locoluis - Slashdot User

uSocial Sells Twitter Followers By the Thousand 118

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday July 06, 2009 @03:34AM from the how-to-know-when-you've-jumped-the-shark dept.

bfire writes to tell us that marketing firm uSocial has decided to apply a new monetization scheme to the Twitter service by providing packages of followers for purchase. "According to the firm, a single Twitter follower could be worth $0.10 a month. It is selling followers in various packages, starting at 1,000 for $87, which is delivered in seven days, and going all the way up to 100,000 followers at a cost of $3,479, delivered over a year." This is just the latest in a number of different exploits and problems of the Twitter universe as individuals try to subvert a popular tool into a self-serving device.

Could Betelgeuse Go Boom? 383

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 11, 2009 @10:22PM from the betelgeuse-betelgeuse-betelgeuse-winona dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The answer is No. In space, nobody can hear you scream. However, it might go supernova in the near future, if it hasn't already. I wanna see that, even if it would permanently disfigure Orion. Ka freaking bam!"

US ISPs Using Push Polling To Stop Cheap Internet 417

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday April 29, 2009 @08:15AM from the we-don't-want-your-kind-here dept.

An anonymous reader writes "What happens when a new ISP is started somewhere in the United States that completely blows out of the water all the other ISPs in the area, in terms of price and performance? Apparently, that question is being answered in North Carolina, where Greenlight Inc., a company started by a city government, is trying to offer faster, more reliable, and cheaper Internet service to the local residents. Time Warner and Embarq can't compete. So they are not only lobbying the state government to destroy the upstart competition, but are now using push polling methods to gain support, across the two cities that could benefit from the new ISP, for the 'Level the playing field' legislation they got introduced in the legislature." A local news outlet provides coverage more friendly to the incumbents' point of view.

What Features Should Be Included With iPhone 3.0? 606

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday March 16, 2009 @12:30PM from the not-that-apple-listens-to-consumers dept.

With the announcement coming tomorrow, Macworld has posted their top list of 15 features they would like to see in an iPhone 3.0 update. The list includes some things that people have been asking for since launch (like cut and paste) and things that were once there but have since been silently removed (like push notifications/background apps). With almost 2 years of time to grow and learn, what other things are woefully inadequate on Apple's popular handheld?

US Adults Fail Basic Science Literacy 1038

Posted by kdawson on Friday March 13, 2009 @10:35AM from the ignorance-can-be-fixed dept.

TaeKwonDood writes "Do you want the bad news first or the good news? The good news is that about 80% of Americans think science knowledge is 'very important' to our future. The bad news is most of those people think it's up to someone else to get knowledgeable. Only 15% actually know how much of the planet is covered in water (47% if you accept a rough approximation of the exact number) and over 40% think dinosaurs and humans cavorted together like in some sort of 'Land Of The Lost' episode. What to do? Pres. Obama thinks merit pay for teachers makes sense. Yes, it will enrage the teachers' union, but it might inspire better people to go into science teaching. It's either that or accept that almost 50% of Americans won't know how long it takes the earth to go around the sun."

Comment Re:Exactly (Score 3, Informative) 409

by locoluis on Thursday March 12, 2009 @05:22PM (#27173429) Attached to: Amazon Uses DMCA To Restrict Ebook Purchases

Oh, here's a catch.

Some PDF creators link the character for each font to the internal representation in order of character appearance, not in Unicode order. This means that things like pdftohtml, screen reading or even plain copy/paste no longer work, as they yield gibberish instead.

For example, the string:

"This is a PDF test."

Would get stored as something like:
0,1,2,3,4,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,4,9,10,3,9,11

And pdftohtml yields something like:
!"#$"#$%&'($)*#)+

Oh, and each typeface gets a distinct ordering, so the same string in different typefaces would probably get encoded differently...

In order to decode this you have to both read the actual graphical characters AND know which typeface is used in each segment of text. Which is a PITA. Otherwise, you're lost.

OCR may or may not be of any help, depending on the typeface used...

Comment Re:Gives a new meaning... (Score 1) 470

by locoluis on Friday February 27, 2009 @05:37PM (#27017267) Attached to: Wife of Harried Pirate Bay Witness Gets Buried in Internet Love

A daisy!!!

**FWHOOOOSH*** ... oops. Sorry, I'm allergic to daisies.

Saving Journalism With Flash and Java 206

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 13, 2009 @04:40PM from the looking-forward-and-looking-back dept.

An anonymous reader writes "New York magazine has a story about some of the flashy new ideas that are coming out of the labs of the New York Times. The piece prompted Peter Wayner to dig up some of the old Java applets he wrote to explore whether more promiscuity really stops AIDS and whether baseball can do anything to speed up the games. He notes that these took a great deal of work to produce and it's not possible to do them on a daily basis. Furthermore, they're cranky and fragile, perhaps thanks to Java. Are cool, interactive features the future of journalism on the web? Or will simple ASCII text continue to be the most efficient way for us to mingle our thoughts, especially when ASCII text won't generate a classloading error?"

