2 pages on my site of 〈The Unabomber Manifesto〉 hit reddit, at http://www.reddit.com/r/sjsucks/comments/1by3nk/an_interesting_read_it_applies_to_sjws_very/
2 pages on my site of 〈The Unabomber Manifesto〉 hit reddit, at http://www.reddit.com/r/sjsucks/comments/1by3nk/an_interesting_read_it_applies_to_sjws_very/
it's actually from Scientology. See also: Scientology and Falun Gong
a 20 years old but still in a toddler's body. Brooke Greenberg
Philip Pilkington: Let's begin. Most economists claim that money was invented to replace the barter system. But you've found something quite different, am I correct?
David Graeber: Yes there's a standard story we're all taught, a “once upon a time” — it's a fairy tale.
What actually happens instead?
… this is what anthropologists observe when neighbors do engage in something like exchange with each other, if you want your neighbor's cow, you'd say, “wow, nice cow” and he'd say “you like it? Take it!” – and now you owe him one.
〔What is Debt? – An Interview with Economic Anthropologist David Graeber By David Graeber. @ www.nakedcapitalism.com…〕
David Graeber. 〔《Debt First 5 000 Years》 @ amazon〕
Google is banning me left and right. Now, this page GNAA Weev Troll Song (Kesha — TiK ToK), they say is violating their AdSense rules.
Here's other moral-sensitive songs. Sensitive Songs Index
I started to put Google ads in 2005. Within one month, they ban'd me, probably because i say fuck George Bush in front page. See: Google AdSense Ban on XahLee.org
So, since 2005 to 2011, i did not run any ads.
In 2012 July, i separated out my articles to different domains, so that all my none-controversial articles (which is about 95%) can benefit from ads.
Then, Google ban'd my xaharts.org for ads. See Google AdSense Ban on Ancient Asian Goddess Sculpture Page and now is warning me about that troll song.
the moral here is, if you wanna make money, stay in line! Or, be one of those unscrupulous ad-ridden SEO site or a spammer!
so many people helped me in a difficult time. Thank you. Here's a record Xah Financial Crisis 2012-12
two file related to the LulzSec around
i think i voted once only, and that was i think the CA governor recall ~2003. (☛ The 2003 California GUBERNATORIAL thing RECALL) (or was it something after that, some regional CA thing, i forgot)
at that time, i did spend huge amount of time to study ALL the issue, every item on the ballot, in detail.
though, in general i think voting is futile, for many reasons:
The sign lady disappeared. Sign Language Interpreter Girl Steals the Show
The town i grew up. photos: Taiwan 2003 Wanshen Street
started a Chinese blog at 李杀中文博客 (most posts are in Chinese only)
the most critical period of a animal's life is when young. That's when death occur the most. Including, human animals. Thus, teen suicide, depression, and other risks. When a animal is young, he lacks experience to deal with survival, and is also physically weak, thus susceptible to predation (bullying) by others.
is your teen years hell? It's not surprising. Same applies to your daughters and sons.
this is not to be taken hysterically. Just a simple fact.
Reddit today isn't just a porn fodder. But stuff there is surpassing 4chan. See new info at bottom: Reddit = Porn Fodder
I always viewed Sweden as a model country. One of Northern Europe country, open views on sex, politics. But since wikileaks …
New twist of event on my youtube porn article: Larry Sanger Reported me to FBI
I support Wikileaks and Julian Assange.
However, Julian's personality isn't the winning type.
If you've watched him on video, you get the impression that he's more of a calculating, conniving, asocial, loner, type of fellow. Such a character trait does not express emotion spontaneously. A significant percentage of geeks are like that. It does not correlate to one's ethical outlook and behavior.
Even in a prepared commercial Wikileaks's Mastercard Parody, you see a rather distant fellow.
this is in contrast to politicians and salesmen types, where, these smooth operators smile and laugh with you readily, easily making you like them, but what they really have in mind is anyone's guess.
United Kingdom declares war on Ecuador over a broken condom in Sweden.
while updating the page The 2003 California GUBERNATORIAL thing RECALL (NSFW), discovered that Peter Camejo died in 2008.
newly generated. 6532 links to Wikipedia. Links to Wikipedia from XahLee.org
updated: Population Under the Firmament
This is me juggling, 2002. Seems like yesterday. xah_juggle.mov
Updated again: Li Ao on Tibet and Dalai Lama.
