Except of course for the content blocker

The content blocker doesn't autoupdate the block list like AdBlock Plus does. With AdBlock Plus you install it and then forget about it. The maintenance cost is higher with Opera as you have to find a block list to download and install, and then update it manually to keep current.

First, the application was filed in 1990, so prior art is going to be harder to come by than you might think.

I doubt that. There were plenty of video games on the Amiga in the mid to late 1980s that had buttons that would change when the pointer was over them.

You are reading Slashdot and really have no idea what Twitter is?

That's correct. The only time I've noticed it mentioned outside of a web site is once or twice during an NPR story. Even then they don't explain what it is. I guess if it's mentioned on NPR then it's not just a computer geek thing.

I'm only interested in approximately 30% of the stories here (databases, Java, and Perl, plus a few other things) so that's usually all that I read. I only read this story because I have Google stock via a technology fund in my 401k, and I like to keep up with the things they do. I didn't know there were any URL shortening services other than tinyurl. I don't see why the net would need more than one, or would even need one in the first place. Shortening a URL seems quite pointless.

Even if you are against Twitter, or social media in general, no need to be elitist about it.

I agree. I waded into one of the Facebook related stories (I believe it was about the open source replacement) and there were a lot of posts about how people had deleted their accounts and why "you should delete yours too, right now!" They all seemed so insistent on telling others what to do. If people want to do something then let them do it. They obviously get some value out of the site or else they wouldn't expend the effort to use it.

I don't really under stand what "social media" is so I don't have a horse in this race. I signed up for MySpace once because a bunch of musicians I met at a music conference were talking about it. I didn't get it. There were only profile pages and no content. I assumed that it was an online dating site since it was asking me things such as if I'm single or married and what my sexual orientation was. I might have tried Facebook but at the time they required a .edu address. When I graduated from college the students did not have email addresses and the term email had not yet entered the public consciousness. 300 baud BBS dialup was just starting to catch on. So, in any case, when I hear the term "social media" I think "online dating." It seems like a great thing for single kids. My wife probably wouldn't be pleased if I signed up for one of those sites. :-)

I don't use it, but obviously other people do.

That statement is applicable to anything, so I'm not sure what your point is.

you know what Twitter is, right?

No, although I've started to see them mentioned all the time in the last six months or so. I assume they are another Facebook-type site but I don't care enough to find out.

Is Slashdot trying to turn into CNN now? This isn't news for nerds.

I didn't see anything in there about him participating in the wedding.

</sarcasm>

This is the dumbest thing I've ever read.

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

Do you know how long it would take them to verify all their sources.

I didn't say that the author needs to verify their source. They merely need to list them. They got that $200 billion figure from somewhere. Cite it.

Maybe newspaper articles should cite their sources and have a list of references at the end like academic papers do. That way at least readers or other interested parties could independently verify the facts in the article.

Maybe he's using it to auto-moderate your comments. I have my preferences configured to add +1 to my foes and +2 to my friend's comments. If I add someone to my foes list it's because I like their posts and want them to be above my comment threshold. I wish I had more than two categories to put people into so I could add +3 to some peoples posts. Beyond that, I find the whole friends and foes thing to be useless. I don't know of anyone else in real life the reads this web site.