The Harrow: Original Works of Fantasy and Horror is back up!

It took a couple of days to realize that dreamhost.com had changed something, and either didn’t know or wouldn’t admit it. The OJS folks (thanks alec) really helped to fix things up.

Slashdot | SMS 4x More Expensive Than Data From Hubble

“Physorg has a paper comparing the cost of text messaging versus the cost of getting data from Hubble Space Telescope. From the article: ‘The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140 bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging system, and we assume the average price for a text message is 5p. There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that’s 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that’s £374.49 [$732.95] per MB — or about 4.4 times more expensive than the ‘most pessimistic’ estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs.” “Hubble is by no means a cheap mission — but the mobile phone text costs were pretty astronomical!”"

I’ve always thought that cellphones and SMS were a total conjob to make you pay for what has cost me nothing since the late 80s. And according to “Space scientist says texting is four times more expensive than receiving scientific data from space” it is true. All this instant messaging vs email, the whole us vs them millenials thing about old and new tech has been problematic for me. I can send a letter around the world for 0.85 euro. An email costs me nothing. An sms costs me $0.15 for whatever number of characters my local contract allows. You tell me. Is someone being conned or what? Post office is cheaper than SMS. And it doesn’t matter how fast your drivel arrives.

Stolen Mac helps nab burglary suspects | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

A remote desktop access feature found in some Macintoshes is being credited with leading police to two suspects in the burglary of an apartment in New York.

While police in White Plains, N.Y., were coming up empty with their investigation, Duplaga learned that her computer was being used on the Internet and turned on the Back to My Mac feature installed on her Mac from another Mac, according to the report.

The feature allowed Duplaga to see immediately how the computer was being used at the time, as well as operate it remotely. Recalling that she had a camera installed on the computer, the fast-thinking Duplaga snapped images of one of the burglary suspects before he realized what was happening, according to the Times. Duplaga showed the image to friends who recognized the suspect as someone who attended a party at the apartment.

Now, if that’s not going to help boost the idea of security.

I’ve set up a new blog/domain at The Complicity Theory. It is just for photography. I’ll sometimes note that there’s new stuff there, or it will be on Complicitytheory @ Flickr, but the best of the best will be on the new site. This site will be more informational, because I use it for teaching, and I don’t want to spam students with pictures.

kinokofry
Art and comics by Rebecca Clements

wii_kartonline
All about Mario Kart Wii: challenge, chat & have fun

the_polaroids
Post and peruse Polaroid photos

Nice to know there is a Jason Nolan USA Black Belt Champions out there.

Second Life could sexually exploit children via Internet, Rep. Mark Kirk says — chicagotribune.com

This would be silly if it wasn’t so scary. Do people actually spend that little time doing their homework? I agree with this article below, SL’s got one of the better systems for age checking, and since it has it’s own ‘teen grid’, and people on the main grid know that it is a TOS violation to even pretend to be younger than 18 (and I know people report violations), I’d actually rather have teens on the teen grid (and children under 13 out playing in physical activities), than doing most other things on the internet. There are potential dangers everywhere. Let’s focus on the ones that present a more clear potential for danger for children. Safe and well funded early learning perhaps? Marketing of unhealthy foods to children?

Second Life a danger to children? Lawmaker trawls for votes

It’s easy to understand the mainstream media’s fascination with Second Life: on paper, it looks like a big story. All those millions of players, real money being made, people opening virtual offices… the list goes on and on. However, the number of actual players is often in question, and the “game” isn’t exactly user-friendly. Still, that doesn’t keep the hype-train from chugging along. The next story? According to Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL), Second Life is a danger to children.

“If you ask: Do you know about MySpace? The average parent will say yes,” Kirk said, as reported by the Chicago Tribune. “But the average parent doesn’t know anything about Second Life.”

Let’s say a few things here, because Second Life has one of the most amazing PR machines in the history of gaming. Never has a product with so few actual players gotten so many people not very well versed in technology so excited. First up, Kirk is running for reelection in a hotly-contested district, and using technology as a scare tactic to get parents on your side is an easy move. Second, Second Life has age-verification technology in place that meets, and in some cases, exceeds the legal requirements. Third, and perhaps the most importantly, there are far easier ways for predators to find teens in much greater numbers. I suppose that children could be victimized in Second Life if they managed to get in, and then managed to announce their childhood without getting their account yanked, and then happened to meet a predator, but if you’re trolling for youngsters online, Second Life is arguably one of the worst places to do it.

There isn’t anyone who wouldn’t agree that children need to be protected from online predators, but it’s almost as if Rep. Kirk singled out one the least likely places for such predation to occur. Parents should be aware of what their children do online, but Second Life is the close to the least of anyone’s worries in this regard.

Advisory Board Nominations Begin

This morning we are opening the nomination process for the user-representative positions on the LiveJournal Advisory Board. A full description of the process can be found here.

To get you started, here are the basic things you should know:

- You may only nominate yourself
- Each nominee will need 100 motions of support in order to be eligible to be a candidate
- We ask that you keep your comments on the nomination posts to "I support this nomination" or something to that effect; be kind to those who will need to count the "supports", please.
- Although the nominations and election poll will take place in lj_election_en, you do not need to watch the community in order to keep up with the election; we'll announce everything here as well.

Everyone here at LiveJournal is looking forward to this first-ever User-Representative election! We'd like to thank everyone who is participating. Some words from our current Advisory Board members:

danah boyd: “LiveJournal is filled with very passionate users. These users have helped shaped LJ's various communities over the last decade and it gives me great joy that LJ is recognizing and incorporating users' voices into the decision-making processes. Having user representatives from different parts of LJ on the Advisory Board will help make sure that the company is meeting the needs of its diverse constituents.”

Esther Dyson: "I'm sure we'll learn a lot from the process, and later on from the two users selected as well. Especially, I hope that the discussions before the voting will be more meaningful and more focused on policy than those in some offline campaigns."

Brad Fitzpatrick: "It's cool that SUP is getting users involved with the LiveJournal decision-making process. I look forward to seeing who the community elects and the results of our efforts working together."

Professor Lawrence Lessig: “The user elections will provide a critical check on LJ's process of maintaining a valuable and trustworthy environment for the LJ community. The mandate of the elections will give the user representatives pride of place among the members of the Advisory Board. Each of us will look to them to guide us in our judgment about how best to make LJ the community we all aspire that it will be. I look forward to welcoming the user representatives, and learning a great deal from them.”


chasethestars has also made some banners for you to use, if you'd like to show your support for the candidate of your choice!

( Banners + code for you to use! )

Here are our first salvo of shots: France 2008 - a set on Flickr. Yuka and I have a quiet time before Mom, Lars, bloof and sarah arrive, at various times.