Just regenerated Wikipedia link report for my website. Now at 5927 links to Wikipedia articles, spread among 1406 pages. See: Links to Wikipedia from XahLee.org.
A joke from the web:
美女住酒店一晚结账时账单800元，她抱怨太贵。经理说这是标准收费，酒店附设泳池、健身房和wifi。美女说自己完全没使用，经理说饭店有提供，是她自己不用。 女客人打开皮包掏钱付账，但说要扣除经理和她共度春宵的700元，只拿出100元。经理急呼：“我哪有？”女客人：“我有提供，是你自己不用。”.
Translation:
a pretty girl is checking out in a hotel, the bill is $800. She complains it's too much. Manager says its standard fare, hotel features swimming pool, gym, and wifi. The girl said she didn't use any of it. Manager says: but it's provided. The girl proceeds to make a payment, but deduct $700 for bedding with manager, so pays only $100. Manager panicked and said: when did i? Girl said: but it's provided.
See also: Woman with Good Legs (Humor).
More detail: Autism Test.
Started a new blog: Xah's Belles-lettres Blog. Its topics are {English, writing, literature, language, linguistics}. Recent articles on these topics are moved there. If you have interest in these topics, subscribe there.
Discovered a UFO cult: Raëlism. See: Cults: Lawsonomy, David Icke, Moonie, Falun Gong, Raelism.
This one is highely recommended.
Logitech “Ultimate Ears 500vi Noise-Isolating Headset” amazon
See: Gaming Headset Reviews.
The first step towards moral progress is to replace the word “human being” and “humanity” with “human animal”.
Student Who Found GPS Device On His Car Due To Reddit Comment Sues The FBI (2011-03-04) By Mike Masnick. @ Source www.techdirt.com
Here's a comment by the well know computer security expert Bruce Schneier.
The FBI is Tracking Whom? (2010-10-13) By Bruce Schneier @ Source www.schneier.com
Time mag has a article about a related issue:
The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves (2010-08-25) By Adam Cohen. @ Source www.time.com
I made one tweet about Falung Gong yesterday, and today i got spamed by 7 consecutive tweets from the group, with hinted threats. The last 2 of the tweets read thus:
musella 3:32am via WebDo not stand in the opposite of "truthfulness, benevolence, forbearance", do not think that disasters are accidental. @xah_lee
musella 3:33am via WebTo be or not to be ? That is a question for you to choose. @xah_lee
Here's the screenshot of the whole tweets:
screenshot of tweets from Falung Gong group.
Another funny video from Fredryk Phox.
“Fredryk Phox - Treadmill”
For another, and who's he, see: Fredryk Phox
Naked Nimba Girl (photo; commentary)
Discovered this political video, via wikileaks's tweet:
“EXPOSED: Attack on Wikileaks”
I was wondering, who is the blonde woman in the video. Of “firedoglake.com”?? What kinda name is that? How she seems to know so much. Can we trust her?
That blonde woman in the video, is Jane Hamsher. She was born in 1959, so, aged 51. Ten years older than me. Amazing. She's very attractive to me, and looks like 40ish. She must have had a very healthy life.
Here's some quote about her frow Wikipedia:
Jane Hamsher (born July 25, 1959) is an American film producer, author, and blogger best known as the author of Killer Instinct, a memoir about co-producing the 1994 movie Natural Born Killers with Don Murphy and others, and as the founder and publisher of the politically progressive blog FireDogLake (2004 – the present). With Murphy, she also co-produced the subsequent films Apt Pupil (1998), Permanent Midnight (1998), and From Hell (2001). A contributor to The Huffington Post, she posts also in other liberal Websites and political magazines, such as AlterNet and The American Prospect.
Funny, she co-produced the Natural Born Killers. (1994) amazon It's a film is a satirical critique of the media. I loved it. (not for the faint of heart)
lyrics appreciation time!Eurythmics - I Need A Man (music video)
In 2005, i read and annotated the Unabomber Manifesto (Industrial Society and its Future), by Dr Theodore Kaczynski (aka unabomber).
Few days ago, i got a comment from someone who's in contact with Kaczynski. It appears, that a revised edition might be coming. You can see the comment here: http://xahlee.org/p/um/um-s27.html#comment-141501691
Recently, in the academic psychology community, there's hot discussion about a psychologist (Daryl Bem) who made experiments that seem to confirm the possibility of some parapsychology phenomenon. e.g. seeing the future, knowing the past, reading other's minds, etc. I'd say, don't pay attention to it. But if you do have a interest in this matter, i recommend reading this article:
Back from the Future: Parapsychology and the Bem Affair (2011-01-06) By James Alcock. @ Source www.csicop.org
You hear China being on the rise in the past few years right? But i'm totally taken back now.
