Geek Stuff category archive

As murder mystery writers are fond of pointing out just before the Great Detective solves the case, a crime requires means, motive, and opportunity.

All Facebook provides is opportunty.

Rev. Cedric A. Miller has had it with what he says Facebook is doing to couples coming to him for help and is giving his married church leaders until Sunday to get off the social-networking website or resign their posts.

Miller, senior pastor at Living Word Christian Fellowship Church, the popular interdenominational and evangelical church on Route 35 (in Neptune, N. J.–ed.), said a large percentage of his counseling over the past year and a half has been for marital problems, including infidelity, stemming from Facebook.

For the short-attention-span generation. From MarketWatch:

What a bunch of incoherent geekledygoop.

Afterthought: Frankly, the thought of an archive of all of everyone’s conversations from the past five years is rather appalling.

On the rampage edition.

Really, folks, including the authorities, are taking twits far too seriously.

Wonder what she said?

The National Labor Relations Board alleges that American Medical Response of Connecticut Inc. illegally fired Dawnmarie Souza from her job as an emergency medical technician late last year after she criticized her supervisor on her personal Facebook page and then traded Facebook messages about the negative comments with other employees.

(snip)

Federal labor law has long protected employees against reprisal for talking to co-workers on their own time about their jobs and working conditions, including remarks that may be critical of managers. The law applies whether or not workers are covered by a union.

I’ve found that, if one only person in a work group complains about supervision while the others do not, it’s likely the employee who has the problem. If most of the persons in the work group complain, it’s likely that supervision is the problem. Most persons do not come to work in order to be miserable.

All seriousness aside, we’re probably going to see more tension between employers and employees over use of social media. Employees will contribute to this by forgetting that the internet is a public place, and employers will respond by hammering the employees, rather than by cleaning up their practices.

Given the stuff that students do and say every day, this does rather seem to be an overreaction by the school system.

In August 2009, the then 24-year-old resigned from her job at Apalachee High School after someone claiming to be a parent sent an e-mail complaining about pictures of Payne smiling while holding alcoholic drinks during a trip to Europe. Payne had also written an expletive on her page, saying she was headed to a game of “Crazy Bitch Bingo” at a Midtown restaurant.

Payne said she was pressured to resign over the e-mail; the district said she volunteered.

A suit is working its way through the court system.

A. What the external hard drive on my file server has got.

Now I know why I was motivated yesterday to order a new 2TB external hard drive from Tiger.

I use it primarily for backing stuff up. All that is uniquely stored on it is the complete F-Troop and the complete Meet the Gimp, which I put there so I could watch them from any computer on the network.

I’m downloading the Meet the Gimp right now.

Before you post that umpteenth status update about your toddler’s latest witticism or your feelings for Glenn Beck, consider this: According to research by a graduate student at the Business School at the University of Colorado-Denver, the top two reasons that Facebook users unfriend people is that they post too frequently on trivial topics or about polarizing subjects — particularly politics and religion.

“One of the interesting things about unfriending is that most real-world friendships either blow up or fade away,” says Christopher Sibona, who wrote the study with his adviser, Steven Walczak, an associate professor of information systems management. “But on Facebook, users actively make the decision to unfriend, and people often don’t know why or what’s happened in the relationship.”

How does “I keep forgetting to log in” rank in the list?

From the BBC:

Energizer reminds you to change your smoke detector batteries and to use Facebook to remind others (emphasis added):

This year, spreading the word to friends through Facebook and Twitter will help earn up to 400,000 donated batteries for local fire departments. Energizer, which helped launch the battery-changing campaign 23 years ago, will donate 3 batteries for reminders, 5 batteries for drawing your residence’s escape plan, and 1 for simply pledging to change your batteries.

The Energizer Bunny Facebook page is unclear as to whether Energizer expects you to post your escape plan. One hopes not; what one may use to get out, another may use to get in.

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source.

What: Monthly TWUUG Meeting.

Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.

Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk-Employee Cafeteria. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.)

When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, November 4.

Directions: Lake Taylor Hospital-1309, Kempsville Road, Norfolk, 23502 (Kempsville Rd. at Lowry Rd.) 461-5001

Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks) at Uno Chicago Grill, Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). Accessible through the Janaf parking lot or directly from the ramp from Virginia Beach Blvd. to Military Highway north.

Daniel Klein and Patrick Bonavitacola, in the Boston Globe, consider the twitterfication of the language. A nugget:

Personal Responsibility

Old: “And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.’’ — JFK, 1961

New: “Buck up or stay in the truck.’’ — Sarah Palin, 2010

James Madison University:

James Madison coach Mickey Matthews closed practices to reporters last week and made no bones about the reason: social media.

