afeinberg - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Stop mangling submissions. (Score 1) 199

by afeinberg on Sunday April 06, 2008 @04:46PM (#22982278) Attached to: Writers Find Blogging To Be a Stressful Method of Reporting

Tom,

If I felt like Slashdot was just a news aggregator, I wouldn't care. But it used to be where viewpoints were shared and yes, other people's blog posts on articles were linked. If you look at the original story, I submitted both the original and my commentary. They should have included both.

As I've said before, this wouldn't have happened in the old days.

Submission + - Can Blogging kill? NYT says maybe. (capitolvalley.net)

Submitted by

Andrew Feinberg

on Sunday April 06, 2008 @05:36AM

Andrew Feinberg writes: "Over at Capitol Valley, we've got our own take on this unsettling NY Times story which references the sad deaths of two tech bloggers, but goes on to describe the sweatshop-like atmosphere the tech blog industry has become due to pay per click and pay per post. The focus on quantity and not quality, and counting clicks clicks over time on site could very well be harming the health of the writers, as well as hurting the written product."

Submission + - CA Lawmaker wants to teach Climate Change (capitolvalley.net)

Submitted by Andrew Feinberg on Saturday February 16, 2008 @10:52AM

Andrew Feinberg writes: Alex over at Capitol Valley has the scoop on the latest threat to his children's future sanity: inane climate change education debates instead of fixing the problem. A California State Senator who wants to mandate Climate Change as part of the standard science cirriculum. Naturally, the other half of the Senate (guess which half) wants to teach "an opposing view." Didn't we already do something like this in Kansas (remember Intelligent Design?), and didn't half of the people on the debate (the ID side) lose their elections because voters got sick of haggling over what to teach instead of running the schools? And these guys aren't even an elected school board? UGH!

Analog Cell Phone Network Shuts Down Monday 205

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 15, 2008 @06:53PM from the end-of-an-ear-a dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "AT&T and Verizon will be shutting down their old, analog AMPS networks next Monday, and AT&T will also turn off its old TDMA network, with smaller providers expected to follow thanks to a sunset date set by the FCC. After these old networks are shut down, the networks will be all digital. Of course, if you have one of those old fashioned 'just a phone' cellphones and it happens to be analog, you'd best enjoy the last few days before it becomes useless."

The Real Issue With Net Neutrality 239

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday August 01, 2006 @02:21PM from the people-always-the-problem dept.

An anonymous reader writes "TechDirt brings into focus one of the largest problems in the net neutrality debate, not the issues themselves, rather it's the people involved and the lies they like to sling. An example of this is certainly the number of lobbyists that are being looked to as 'experts' and getting their opinions published as such. One specific example was a recent piece published in the Baltimore Sun by Mike McCurry, a lobbyist working for AT&T who claimed that with new legislation working for net neutrality Google wouldn't have to pay a dime. In response, TechDirt has suggested that McCurry should swap telco bills with Google, somehow I doubt it will happen."

Is Simplified Spelling Worth Reform? 1183

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 06, 2006 @02:23PM from the a-pruh-po-or-rediculous dept.

digitalhermit writes "I guess many folks are of very little brain, and big words bother them... There's a push for simpler spelling. Instead of 'weigh' it would be 'way.' 'Dictionary' would be 'dikshunery' and so forth. Dunno if it's a joke, but it seems in earnest. Mark Twain must be spinning around somewhere." Twain is often credited with the satirical call for spelling reform called "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling," though according to Wikipedia, Twain was "actually a supporter of reform," and the piece may have been written by M.J. Shields. Benjamin Franklin was another champion of spelling reform, and even came up with a phonetic alphabet to implement such reform.

Linuxcare Reincarnated as Levanta 71

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday June 21, 2006 @11:08AM from the digging-out-a-classic-icon dept.

ches_grin writes "BusinessWeek is running a nice profile on Levanta, the former dot-com poster child once known as Linuxcare. From the article: 'It's not that Matt Mosman has an easy job. As Linux continues its march deeper into Corporate America's racks and racks of servers, his small Silicon Valley company, Levanta, is one of many trying to help companies install and manage all those servers--a big, complex problem that's not being solved very well right now. Still, Mosman has one thing going for him: He can't do much worse than his predecessors.'"

UK Law May Criminalize IT Pros 514

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 19, 2006 @03:39PM from the just-doing-my-job dept.

An anonymous reader writes "More worrying news from the UK. This time, a bill meant to fight cybercrime may make it illegal to use or make available network security tools available, just because they could be used by hackers." From the article: "Clayton cited the Perl scripting language, created by Larry Wall in 1987, as an example of a useful technology that could fall foul of the law. 'Perl is almost universally used on a daily basis to permit the Internet to function,' said Clayton. 'I doubt if there is a sysadmin on the planet who hasn't written a Perl program at some time or another. Equally, almost every hacker who commits an offense under section 1 or section 3 of the CMA will use Perl as part of their toolkit. Unless Larry is especially stupid, and there is very little evidence for that, he will form the opinion that hackers are likely to use his Perl system. Locking Larry up is surely not desirable.'" A note that this is equally confusing but separate from yesterday's story about the UK government wanting private encryption keys.

Let Goofy Track Your Children 291

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 05, 2006 @10:52PM from the parenting-is-hard dept.

Rio writes "The Walt Disney Company unveiled a new wireless phone service that allows parents to track their children on a map using Global Positioning System technology, according to Local 6 News. The new "family friendly" service, called Disney Mobile, allows parents to decide who their children can call and when, the report said. The phone service will launch in June and has not been priced yet."

Download-only Single Becomes UK Number One 192

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sunday April 02, 2006 @07:41PM from the bit-by-bit dept.

Stuart Gibson writes "As predicted, the Gnarls Barkely single 'Crazy' has reached the number one spot on the official UK charts, based solely on legal downloads. The CD version of the single will not be released until tomorrow. This is the first single to be eligible for the honour as, until last month, download sales would only be counted if the track was also available to be bought as a physical copy."

The Real Purpose of DRM 235

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sunday April 02, 2006 @01:35PM from the man-keeping-us-down dept.

Roberto writes "Gorgeous nerd Annalee Newitz hacked a political interpretation to recent vacuum cleaner cockfights at O'Reilly's ETech: 'Hollywood corporations have finally admitted that the real reason they built digital restriction management (DRM) software into PVRs and DVD players was to stop geeks from turning their recording devices into back-alley combat machines. You haven't seen ugly until you've watched what a DVD player without DRM can do to a TiVo.' Don't try to even think of this at home."

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