The world's fastest super computer is from china now. See: China Owns the Fastest Supercomputer …Now What? (video) @ Source singularityhub.com.
“China Has World's Fastest Supercomputer”
Here's Wikipedia listing of fastest computer: Fastest computer. Funny that they all run Linux. LOL.
Also on the news is that china also built the “longest bridge”. See: China Completes World’s Longest Bridge – More than 26 Miles! (2011-01-18) @ Source singularityhub.com. Here's Wikipedia article: List of longest bridges in the world.
hmm... interesting. my facebook page is google ranked at 4. I guess it's good thing for me to be ranked high, though i have little idea why. I guess people google my name and clicks on my facebook page. I got a rep among online programing forums as a troll. I know people are interested in oddball personalities, as in gossip mags on celebrities. Though, i dont write much personal stuff (as in, my current mood, feelings, what i had for dinner, new relationships), partly because writing trivia isn't my style, partly because in past 7 years i don't really have good news on these to brag about. (that reminds me, i'll have to write my 2-years experience living in a Honda Civic around 2005.)
Am guessing that the perception of me as a troll has waned in the past 3 years. I think partly because my emacs tutorial is getting popular, and i haven't written much essays with downright idiot-this n shit-that expressions.
As a thinker, even a nameless one, or possibly crazy idiotic one, i think it's important to write as you are, even with extreme views and insulting words. Because, that is the force of idea, expression, that are not ubiquitous. Sure, politeness is great, in fact critical, and actually necessary if you want to sell yourself, make friends. (e.g. in marketing, advertising, diplomacy, a core ingredient is to make people like you, and cynically — ingratiation.) But if thinking is what you sell, as a philosopher or artist, you have to sell them as is, and best to express them as you are.
Yeah, right! So, Xah, you think you can make a point only if you insulted people. What you take of me, a idiot? Yes, and i just made a new friend. (O, Shakespear says, please remember to read between the lines!)
Now, let's engage in a lil' fun speculation on humbleness from evolutionary psychology's perspective. Why do people despise arrogance? why humbleness sells? Besides selling, what's the effect of humbleness in the quality of work?
I don't know!
PS this blog shouldn't be titled “why humbleness sells”. That's the inaccurate message. Humbleness doesn't sell by itself, of course. Nobody would care more just because a idiot is humble. Rather, “why humbleness is in general a good quality to present onself”. For exmple, some well known celebrities are not shy to express themselves, examples are Stephen Wolfram, Steve Jobs. Others, for example blogger Steve Yegge (of amazon and google), Jeff Atwood (of codinghorror and stackoverflow frame), write conspicuously in a humble way (usually injecting extraneous humble statements or jokes), and they get tens of thousand followers. Political leaders, some are also humble, some cocky.
See also: Self-deprecation. Quote:
Self-deprecating humor relies on the observation of something negative about the person delivering the commentary. Many comedians use self-deprecating humor to avoid seeming arrogant or pompous, and to help the audience identify with them. In this way, the use of self-deprecating humor could be seen as an application of the rhetorical concept of ethos. This is a major component of the comedy of comedians such as Don Knotts, Jon Stewart, David Letterman, Craig Ferguson, Jerry Seinfeld, Rodney Dangerfield, Conan O'Brien, and Daniel Tosh.
Thanks to Lori Williams for some thoughts.
Ran into this mockery: “Why I Need To Quit Facebook” @ Source runt-of-the-web.com.
Though, note, that fb and other social media is merely a extension of RL chat or whatever u do around friends or water coolers.
So, when you are with friends in meat space, may it be in party, on phone, or at work place, do you engage in serious intellectual stuff like history, philosophy? Of course not.
In a sense, the article about “why i need quit facebook” mockery is itself just another insignificant thing on the web that “wastes” your time.
Its significance, is alerting us that many of us spend too much time on social media. Though, that itself isn't a problem caused by social media, rather, it is caused by modern society. The internet merely provided you a way to waste time by many means. Without, those who spend too much time on Facebook probably would over-sleep or playing solitaire endlessly (which indeed people do a lot in 1990s). You won't be reading War And Peace or dig into history, philosophy, anytime soon.
