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16 Things To Know About Blogging

Blogging is the ultimate in free speech. You can just write your heart out and post it online for all to see. Write your blog about anything you want to write it about. It can be all about you or you can write your blog about something you feel strongly about. Make a point and make it stick. Get readers and let them post comments to what you have to say. Create a discussion.

Ubuntu hits new high in Linux boredom

Last weekend a friend was moaning about endless problems with Windows XP on his desktop PC. We installed Ubuntu 7.04 on it. The problems went away. That started me thinking about my own "daily driver" computer, a Dell Latitude that also runs Ubuntu 7.04, and it made me realize that I hadn't thought about my laptop or its operating system in many months. Linux -- especially Ubuntu -- has become so reliable and simple that for most end users it's simply not worth thinking about, any more than we think about tools like wrenches and screwdrivers. Does this mean desktop GNU/Linux has become so boring that it's not worth noticing?

Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. told lawmakers Wednesday that Congress should pass basic privacy legislation to protect information about consumers, such as the data being gathered about people's Web surfing habits in order to pinpoint Internet adver

WASHINGTON - Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. told lawmakers Wednesday that Congress should pass basic privacy legislation to protect information about consumers, such as the data being gathered about people's Web surfing habits in order to pinpoint Internet advertising.

KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw)

Lately a lot has been said (or bemoaned) in the community about KDE 4, the 4.0 release and the KDE developers. In the following article we would like to address some common misconceptions about KDE 4 as we see it. As we firmly believe in KDE 4 and the future of the Free Desktop, we expected the heated discussions about KDE4 and especially the 4.0 release to go away - and we were wrong about that. As blogging about the issues raised didn't seem to reach the audience we intended, we took the opportunity presented by Groklaw for this article with both hands. We sincerely hope it sheds some light on why the KDE community did what it thought it had to do and we hope it shows we do take the criticism seriously.

KDE Responds To Misconceptions About KDE 4

Jiilik Oiolosse writes "PJ at Groklaw speaks with a member of the KDE team about some of the common myths circulating about KDE 4. 'There has been a bit of a dustup about KDE 4.0. A lot of opinions have been expressed, but I thought you might like to hear from KDE. So I wrote to them and asked if they'd be willing to explain their choices and answer the main complaints. They graciously agreed.' Among the topics discussed are: 'Releasing KDE 4.0 was a mistake,' 'I cannot put files on my desktop,' and 'KDE should just have ported KDE 3.5 to Qt 4 and not add all that other experimental stuff right away.'"

5 Things You Need To Know About Hyper-V

I was fortunate to receive a Twitter message from the Microsoft virtualization team after writing my blog post A Weekend With Hyper-V. If you aren't familiar with the Windows Virtualization Team Blog, you can find it at http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization. Ronald Beekelaar, Microsoft MVP of Virtual Machine Technology, has an excellent blog post there about the Top 5 Things You Should Know About Hyper-V, which I'm summarizing here (you can read Ronald's post for the full details.) I appreciate Ronald and the other team members putting information like this up on their blog. It helps accelerate learning and sharing info about Hyper-V.

Call centre frustration - One man and his blog

I blogged recently about the idea of Quality of Experience versus Quality of Service, a concept that I’ve been thinking about as I ride my bike to work – the benefit of having no radio to entertain me. Don’t get me wrong, Quality of Service is a good thing. I understand the reason why it sometimes needs to be in place but when you sit down and think about it, it really only solves one type of problem. Quality of Service looks at the packet header ensuring the packet gets from A to B in time with minimal packet loss, jitter and latency. That’s all very good but it doesn’t really tell you much about the quality of the payload i.e. the actual conversation. All the packets could be getting there in time and in the right order but if there is a hiss on the line, it’s too quiet or people are speaking over each other, then the experi

Career Opportunities: How I Got My Job

In our July issue, PDN talks to over 20 professionals anonymously who work in the photography industry (but don't take pictures) about the things they like about their jobs, the things they aren't crazy about and, most intriguingly, what they earn in salary and other perks. Here six of those photo professionals talk about their career path and how they ending up doing what they do now.

The Hourglass Aging Science Blog Carnival

Chris Patil of Ouroboros is organizing a blog carnival for aging science and longevity research topics: "There's enough good science blogging about the biology of aging that the community deserves its own monthly carnival (along the lines of the general-biology carnival Tangled Bank, or the neuroscience carnival Encephalon, both of which we've hosted here before). So let's start one. I thought long and hard about names and settled on 'Hourglass,' which is topical enough to be appropriate, but general to be inclusive. ... Topics of posts should have something to do with the biology of aging, broadly speaking - including fundamental research in biogerontology, age-related disease, ideas about life extension technologies, your personal experience with calorie restriction, maybe even something about the sociological implications of increased

Do you need a CSS editor?

I got an email the other day asking me why I didn't recommend WYSIWYG CSS editors. That seemed like a really good question, so I started looking at the CSS editors I know about and you know what? There really aren't any WYSIWYG CSS editors of note. Now, mind you, I'm not talking about Dreamweaver and other Web Design software programs that support CSS, I'm talking about CSS editors. If you know of a CSS editor that is WYSIWYG, not just with a preview mode, but actually WYSIWYG, I'd love to know about it. But in the mean time, if you're looking for a CSS editor, I've set up a questionnaire to help you determine the best ones for your needs.

