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Comment Re:Lead to Walls? (Score 1) 120

by jcombel (#34147412) Attached to: Google Challenges Facebook Over User Address Books

regardless of your stretch of a definition for fud,
 
Google is singing "tear down the wall," by building a wall. we've been living in an environment of corporate self-protection lately; do you think this tactic will work, and convince Facebook "Oh, wow, I should open up here!"
 
Or is it more likely that other sites will follow suit and prevent their users from easily getting in bed with other websites?
Facebook

Submission + - Google challenges Facebook over user address books (reuters.com)

Submitted by jcombel
jcombel writes: When you sign in to Facebook, you had the option of importing your email contacts, to "friend" them all on the social network. Importing the other way — easily copying your Facebook contacts to Gmail — required jumping through considerable copy/paste hoops or third-party scripts. Google said enough is enough, and they're no longer helping sites that don't allow two-way contact merging. The stated intention is standing their ground to budge other sites into allowing users have control of where their data goes — but will this just lead to more sites putting up "data walls"?

Submission + - Thousands of words are worth a Picture (rambisyouth.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An artist who spent 3 years finding magazines cutting out words and phrases and glued them back together to form pictures. One is a very large picture of Abraham Lincoln being assassinated at fords theater and another is of the escape from Saigon. The different areas of the picture have words related to the area of the picture giving background to the scene. The macro view is used to inspire an idea while the micro view drags you into a story.
Education

Submission + - In Praise of Procrastination 1

Submitted by
Ponca City
Ponca City writes: "Every year, millions of Americans pay needless penalties because they don’t file their taxes on time, forgone huge amounts of money in matching 401(k) contributions because they never get around to signing up for a retirement plan, and risk blindness from glaucoma because they don’t use their eyedrops regularly. Now James Surowiecki writes that procrastination is a basic human impulse, a peculiar irrationality stems from our relationship to time — in particular, from a tendency that economists call “hyperbolic discounting," the ability to make rational choices when they’re thinking about the future, but, where as the present gets closer, short-term considerations overwhelm their long-term goals. Game theorist Thomas Schelling proposes that we think of ourselves a collection of competing selves, jostling, contending, and bargaining for control where one represents your short-term interests (having fun, putting off work, and so on), while another represents your long-term goals while philosopher Mark Kingwell puts it in existential terms: “Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. . . . Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.” So before we rush to overcome procrastination we should consider whether it is sometimes an impulse we should heed and that it might be useful to think about two kinds of procrastination: the kind that is genuinely akratic, a weakness of will that allows us to act against our own benefit, and the kind that’s telling you that what you’re supposed to be doing has, deep down, no real point. The procrastinator’s challenge, and perhaps the philosopher’s, too, is to figure out which is which."
Idle

Submission + - Disguised Asian Male Caught At Canadian Airport (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A young male of Asian appearance was caught in disguise during a flight from Hong Kong to Canada. The disguise consisted of a molded silicone face and neck mask, hat, glasses and cardigan. An intelligence alert (PDF) from Canada Border Services Agency contains photos of the man with and without the disguise as well as further details of the incident. Suspicions were raised at the start of the flight when the subject was noted as having an elderly appearance that didn't match his hands of youthful appearance. Later in the flight the subject entered an aircraft washroom to remove the disguise and was caught emerging as an early 20's Asian male. This disguise is more elaborate than those used by the suspected perpetrators of the assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai, January 2010. Will the continued introduction of biometric passport security deprecate the use of disguises or will disguises simply become more sophisticated?

Comment Re:That's What's Holding It Down! (Score 1) 283

by jcombel (#33904616) Attached to: Opera Embraces Extensions For v.11

when i hit the second item on the list - all-in-one gestures - i stopped reading. opera had mouse gestures since 2001, years before firefox was released to much fanfare. all-in-one (like most gesture extensions) copied opera's default mouse gesture setting scheme.
 
yes, i am dismissing his content based on having very little information, i thought there was nice circular story-telling there.

Comment excellent (Score 2, Interesting) 34

by jcombel (#33779758) Attached to: IBM High School To Churn Out IT Pros

i'm always willing to support an attempt at alternative forms of education. i honestly wish i had a similar opportunity as a high-schooler.
 
the only concern i'd have (and which has probably already been addressed) is to make sure the students get a diploma or GED at the end of the twelfth year. not seeing any indicator on that in tfa.

Comment Re:Why people distrust pollsters (Score 1) 478

by jcombel (#33585286) Attached to: 72% of US Adults Support Violent-Game Ban For Minors

for example: "Do you think parents should be responsible for preventing their children from accessing video games containing violent content?" I would bet you that those same 72% are going to say "yes" to that as well.

 
hello! ever raised a child? it would be impossible for parents alone to control that. with children, it takes a village, etc etc. in today's world, the village includes activists and law makers.

Comment Re:And no one cared (Score 1) 124

by jcombel (#32473078) Attached to: Microsoft Cancels Bing Cashback Program

i did honestly try to switch to bing when it came out. i'm a fan of breaking up any monopoly by voting with my dollar and opinion.

but, yeah, the bing results were just too wacky. i'm sure there was a way to search that would probably produce the results i wanted, but it seems like google always thought how i did, when i would go looking for things. either that, or after all this time, i am trained to search on google to get the results i want.

Comment Re:Freedom from porn. (Score 1, Flamebait) 1067

by jcombel (#32224518) Attached to: Steve Jobs Says PC Folks' World Is Slipping Away

i can't (won't) take the time to map out all the details, so i'll rely on you to make my points for me:

wtf? How does free software equate to software anarchy?

tell me you have noticed that the FOSS movement is disorganized, free of any sort of recognized governing, directing body or group? ...pretty anarchist, no?

How does free software equate to sex free computing?

tell me you have noticed that the freetard coders in the three cubes surrounding you are incredibly unsexed?

How does software anarchy equate to sex free computing?

tell me you have noticed that if a=b, and a=c, then b=c?

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