Likewise, average human activity been like that for past thousands of years too. Books such as War And Peace existed for over a hundred years, likewise other great literature or philosophy been around for thousands of years. Do average people get excited by them?
Magibon's typical video.
For info and more vid, see: Magibon, Boxxy (4chan personality video)
Am re-starting my wordy-english word-a-day. From 2004-11 to 2008-10, it ran on yahoo mailing list at games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordy-english/ But now, the new address is wordy-english.blogspot.com. This way, you can subscribe as blog and read it whenever you like, or you can subscribe by mail.
You can see archive of about 5 thousand words with usage here: English Vocabulary. Everyday, i'll pull a word there and post.
Please subscribe! Thank you.
Alexander McQueen, Haute Couture, Suicide (video; commentary)
“The Arabian 1002th Night Guo Pei Haute”
The song is Harem (Sarah Brightman) amazon
The Wikileaks situation is getting out of hand. (See: Wikileak: US Diplomatic Cables Leak) In the past week, they got kicked out by amazon hosting, then paypal, then Mastercard, and Vista card, and the a Swiss bank closed their account. Due to gonvernment's political pressure, mostly from US government. Here's a detailed timeline of the attacks:
You can still donate, here: http://wikileaks.ch/support.html.
Also, you can help hosting the site, here: http://213.251.145.96/mirrors.html. There are currently over 1k mirror sites already.
I think Google and Free Software Foundation should step up to make a gesture for hosting.
The severity of this government and big org censorship, is kinda a revolution material. We, the people, should stand up against them.
Just read a story that exposes how the sexual harassment happened. A must read:
〈The Wikileaks sex files: How two one-night stands sparked a worldwide hunt for Julian Assange〉 (2010-12-07) By Richard Pendlebury. Source www.dailymail.co.uk.
Time Mag cover 2010-12-13 Julian Assange
A very interesting video: 〈WikiLeaks's Julian Assange Reviews TIME's Top 10 Leaks〉 Source www.time.com.
According one of the US Diplomatic Cables Leak, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has ordered espionage on UN officials.
Here's a Gardian article: 〈US diplomats spied on UN leadership〉 (2010-11-28) By Robert Booth and Julian Borger, guardian.co.uk. At: Source www.guardian.co.uk
A classified directive which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clinton's name in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.
It called for detailed biometric information "on key UN officials, to include undersecretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers, top SYG [secretary general] aides, heads of peace operations and political field missions, including force commanders" as well as intelligence on Ban's "management and decision-making style and his influence on the secretariat". A parallel intelligence directive sent to diplomats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi said biometric data included DNA, fingerprints and iris scans.
Washington also wanted credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers for UN figures and "biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives".
So, the United States, with its justice obsession and all, is now spying on not Iran, China, or some rogue enemy states, but United Nations, a org for world peace that US touts to have helped build. How ironic. And the US want things including passwords, credit card numbers, DNA, iris scan. This is getting serious.
I think UN or something should prosecute Hillary Clinton to the fullest extend of international law.
Madman drives a self-built, modified-to-armored bulldozer on a destruction rampage. He's Marvin Heemeyer.
Madman drives a stolen tank thru street. He's Shawn Nelson.
See also: Unabomber Manifesto (Industrial Society and its Future).
“Llorando” from the movie Mulholland Drive.
Truth, Virtue, Beauty; Truth, Virtue, Beauty They are the nervous breakdowns Sweat and tears How do they taste? Truth, Virtue, Beauty; Truth, Virtue, Beauty Their cost is insanity Intoxication, and despondency Are they not suffering? How many failings, the dejections and futilities Buys how much truth, virtue, and beauty? What sacrifices, oblivion What wreckage For how much truth, virtue, and beauty? Truth, Virtue, Beauty; Truth, Virtue, Beauty Just who appreciates them? Who loves them? Who needs them? Have you tasted their costs?
Greg Kennedy juggling inside a conical enclosure.
For comment and 2 more vids, see: Conical Surface Juggling.
Just discovered that reddit this a section of Ephebophile (of photos almost naked teens). See bottom of: Reddit = Porn Fodder.
So, i found this Autism Spectrum Quotient from Facebook.
(before talking about that, here's a side story: motherfuck scumbag facebook. So, i saw this Autism Spectrum Quotient test from friend's comment. Click, and as usuall, it asks to accessing fucking info. Why the fuck is that necessary? Copy the phrase “Autism Spectrum Quotient test”, google, bang, arrive at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html right there first result. No fucking require my age, sex, sexual preference fuck. (See: Facebook's Ethics.))