PR Guy Says Bloggers Should Shut Up And Take Press Releases

When we first started Techdirt, one of the things I said clearly on the site was not to send us press releases, as we had no interest in writing about them. Yet, so many PR people clearly chose not to read the site and they send them anyway. They don't read the fact that we don't want press releases -- and in most cases they clearly don't read the site because the press releases obviously are about stuff we never write about. And it just gets worse and worse. These days, my inbox is filled with more press releases than regular email -- and I don't post any of them. You would think that PR people would eventually recognize how inefficient it is to send these press releases -- but since it's so easy to just cc every email address in a press list, they never even think about it.

Rhever Offers Legal (But Questionable) Alternative to BitTorrent

There’s an interesting article over at TorrentFreak discussing a company called Rhever which aims to replace BitTorrent and LimeWire filesharing with what is basically a Usenet service. At first glance, Rhever looks interesting. It preys on fears that people have about filesharing fines, viruses and problems with adware and claims to offer a service that comes with none of those problems. However, upon closer examination, it appears that the company is basing their business on those fears alone and that their actual business is questionable. The owners of the site previously owned a domain which was associated with malware. Combined with the lack of information about the company on the site and the fact that the only press about the service comes from their PR department, this leaves many questions to be answered about whether or not this

About Me page on eBay is a very powerful tool

The About Me page on eBay is a very powerful tool for improving your auction traffic and for taking advantage of the tremendous traffic that looks at eBay auctions everyday. One of the best features of the About Me page - it is free. You can use it as a giant billboard on the Internet to direct traffic to your site or you can include a sign up form for your newsletter or mailing list.

10 Things You Should Know About Open Source

Just a few of the myths about about open source are that it is a secret society, you have to be a coder to use it and it's not Windows-friendly.

Is User Apathy About Smartphones Becoming Apparent?

I've written before that I had my doubts about the supposed conversion of the world's mobile population to smartphones. And in particular, that many supposed "smartphone shipment" graphs include the use of locked-down smartphone OS's in places like Japan, and smartphones bought just because the user liked the looks of a device, rather than caring about the software.

Suspected terrorists talked about making homemade chemical weapons: wiretap

BRAMPTON, Ont. - The alleged ringleaders of a suspected terror plot to attack Canadian targets talked about making homemade chemical weapons from a "mujahed cookbook" and worried about being "sitting ducks" for police, wiretaps played in a courtroom Friday suggested.

Suspected terrorists talked about making homemade chemical weapons: wiretap

BRAMPTON, Ont. — The alleged ringleaders of a suspected terror plot to attack Canadian targets talked about making homemade chemical weapons from a “mujahed cookbook� and worried about being “sitting ducks� for police, wiretaps played in a courtroom Friday suggested.

Suspected terrorists talked about making homemade chemical weapons: wiretap

BRAMPTON, Ont. - The alleged ringleaders of a suspected terror plot to attack Canadian targets talked about making homemade chemical weapons from a "mujahed cookbook" and worried about being "sitting ducks" for police, wiretaps played in a courtroom Friday suggested.

Suspected terrorists talked about making homemade chemical weapons: wiretap

BRAMPTON, Ont. - The alleged ringleaders of a suspected terror plot to attack Canadian targets talked about making homemade chemical weapons from a "mujahed cookbook" and worried about being "sitting ducks" for police, wiretaps played in a courtroom Friday suggested.

Suspected terrorists talked about making homemade chemical weapons: wiretap

BRAMPTON, Ont. - The alleged ringleaders of a suspected terror plot to attack Canadian targets talked about making homemade chemical weapons from a "mujahed cookbook" and worried about being "sitting ducks" for police, wiretaps played in a courtroom Friday suggested.

Robot 'Wall-E' Holds Unexpected Message About Love in Animated Film

An unexpected love story combined with a gentle reminder to care ... care about each other and about the planet ... combine in another delightfully family-friendly computer-animated feature from Pixar Studios and Walt Disney Pictures. Alan Silverman has this look at the story of a robot named Wall-E.

Alleged leaders of suspected terror plot talked about making chemical weapons: wiretap

The alleged ringleaders of a suspected terror plot to attack Canadian targets talked about making chemical weapons from a "mujahed cookbook," and worried about being "sitting ducks" for police even as they organized a second alleged training camp for recruits, wiretaps played in a Brampton, Ont., courtroom suggested.

Off the shelf: Everyone's talking about the Kindle, Rowling at Harvard, authors at Google

Forget fall's big releases. The one thing that everyone was talking about at last week's Book Expo America, the annual tradeshow for the publishing industry, was Amazon's e-book reader the Kindle. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos gave a talk at the trade fair last week and got booksellers both worried and excited about the electronic future.

Four things you should never blog about

It might be tempting to post your grievances online and let the entire world know about it, but no matter how much you want to do it, don't. Sensitive information, pictures or even opinions directed at individuals might one day find its way back to you. Here is a list of the four things you should never blog about.

Endeavour crew tell Japanese students about space mission

Crew members of the U.S. space shuttle Endeavour including Japanese astronaut Takao Doi met Japanese junior and senior high school students on Tuesday, telling them about their mission in March to deliver the first of three sections of Japan’s Kibo space laboratory. The event was held at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to provide the Japanese students with an opportunity to learn about the manned space mission at the International Space Station and to answer their questions.

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