Geek Stuff category archive
Yelped! 0
The Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Citizen said Wednesday that the Supreme Court of Virginia has thrown out the preliminary injunction issued in Fairfax County Circuit Court. The groups had appealed the judge’s order saying it violated both the First Amendment and Virginia law.
The lady felt she had been ripped off by a contractor and published her story. The contractor sued.
I think this is a good ruling.
Details at the link.
Make TWUUG Your LUG 0
Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source.
Join the new TWUUG forums and help them grow, then join us tomorrow in person.
Tidewater Unix Users Group
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 Training Room. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.)
When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, January 3.
Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)
Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). (Map)
Facebook Frolics 0
Reunited and it feels so good.
(That’s somewhat similar to how I ended up in Virginia Beach, the one really good thing that has resulted from my signing up for the Zuckerboard.)
Facebook Frolics 3
Is Facebook the lonely cloud?
Who Aren’t You . . . 3
. . . when you’re not yourself?
If you don’t stake out your social media territory, someone else will.
That’s the new reality reflected in a lawsuit filed Thursday in Pittsburgh’s federal court by a foundation head against the networking firm LinkedIn Corp.
Rick D. Senft, president and CEO of the Passavant Memorial Home Foundation, wants to know who put his name, personal cell phone and personal email on the popular site — and so far, LinkedIn won’t tell him.
Cloud Cuckoo Land 0
Dave Mandi is skeptical of storing your stuff in the “cloud” (whatever that is–as near as I can tell, it’s marketese for “remote server”). A snippet:
Then there are broader privacy questions. Can you be sure the cloud owner isn’t doing anything with your data? Is it conceivable that at some point in the future they might sell or rent it? Imagine how much marketing companies would be willing to pay for personal information stored in the cloud — even if it were anonymized.
If you use any kind of commercial “cloud” service, this is a must-read.
Spam Alert, Android Dept. 0
I’ve not seen this one, but from time to time–maybe once a quarter–I get texts telling me I’ve won something or other at Best Buy. Since I loathe Best Buy, they do not interest me.
I follow my carrier’s instructions and forward such messages to their spam-reporting address (7726 or “spam”).
The article goes on to state the obvious–don’t follow links in texts from unknown sources and don’t download programs from third-party app repositories.
In other words, think before you click.
Meta: Embeds 0
The new version of WordPress seems to have issues.
When I embed a video in a post, test the post, schedule it to post at a future time (you didn’t actually think I sit here all day, did you? Heck, Wednesday I went to Williamsburg for a meeting and my Christmas posts are already lined up), then test the post, the embed works. That is, it displays and plays. Then, when the post posts, the embedded video is gone.
This started when I installed latest WordPress version.
I try to fix it when I notice the void; once the post is published, the embedded videos seem to stick around.
In the mean time, I will include a link to the source of the video in the post. If I feel truly energetic, I might even file a bug report.
Be assured that any video I choose to embed in a post is Deathless Art and Must-See viewing.
If nothing else, it’s got to be better than Honey Boo-Boo or the Six O’Clock News.
Android Is Going to Pot 1
From El Reg:
Video (no human beings are involved) at the link.
Support Accessibilty 0
Hold Amazon accountable for attempting to place non-accessible devices, that is, Kindles, in schools.
Via GNC.
Droning On 0
Be popular. Fool your friends. Then post them on the innerwebs.
If the embed doesn’t work, watch here.
Facebook Frolics 0
You can’t make this stuff up.
Authorities had been looking for the man, identified as Korry Martinson, 19, since Friday about 7:20 p.m., after he allegedly posted the threat on his Facebook page, police said.
Some folks aren’t bright enough to wield firearms.
Sadly, they are the ones who do.
Facebook Frolics 0
Schleswig-Holstein doesn’t like Facebook’s lack of privacy policies.
In response to the social media site’s refusal to allow pseudonyms, the Independent State Center for Data Privacy (ULD) in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein issued an ultimatum to the company’s California headquarters on Monday.
Should Facebook Inc., which operates in the United States, and its Irish subsidiary Facebook Ltd., which runs European operations, refuse to comply within two weeks, they each face a fine of €20,000 ($26,000), ULD said.
Facebook plans to resist.
Peace and Quiet 0
I have had no email to my primary email address for over 48 hours.
Can’t say as how I have missed it all that much.
I do have several other accounts, so I sent an email to my family telling them to use the telly fone or my Gmail address (which I seldom use but which sort of comes with an Android phone).
The ISP finally got the webmail inerface up again (even it had disappeared, turning into a big empty space in the screen), but my incoming email, which they claim to have been saving up for my future delight, hasn’t started flowing yet.
Whatever they broke, they broke it good.
The iJunk Chronicles 0
Celebrate the New Year with HPR (Sticky) 0
Join HPR for the 24-hour New Year’s Eve stream. All the cool kids will be there.
Learn how to participate. Coolness is just a click away.
Make TWUUG Your LUG 0
Join the new TWUUG forums and help them grow, then join us tonight.
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 Training Room. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.)
When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, December 6.
Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)
Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). (Map)
Facebook Frolics 0
Facebook has received preliminary approval for a settlement in a class action suit over their “sponsored stories” campaign. In that method of “advertising,” they use pictures and names of Facebook “members” in “advertisements” to those members’ “friends.”
The Center for Public Interest Law is not happy:
Remember, in Facebook you are not the customer. You are the product.