Ok, back. Now, the test is available here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html. Here's a quote about the test:
Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge's Autism Research Centre have created the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, as a measure of the extent of autistic traits in adults. In the first major trial using the test, the average score in the control group was 16.4. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher. The test is not a means for making a diagnosis, however, and many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger's report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives.
My score is 30.
Agree: 2,4,7,13,16,19,21,22,23,41,42,43,45,46: 1 point Disagree: 1,10,11,15,17,24,27,29,34,37,38,40,44,47,48,50: 1 point Score: 30
For erotic pole dancing video and more, see: Pole Dancing and Chinese Poles (video).
Just watched the torture porn movie Saw VI amazon today. I love the torture scenes, but otherwise despise every other aspect of it. Americans, with their infatuation of justice and human rights, yet still love torture like every other human animal, had to create this twisted theme of justice to subconsciously justify their enjoyment of a graphic torture story. The Saw series is a huge money maker.
This shallow, twisted, theme of justice is very offensive to me. For example, you know how insurance company has a formula to calculate the insurance rates, coverage, for each person, based on their health, age? That's very rational, fair, and justified. But in Saw VI, it implies such insurance policy is not moral, and the person who “invented” this insurance formula is used as a victum for us to enjoy the torture show. You know how some people are addicted to drugs, who otherwise might have a good life? So, “Saw” makes fun of this. In Saw's theme, it says these people need to be tortured so that they “wake up” and realize the value of life. As another example, another justification to torture people is on those rich or well-to-do who are un-ethical or criminal in business or practices (e.g. Predatory lending). The victums are not always offenders of some crass morality. Some are almost random, playing on human vengence. Torturers also get tortured, as some sorta vindication that “you need to test yourself”.
In general, the film is about a demented guy who torture others. He consider himself to be some sort of justice giver or teacher in helping his victums. He thinks his victums “deserve” it. His reasons are certain lose pop morality. These brainless moral thoughts are typical of the uneducated masses.
The Saw series of movies insults intelligence, insults education, insults moral philosophy.
Of torture porn films, i rather enjoyed The Devil's Rejects amazon and Hostel: Part II amazon
The Devil's Rejects is a cult classic. Featuring a bunch of demented fucks of culturally American “midwest” types, crazy for the sake of it. Weird and funny. The “Hostel: Part II”, is just pure torture porn, without some moral shit. In Hostel II, i particularly like the protaganist chick Beth, who, when facing death, made a choice that transformed herself from a victum to villain. She is beautiful, intelligent, and courageous. The type of woman i love.
bmx freestyle
perm url: Freestyle BMX (Bicycle Acrobat).
Last week's poll result:
With regards to swearing, do you prefer my articles to be:
| Answer | Votes Count |
|---|---|
| True Xah Lee style; (e.g. I don't really give a flying fuck if people can't read my article due to fucking words in it. Those “constructive criticism” thinking fuckers, go study philosophy and fuck off. At times, my copious copulative expletives littered thru-out makes aliterative art, and that's the worth by itself, besides solid content behind them. (google my essay on constructive criticism)) | 20 (68%) |
| Criticize as usual, be honest, don't overswear; some swearing conveys needed altitude. | 2 (6%) |
| Swearing distracts. I prefer less or no swearing. Maybe once in a while. | 4 (13%) |
| Try to convery the same point, with expressions that are not so offensive or confrontational. Four-letter words is never really necessary in writing. | 3 (10%) |
Total Votes: 29
See also: The Writing Style on XahLee.org.
Want to add a search box to xahlee.org? You can add a html snippet to your site or blog, so you can easily search the 4 thousand articles. Get the code at bottom of this page: Subscribe To XahLee.org Site Feed.
Some issues on chinese censorship.
Some abbrevs used to get around:
The abbrevs are interesting because they are a mixture of: english abbrev, Pinyin, pun.
For info about chinese net censorship, see: Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China. For detail about gfw, see: Golden Shield Project.
Not related to censorship, but here's a simplified char i learned today: 拥护 = 擁護. See: 简体/繁體 字表 (Simplified/Traditional Chinese Characters List).
It would be great if chinese government would open up. Perhaps it is time to open up more?