(snip)

Matthews said reporters were “announcing to the world” what was happening at practices and he wouldn’t tolerate it because he has “an obligation to the university and the program.”

A Firefox extension called “Firesheep” automates hacking your wi-fi connection if you are using public wi-fi.

Firesheep, though, has an easy-to-use interface and, perhaps most importantly, a cute name. Surely this can’t be a “cracking tool”? It wasn’t released by someone going by a name like ‘dEvILSp0RN42’. It doesn’t feature white text on a black background. It has well-thought-out and literate documentation. To use it, you simply install it into Firefox and click a few buttons. One minor additional step, installing WinPcap, is required for Windows users.

Here’s a demo:

UK Electoral Edition.

At Psychology Today, Christine Louise Hohlbaum asks

Are we losing our ability to actually interact with other people on a personal level? I’m wondering if we are.

(snip)

In response to a private conversation my PR colleagues and I were having about this topic (yes, via email!) , Herdon, VA-based PR professional Diane Johnson said, “We’re cultivating a culture of mushroom people who want to sit in front of their computer or on their PDAs and believe using their fingers (while keeping them off each other) counts as human interaction.”

To share your reaction, use your mobile phone to connect with the Pine View Farm mobile site (the URL is the same) and text in your comments.

Phantom Facebook user brings police to school:

Clearview Superintendent John Horchak III said the students reported the posts around Tuesday to school officials, who alerted police.

The person posting the comments called himself David Prezet, according to students, and students were concerned Thursday because the poster indicated he was coming to the school that day.

Horchak said the poster claimed he was going to enroll that day. That did not happen, nor is there a student at the Mullica Hill school by that name, the superintendent said.

It started with friend requests. Once the poster had a number of “Facebook friends” amongst the students, the posts turned creepy–from the story, apparently more nasty than threatening.

Having been a teenager and (probably contrary to the theories of my children, being able to remember what it was like) I suspect the posts were pretty creepy to motivate the kids to complain to the administration.

Why can’t they be like we were, stealing the occasional stop sign and tping the occasional teacher’s yard and driving fast on back roads on dark nights perfect in every way?

And this surprises us how?

Facebook users are inadvertently providing access to their names and in some cases even their friend’s names to advertising and Internet tracking companies, through some popular applications, the Wall Street Journal said.

According to the Journal’s investigation, the issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings, the paper said.

Ethan Gilsdorf considers role-playing, Dungeons and Dragons, All Hallows Eve, and Facebook in the Boston Globe. A nugget:

Role-playing? Like that conflict-resolution exercise your sales team endured last year? Or role-playing, as in Dungeons & Dragons — that strange and wondrous game I (and perhaps you) played back in the Reagan administration, rolling dice in a basement and slaying goblins and dragons and snarfing bowls of Doritos?

I’d argue all these experiences — including posting a witty Facebook update — are cut from the same role-playing cloth. We all share that desire to be someone else. To be better, stronger, faster; to appear more handsome, more clever, more attractive than our fleshy selves might ever be. “My, aren’t we having fun?’’ say our photos, snapped while we’re half drunk and posted in a day-after haze. On my Match.com profile, I offer clues that might seduce. I suggest, in a whisper of pixels, “I am your ideal man.’’

Jen McCreight, grad student and aspiring biologist, thinks she has found part of the reason that scientific information is poorly received. Scientists can’t write, and the conventions of scientific literature accentuate their inability to write:

Most scientists are terrible writers.

And when I say terrible writers, I’m not just talking about English skills – though that certainly is a problem. When I had to read some of my classmates’ papers in undergrad, I was often thankful to find a sentence that wasn’t a fragment or a run-on. I don’t have perfect grammar, especially when informally blogging, but I can usually get general concepts across. And don’t even get me started on the organization of some papers. Your methods are where?

But most science writing is simply impenetrable. Everything seems to be lingo and jargon, to the point where they might as well be speaking another language. This problem gets worse with time, since fields are becoming more specialized, not less.

I think she has a point. Much academic writing is execrable.

I once had a boss who had recently earned a doctorate in an education-related field (not teaching or guidance–he was in business, not in the school system; it was in ed. psych., instructional design, or something like that).

He told me that, when his advisor read the draft of his dissertation, his advisor told him to rewrite it.

He said, “Why? I think it’s very well-written.”

The advisor said, “It’s too well-written. It’s too clear. The sentences are too short. The language is too straightforward. Go back and replace the sort words with long ones.”

Thirty additional pages later, his advisor told him the dissertation was ready to be submitted to the examining committee.