Nintendo Files Patent For Game That Plays Itself 152

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 10, 2009 @04:45AM from the say-what-now dept.

Kotaku points out a recent patent filed by Nintendo which automates gameplay unless the user specifically chooses to play a particular part of the game. Quoting: "The new system, described in a patent filed by Nintendo Creative Director Shigeru Miyamoto on June 30, 2008, but made public today, looks to solve the issue of casual gamers losing interest in a game before they complete it, while still maintaining the interest of hardcore gamers. The solution would turn a game into a full-length cut scene of sorts, allowing players to jump into and out of the action whenever they wanted. But when played this way, gamers would not be able to save their progress, maintaining the challenge of completing a game without skipping or cheating."

Sleep Mailing 195

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 15, 2008 @06:14PM from the better-than-drunk-dialing dept.

Doctors have reported the first case of someone using the internet while asleep, when a sleeping woman sent emails to people asking them over for drinks and caviar. The 44-year-old woman found out what she had done after a would be guest phoned her about it the next day. While asleep the woman turned on her computer, logged on by typing her username and password then composed and sent three emails. Each mail was in a random mix of upper and lower cases, unformatted and written in strange language. One read: "Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm,. Bring wine and caviar only." Another said simply, "What the......." If I had known that researchers were interested in unformatted, rambling email I would have let them read my inbox. They could start a whole new school of medicine.

Stallman Unsure Whether Firefox Is Truly Free 905

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday November 17, 2008 @10:35AM from the more-left-than-left dept.

Slatterz writes "Among the theories Stallman bandies about in this Q&A are: Facebook may not share private data with the CIA, Firefox isn't really 'free software,' and his dreams of a day where nobody is involved in developing or promoting proprietary software. Agree or disagree?"

Rubber Duckies For Global Warming Research 167

Posted by kdawson on Sunday November 16, 2008 @08:51PM from the next-time-try-penguins dept.

The Wall Street Journal has a look at global warming research using rubber duckies. The toys have been employed in tracking ocean currents since 1992; but recently NASA robotics expert Alberto Behar released 90 yellow rubber ducks into the melt water flowing down a chasm in a Greenland glacier. "Each duck was imprinted with an email address and, in three languages, the offer of a reward. If all goes well, Dr. Behar hopes that one day they will emerge 30 miles or so away at the glacier's edge in the open water of Disko Bay near Ilulissat, bobbing brightly amid the icebergs north of the Arctic Circle, each one a significant clue to just how warming temperatures may speed the glacier's slide to the sea."

US State Sues Web/SEO Firm For Deceiving Mom-and-Pops 96

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 14, 2008 @10:39AM from the about-time dept.

netbuzz writes "The state of Washington is suing a search engine optimization and Web services outfit, based in Redmond, that has done business under the names Visible.net, Captures.com, and WebMarketingSource.com. In essence, the state says these entities have deceived mostly mom-and-pop sites through unfulfilled performance promises and financial shenanigans after charging up to $10,000 in up-front charges and more in monthly fees. About 90 complaints have been lodged over four years, the state says."

Non-Profit Org Claims Rights In Library Catalog Data 152

Posted by timothy on Thursday November 13, 2008 @03:48PM from the paging-dr-gracenote dept.

lamona writes "The main source of the bibliographic records that are carried in library databases is a non-profit organization called OCLC. Over the weekend OCLC 'leaked' its new policy that claims contractual rights in the subsequent uses of the data, uses such as downloading book information into Zotero or other bibliographic software. The policy explicitly forbids any use that would compete with OCLC. This would essentially rule out the creation of free and open databases of library content, such as the Open Library and LibraryThing. The library blogosphere is up in arms . But can our right to say: "Twain, Mark. The adventures of Tom Sawyer" be saved?"

As Seas Rise, Maldives Seek To Buy a New Homeland 521

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday November 12, 2008 @09:14AM from the gladly-pay-you-tuesday dept.

Peace Corps Online writes "The Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country's billion-dollar annual tourist revenue to buy a new homeland as insurance against climate change. Rising sea levels threaten to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees as the chain of 1,200 island and coral atolls dotted 500 miles from the tip of India is likely to disappear under the waves if the current pace of climate change continues to raise sea levels. The UN forecasts that the seas are likely to rise by up to 59 cm by the year 2100. Most parts of the Maldives are just 150 cm above water so even a 'small rise' in sea levels would inundate large parts of the archipelago. 'We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere. It's an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome,' says the Muslim country's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, adding that he has already broached the subject with a number of countries and found them to be 'receptive.' India and Sri Lanka are targets because they have similar cultures and climates; Australia is worth looking at because of the immense amount of unoccupied land in that country. 'We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades.'"

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