Btw, if you are a typical american reading this: i do not support the stereotypical “freedom” and “human right” the US is condeming china, all over the mainstream presses. I consider them political propaganda. See:
(Thanks to fangzhzh for explaining the abbrevs.)
my twitter babble today:
2010-10-09 A comment by me on http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2693.
hum... was wondering if lang log has blogged bout reddit, if so, i haven't reddit. (just did a search thru the search box here, didn't seem to find it.)
a quick google found me:
- “i reddit everything.”
- “how do i reddit?”
- “i.reddit.com”
- “I Reddit on Facebook, ya Digg?”
- “i reddit too - good job.”
- “Where Have I Reddit Before?!”
- “i reddit already.”
- “ I reddit again and again.”
- “I Reddit online last night”
- “I am a Digger before I Reddit”
- “Been giggling about this since I reddit: http://www.reddit.com/...”
- “But I reddit'ed something for the first time the other day and it spiked traffic so hard that ...”
- “ I reddit this, stumbled, ...”
- “Also, I reddit most of the time when i'm bored”
few meanings are apparent: i've read it; i've submitted to reddit.com; i've read it on reddit; i am doing something on reddit.
am thinking, tweeted might be twitted or twittered. Need a google fight here.
so... these days i might have stumbled upon a article, reddit, tweeted/twitted/twittered it, buzzed, get slashdotted, im'd, or skyped.
...though, i have a feeling that none of these would stick for good. Personally, i really find “read” to be a problem, and am at a lost how i should fix it with my brazen english-rectification style. “Readed” looks good in form but sounds awful — too much like “re-did”. While “red” is worse a solution, cause of the homograph and homophone, besides carrying on the illogicality.
my other personal problem is “women”...
Some interesting highlights of Wikipedia Twitter reading. Quote:
San Antonio-based market research firm Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from the US and in English) over a 2-week period in August 2009 from 11:00a to 5:00p (CST) and separated them into six categories:[40]
- Pointless babble — 41%
- Conversational — 38%
- Pass-along value — 9%
- Self-promotion — 6%
- Spam — 4%
- News — 4%[40]
In August 2010, South Korea tried to block Twitter due to the North Korean government opening a Twitter account.[117] The North Korean Twitter account created on August 12, @uriminzok, loosely translated to mean "our people" in Korean, acquired over 4,500 followers in less than one week. On August 19, 2010, South Korea's state-run Communications Standards Commission banned the Twitter account for broadcasting "illegal information."[118] According to BBC US and Canada, experts claim that North Korea has invested in "information technology for more than 20 years" with knowledge of how to use social networking sites to their power[119] This appears to be "nothing new" for North Korea as the reclusive country has always published propaganda in its press, usually against South Korea, calling them "warmongers."[119] With only 36 tweets, the Twitter account was able to accumulate almost 9,000 followers. To date, the South Korean Commission has banned 65 sites, including this Twitter account.[118]
Twitter is ranked as one of the 10 most visited websites worldwide by Alexa's web traffic analysis.[42
Twitter is mainly used by older adults who might not have used other social sites before Twitter, says Jeremiah Owyang, an industry analyst studying social media. "Adults are just catching up to what teens have been doing for years," he said.[49] According to comScore only 11% of Twitter's users are aged 12 to 17.[49] comScore attributes this to Twitter's "early adopter period" when the social network first gained popularity in business settings and news outlets attracting primarily older users. However, comScore as of late, has stated that Twitter has begun to "filter more into the mainstream", and "along with it came a culture of celebrity as Shaq, Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher joined the ranks of the Twitterati."[50]
According to a study by Sysomos in June 2009, women make up a slightly larger Twitter demographic than men — 53% over 47%. It also stated that 5% of users accounted for 75% of all activity, and that New York has the most Twitter users.[51]
According to Quancast, 27 million people in the US used Twitter as of 09/03/2009. 63% of Twitter users are less than 35 years old, 60% of Twitter users are Caucasian, but a higher than average (compared to other Internet properties) are African American (16%) and Hispanic (11%); 58% of Twitter users have a total household income of at least $60K.[52]
The Industry Standard has remarked that Twitter's long-term viability is limited by a lack of revenue.[56] Twitter board member Todd Chaffee forecast that the company could profit from e-commerce, noting that users may want to buy items directly from Twitter since it already provides product recommendations and promotions.[57]
The Twitter Web interface uses the Ruby on Rails framework,[61] deployed on a performance enhanced Ruby Enterprise Edition implementation of Ruby.[62]
