targeted using a phishing scam that used fake webpages to capture usernames and passwords. There is no mention as to whether or not the thieves made off with the bath towels, gowns, shampoo bottles, and soaps."
Image

Website Sells Pubic Lice 319

A British website called crabrevenge.com will help you prove that there is literally nothing you can't find online by selling you pubic lice. A disclaimer on the site says the creators "do not endorse giving people lice," and the lice are for "novelty purposes only." The company also boasts about a facility "where we do all of our parasite husbandry and carefully considered selective breeding." Three different packages are available: "Green package - One colony that can lay as many as 30 eggs for about $20. Blue package - Three colonies to share with your friends or freeze a batch or two for about $35. Red package - A vial of 'shampoo-resistant F-strain crabs' which can take up to two weeks to kill for about $52."

Comment Probably won't happen everywhere. (Score 1) 502

This probably won't happen everywhere. I live in a rural community, and there's really no other options besides satellite or (in town) cable. Many people don't even have high speed internet - DSL became available just 2 of years ago, and our town still has a local dial-up ISP with enough subscribers to turn a profit. The nearest over-the-air TV station is over 60 miles away, so it takes a powerful antenna to get even a single station.

I personally could probably do without a lot of the channels on my Dish Network system. However, I like HIstory, History Inernational, Investigation Discovery, and Tru TV enough to keep it around. And my parents don't know how to use the internet, so they have to have something to watch.

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