said by icp1 :

Shoot me now...

said by theeinstein :

How about someone with some BALLS stand up and make them PROVE it is actually doing something before we just bend over and take it in the rear!

Some Web enthusiasts find microblogging service Twitter to be addictive because you can say absolutely anything you want--as long as it's 140 characters or less. So what happens when "saying anything" translates into harassment?

One avid Twitter user, Ariel Waldman, posted an entry Thursday on her personal blog, declaring that "Twitter refuses to uphold (its) terms of service."

She said she started receiving "multiple accounts of harassment" from another user of the microblogging service and that when she petitioned to Twitter's community manager, he opted to remove the Twitter posts in question from the site's "public timeline."

Waldman is hardly the average Twitter user. Well-known in geek circles, she's a "social-media insights consultant" who contributes to tech blog Engadget and runs her own site, Shake Well Before Use, about "art, advertising, sex, and technology."

The final response to Waldman's complaint from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone asserted that "Twitter is a communication utility, not a mediator of content," and that "Twitter recognizes that it is not skilled at judging content disputes between individuals. Determining the line between update and insult is not something that Twitter, nor a crowd, would do well." Stone added that Twitter's team would continue talking about which situations were appropriate for account banning.

As Waldman pointed out, however, other online services, such as Flickr, Digg, and her employer are far less laissez-faire, banning accounts frequently. And she raised a legitimate concern when she said harassing messages are an issue for identity management in the chaotic muck of the Web.

Either way, what Waldman calls "community management" is something that Twitter has to sort out--fast. As Twitter breaks further out of Silicon Valley culture, the service will invariably have to deal with users who cry foul over far tamer situations. Much like its famous outages, which the site finally addressed in full this week, abuse and harassment is something that Twitter can't simply ignore.

said by theeinstein :

hahah...

harassment online I like it...

How about you just press the X in the top left corner wouldnt that stop the harassment?? DUH

Harassment is something that occurs in person settings... How is "online harassment" not the most retarded thing in the world!

said by Airwolf7 :

They scream to their superiors "They are shooting at us and it hurts our little feelings, make them stop".

America alone has more than 7,000 data centres, according to IDC, a market-research firm. And each is housing ever more servers, the powerful computers that crunch and dish up data. In America the number of servers is expected to grow to 15.8m by 2010—three times as many as a decade earlier.

As space gets tight and energy costs climb, many firms have begun consolidating and simplifying their computing infrastructure. Hewlett-Packard, the world's biggest computer-maker, for instance, is replacing its 85 data centres across the world with just six in America.

Internet firms, meanwhile, need ever larger amounts of computing power. Google is said to operate a global network of about three dozen data centres with, according to some estimates, more than 1m servers. To catch up, Microsoft is investing billions of dollars and adding up to 20,000 servers a month.

Microsoft's $500m new facility near Chicago, for instance, will need three electrical substations with a total capacity of 198 megawatts. As a result, finding a site for a large data centre is now, above all, about securing a cheap and reliable source of power, says Rich Miller of Data Center Knowledge, a website that chronicles the boom in data-centre construction.

Microsoft needs a lot of choice: if a new service suddenly becomes popular, it needs to be able to increase computing capacity quickly. That is also why it uses shipping containers pre-loaded with up to 2,000 servers, which can be up and running within hours.

Yet it will not just be market economics that determines the shape of the clouds. Local governments give tax breaks in the hope that the presence of big data centres will attract other businesses (the computing plants themselves usually employ only a few dozen people). Regulation is a factor, too. SWIFT, a bank-transfer consortium, has announced plans to build a data centre in neutral Switzerland, so that data collected in Europe will not be stored in an American facility, where it could be subpoenaed by the United States government.

said by DrModem :

Who wants to guess the percent likelihood of that statement happening? :P

Symantec is developing a Web-based service that will let parents control almost all aspects of their child's Internet activity from anywhere in the world.

A demo seen by IDG on Friday showed the application gives parents sweeping control over their child's activity.

It can be configured so a parent must approve adding a new person to a buddy list on an instant-messaging program. Search terms can be monitored as well as content posted on social-networking sites.

The program is Web-based and can be access through a Web browser, so parents have control even if they're not at home. After logging in, parents can click on a tab labeled "news" and see a list of recent actions by their child.

Those actions can include the creation of a new profile on MySpace, the last person the child sent an instant message to, a transcript of that conversation, the Web sites the child has either access or tried to access and the length of time online, among other metrics.

A client program must be installed on the PC the child uses, and actions done by the child on another PC can't be monitored, Mallon said.

The application was rolled out within the last two weeks for Symantec employees, Mallon said. It will then be offered on a forthcoming Web site called the "Incubator" that Symantec plans to launch within the next two months.

said by TKJunkMail :

»news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/2008052···d/146223
The main problem is the kids can still go to a friends house where the parents either don't care or are too stupid to understand the internet. So, ultimately, the kids will get access no matter how hard you try to control it.

The Internet is routinely used when making buying decisions, but its influence is small compared with offline channels such as friends and sales personnel, a new study finds.

Sunday's report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project looked at consumer behavior in purchasing music, cell phones and homes or renting apartments. It found the Internet's role to be indirect.

Only about 10 percent of real estate and cell phone buyers and 7 percent of music purchasers credit the Internet with having a major impact on their decision. And only a small portion — 22 percent of the music buyers and 12 percent of cell phone purchasers — ultimately bought their product over the Internet.

"People do cast their information nets widely when doing consumer research," Horrigan said. "At the end of the day, though, it's the offline nugget that has more influence."

The study is based on phone interviews conducted Aug. 3 to Sept. 5, 2007, with 2,400 adults, including 1,684 Internet users. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

said by N3OGH :

It was a lot of fun, and the thing I love the most about it is the intense zone of concentration it brings me into. Nothing else except flying the airplane exists in my life when I'm flying in challenging conditions.

said by hayabusa3303 :

Family is here from out of town.

cheers everyone.

A jury in Alexandria, Va, found Barry Gitarts, 25, allegedly a member of Internet music piracy group, Apocalypse Production Crew (APC), was found guilty of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.

Gitarts faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and must make full restitution, according to a statement released by the DOJ.

The Recording Industry Assoc. of America (RIAA), which said it helped develop evidence against APC, applauded the jury verdict.

Gitarts is accused of participating in the group for nearly a year, the DOJ alleged. The government has convicted 15 APC members so far.

The transition to digital TV is going smoothly for broadcasters, according to a government report issued earlier this week. But lawmakers are still worried that consumers may still be confused or unaware of the change.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued Tuesday said about 91 percent of the 1,122 full-power TV stations that answered their survey said they were already broadcasting a digital TV signal.

"Broadcast stations have made substantial progress in transitioning to DTV, with the vast majority already transmitting a digital signal," the GAO concluded.

According to a new survey by the trade organization, almost 80 percent of households with a TV have at least some knowledge of the digital transition, up from 38 percent a year ago.

Under pressure from the FCC and lawmakers, broadcasters earlier this year agreed to run at least four advertisements a week during prime-time hours, along with a 30-minute show about the transition before the February 17 deadline next year, to educate the public about the transition.