From the spring of 2007 until 2008 the messages were handled by a Ruby persistent queue server called Starling,[63] but since 2009 implementation has been gradually replaced with software written in Scala.[64] The service's application programming interface (API) allows other web services and applications to integrate with Twitter.[65][66]
On January 5, 2009, 33 high-profile Twitter accounts were compromised after a Twitter administrator's password was guessed by a dictionary attack.[86] Falsified tweets — including sexually explicit and drug-related messages — were sent from these accounts.[87]
Twitter launched the beta version of their "Verified Accounts" service on June 11, 2009, allowing famous or notable people to announce their Twitter account name. The home pages of these accounts display a badge indicating their status.[88]
In May 2010, a bug was discovered by İnci Sözlük users that allowed Twitter users to force others to follow them without the other user's knowledge. For example, comedian Conan O'Brien's account which had been set to follow only one person was changed to receive nearly 200 malicious subscriptions.[89]
In response to Twitter's security breaches, the Federal Trade Commission brought charges against the service which were settled on June 24, 2010. This was the first time the FTC had taken action against a social network for security lapses. The settlement requires Twitter to take a number of steps to secure users' private information including maintenance of a "comprehensive information security program" to be independently audited biannually.[90]
"MouseOver" exploit
On 21 September 2010, an XSS Worm became active on Twitter. When an account user held the mouse cursor over blacked out parts of a tweet, the worm within the script would automatically open links and re-post itself on the reader's account.[91] The exploit was then re-used to post pop-up ads and links to pornographic sites.
The origin is unclear but Pearce Delphin (known on Twitter as @zzap) and a Scandinavian developer, Magnus Holm, both claim to have modified the exploit of a user, possibly Masato Kinugawa, who was using it to create coloured Tweets.[92] Kinugawa, a Japanese developer, reported the XSS vulnerability to Twitter on August 14. Later, when he found it was exploitable again, he created the account 'RainbowTwtr' and used it to post coloured messages.[92]
Delphin says he exposed the security flaw by tweeting a JavaScript function for "onMouseOver",[92] and Holm later created and posted the XSS Worm that automatically re-tweeted itself.[91]
Accounts affected by the virus included Sarah Brown, wife of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Security firm Sophos reported the virus was spread by people doing it for "fun and games", but noted it could be exploited by cybercriminals.[93] Twitter issued a statement on their status blog at 13:50 UTC that "The exploit is fully patched".[91][94] Twitter representative Carolyn Penner has expressed that they will not be pressing charges over this incident.[95]
Thanks a lot to R. Michael Underwood, and Carel Bertram for donation!
Michael is a accomplished lawyer (and a friend) with wide range of interests, and Carel Bertram is a professor in humanities, in particular Islamic culture. She donated for The Arabian Nights.
What content would you like to see more?
emacs 5 other programing/computing/webdev topics 6 math 0 random pop, social, art, sex, politics 2 more technical (e.g. emacs, comp lang tutorial) 2 more rant/essay/opinion style writing 2 prefer longer (e.g. 1 or 2 pages essay/tutorial) 3 prefer short (1 paragraph emacs tips, etc) 0
Check out this week's poll:
With regards to swearing, do you prefer my writing style to be:
Vote at:
Stupid poll gadget made me split the first item cause it's too long. What the fuck is with the web these days? Must we all just tweet 5 words blurbs? Fucking twits. What happened to eloquence? harangue?
TechCrunch is running a article:
The article so far has 270 comments, and more than half are women, complaining about the article. Here's my comment:
lol. this post gets a flood of angry girls who flame the author, with comments that indicates they speak for men too. (e.g. “this post is not insulting to women but insulting to men TOO!”)
the sex fight is eternal to human animals. Some chide the author for not having done research or statistics. Well, you have done study in the general behavior pattern of this in human history?
this article, just like many others, simply speaks the author's mind, without needing to dress it up. But due to the sensitive topic, of course you get a flood of women complaining (and btw, perhaps less that 10% of all the business men, or entrepreneurs, are women in the first place, because, women, are simply not interested, generally speaking.)
so, thumbs down to the bitchers. But one sympathizes with these people cause their reaction are typical to all human animals: defending their self-interests, with less regard to what is true or fair.
as some of these seems young ladies grew to mid-age, perhaps like Camille Paglia have expressed, they left the scene, and the ambitions became stories of “when i was young...”.
As with respect to marketing in our web 2.0 age, bravo for the title and topic.
