8185 MetaFilter comments by Civil_Disobedient (displaying 51 through 100)





Amazon.com has taught readers that they do not need bookstores. Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their publishers. “Everyone’s afraid of Amazon. ... If you’re a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you’re a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you too. And if you’re an agent, Amazon may be stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out." (Some adventures in self-publishing.)
comment posted at 1:08 AM on Oct-18-11
comment posted at 2:49 AM on Oct-18-11




The Invisible Fastball. "Six decades ago, a minor league pitcher accomplished something we'll never see again." (Single page version)
comment posted at 8:25 PM on Oct-15-11

If you met Phil Pressel at a party anytime over the past half-century, he couldn't tell you what he did for a living. If you were his wife, you didn't even know where he was staying on those mysterious business trips. Today, after 46 years, the man who made the camera that prevented a war finally got to show off his magnum opus.
comment posted at 10:15 PM on Oct-14-11



According to breaking news, Dennis Ritchie, inventor of the C programming language, co-author with Brian Kernigham of the famous book on it, and creator with Ken Thompson of the Unix operating system, has died.
comment posted at 3:14 AM on Oct-13-11


On the front of every United States Federal Reserve Note, there appear two signatures: that of the Secretary of the Treasury, and of the Treasurer of the United States. Take a look at any note printed since 1949 and you might notice a pattern: since that Treasurer, a Kansan named Georgia Neese Clark, that office has been exclusively held by women.
comment posted at 3:29 AM on Oct-13-11

"Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product." "Last night, high-profile Google engineer Steve Yegge mistakenly posted a long rant about working at Amazon and Google’s own issues with creating platforms on Google+...The most interesting part to me, though, is Yegge’s blunt assessment of what he perceives to be Google’s inability to understand platforms and how this could endanger the company in the long run." It's quite long, but there's some interesting insight - all the more because it wasn't initially intended to be made public. (via SiliconFilter/via G+)
comment posted at 3:58 AM on Oct-13-11
comment posted at 4:02 AM on Oct-13-11
comment posted at 7:46 AM on Oct-13-11

Rate your EX. ExRated's mission is to empower singles by giving them character reviews of potential dates, and allow them to express themselves through multiple choice reviews designed to help them realize what went wrong in the past and how to make the right dating choices in the future. How does it work?
comment posted at 4:39 AM on Oct-13-11


Google has introduced Dart "a new class-based programming language for creating structured web applications"
comment posted at 5:16 PM on Oct-11-11
comment posted at 1:59 AM on Oct-13-11

What Facebook needs to do to make Facebook Music what it should be: notes on building one true catalog of music.
comment posted at 2:51 PM on Oct-11-11


Guy has a close encounter with some wildlife during a mountain bike race. (SLYT)
comment posted at 9:11 AM on Oct-11-11

We are the 53% - the conservative response to We are the 99%. Every American has a story and an opinion. Amazing diversity on display. The LA Weekly looks for commonality.
comment posted at 10:01 AM on Oct-11-11


Snuff, Sir Terry Pratchett's 50th book (and 37th Discworld book) will be released in the U.S. tomorrow, and Neil Gaiman has interviewed him for Boing Boing.
comment posted at 10:42 PM on Oct-10-11

Anonymous (or parts of Anonymous) want to hack the NYSE today. Anonymous is recruiting for an action against the New York Stock Exchange. ABC news reported that the threats started last week and other sources are indicating that Anonymous itself has been hacked. Investors don't seem to be worried.
comment posted at 1:40 PM on Oct-10-11



In August 2011, 35 ACLU affiliates filed 381 requests in 32 states with local law enforcement agencies seeking to uncover when, why and how they are using cell phone location data to track Americans. So how long do American cell phone carriers retain information about your calls, text messages, and data use? According to data gathered by the US Department of Justice, it can be as little as a few days or up to seven years, depending on your provider. (Via / More)
comment posted at 4:39 AM on Oct-10-11


Chaos Computer Club analyzes government malware The Chaos Computer Club got their hands on something they think is the fabled “Bundestrojaner” – the software the German government is using for computer surveillance. F-Secure announced they’ll add that software to their list of malware.
comment posted at 3:47 PM on Oct-8-11

The Dalai Lama was prevented from going to South Africa for Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday by visa problems. So they used Google+ to "Hangout" instead.
comment posted at 10:18 AM on Oct-8-11
comment posted at 3:11 PM on Oct-8-11

Last night, the Unites States Senate voted successfully to invoke cloture (end debate) on S.1619, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) filed a series of motions to suspend the rules in an effort to force a vote on President Obama's American Jobs Act [PDF]. That's when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) nuked the Senate.
comment posted at 8:05 AM on Oct-8-11

Organizers for the 40 year-old Portland Marathon arrived at the start/finish area this morning to find the area held by the Occupy Portland protest.
comment posted at 12:37 PM on Oct-7-11

In a recent Op-Ed piece on the Wall Street Journal, author, journalist, public speaker and generally inquisitive fellow Robert Bryce offered up following analogy in his discussion of climate change science: "If serious scientists can question Einstein's theory of relativity, then there must be room for debate about the workings and complexities of the Earth's atmosphere. " And the internet took it from there, in the form of comics, the Twitter hashtag #WSJscience, and plenty of science-minded blogs and sites a-plenty.
comment posted at 9:19 AM on Oct-7-11
comment posted at 12:42 PM on Oct-7-11


Even as medical marijuana activists in states like Arkansas, Ohio, and Massachusetts look to legalize medical use in 2012, the ATF has sent letters to gun shops in existing medical marijuana states. The letter says that shop owners cannot sell guns or ammunition if they have "reasonable cause to believe" that the customer is a drug user, even if their use is legal under state law -- and that having or even mentioning a medical marijuana card constitutes reasonable cause. The entire text of the letter can be viewed here.
comment posted at 8:04 PM on Oct-5-11

Kei Igawa arrived in the US with a lot of fanfare in 2007. After failing miserably with the Yankees, he was sent to the minor leagues. Since then, he has existed in an uncomfortable limbo, not completely part of either world.
comment posted at 4:05 PM on Oct-5-11


The Best of #OccupySesameStreet. Since its launched two weeks ago, the #OccupyWallStreet movement has gone national, spawning copy-cat demonstrations in far-flung locales like Tulsa and Boise. Its members have serious concerns--about income inequality, the influence of large corporations in our political system, and their own financial futures. The #OccupySesameStreet movement? Not so much.
comment posted at 1:27 AM on Oct-5-11

In 1987 Apple predicted a complex language voice assistant built into something called the Apple Knowledge Navigator, a tablet computer. With today's announcement of the refined (and integrated) version of Siri, it appears they were less than a month off.
comment posted at 6:51 PM on Oct-4-11

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