Lew Perin, a programer, who fixed a Windows Vista VirtualStore Problem for FSF Emacs with C code, has written a web app that translate tea names in Chinese to English, with good explanations. The app is called BabelCarp at: http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html. Quote:
I've been drinking tea, for want of a better word, *seriously* for a dozen years. Obviously Chinese tea is the majority of all the world's tea of any interest. After a few years, I realized that I would learn something about Chinese tea and then forget it, so I started thinking about how I'd memorialize what I learned. Then I said to myself "Hey dummy, you're a computer programmer - create a web application!" Hence Babelcarp.
If you don't know... tea in China is quite involved, with all sorts of knowledge and culture. Similar to, say, coffee and wine making. You know? the types, techniques to process, locations, brewing knowledge and secrets, etc, with aficionados, competitions, exhibitions, expert tasters etc. Some old masters, can take a whiff of your tea (baked dry leaves) and tell you how much it's worth (in wholesale level trading).
Personally i know quite a bit about tea, more so than a typical Chinese, because my dad is a tea merchant, he bakes tea. (and as a teen, i was beaten, etc, to learn and do the processing, delivery, etc in the family business.)
You can read Wikipedia to learn more: Tea.
One thing funny is that, in Taiwan (where i grew up), you never put sugar in tea. Unless it's bottled commercial iced tea, but even bottled tea is rare (it's like, as rare as bottled ice coffee in US). Nor have i ever heard of putting milk in tea. So, when in US, when people drop some sugar or milk in tea, it's like LOL, what a idiotic practice! That's like, hey let's put in some suger or lemon juice in red wine to enhance the taste. Also, there's never such things as lemon tea, or whatnot orange tea or herb tea or de-caff tea. Western idiots created that. But actually, probably they exist in Taiwan or China, but the point is, it's so rare that you never heard of it.
In writing, you know that there is passive voice and active voice, right? And the writing style guilds tell us, that we should use active voice. In the following sentences, can you tell which is active voice and which is passive voice?
Answer tomorrow. Post your answer at:
〈Neuroscience in the service of sexual stereotypes 〉 (2006-08-06) By Mark Liberman. http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/003419.html
Research says, woman uses 20 thousands words a day, while man only 7 thousand. See:
Wikipedia Mark Liberman.
If you don't have time to read them thru, here's a moral:
There are quite a lot questionable idiots in society, some with MD or PhD tattooed on their heads, and like to throw bullshit at the public, usually for profit, in the form of a book. So, when you see attractive titles like the following, typically pop psychology, be wary.
Note that in amazon they have high ratings.
In the case of John Gray, the “Ph.D.” title plastered all over his books is from a unaccredited university that the court ordered to close. Quote from John Gray (U.S. author):
Gray received his Ph.D. from the unaccredited institution, Columbia Pacific University (CPU), after completing a correspondence course.[3][6] CPU was closed by California court order in 2000.[7] The court ruled that the State of California recognizes CPU degrees earned before June 25, 1997, as "legally valid" for use in the state, but other states, such as Texas, criminalize the use of CPU degrees. This time period above included Gray's degree which he received in 1982.[7]
Here's the Wikipedia on Columbia Pacific University. Quote:
- “One master's-degree student was given credit for “a learning contract describing how he would continue taking dance lessons and watch dance demonstrations in order to improve his skills as a Country Western dancer.””
- “A Ph.D. dissertation written in Spanish was approved by four faculty who cannot speak the language.”
- “One dissertation “had no hypothesis, no data collection, and no statistical analysis. A member of the visiting committee characterized the work as more like a project paper at the college freshman level.” The dissertation, The Complete Guide to Glass Collecting, was 61 pages long.”
- “At least nine students who received the Ph.D. degree in 1994 had been enrolled less than 20 months, four of them less than 12.”[12]
Since California court ordered it to close, the founder moved states about and renamed his school. Quote:
Soon after CPU's closure in California, founder Les Carr relocated the school to Missoula, Montana and subsequently changed its name to "Columbia Commonwealth University" (CCWU).[15][16][17] As Columbia Commonwealth University, the school obtained approval from the Republic of Malawi to operate as an educational institution in the African nation.[16][18][19] In 2001 CCWU moved to Jackson, Wyoming,[16] and was based in Rock Springs, Wyoming until it was either unable or unwilling to comply with Wyoming law. CPU founder Les Carr still serves as president of CCWU.[20][21] In 1993 Carr established Senior University International in Evanston, Wyoming, later known as Rutherford University.
Here's a funny tidbit:
In Neal Stephenson's 1999 novel, Cryptonomicon, an American protagonist remarks to his Filipino attorney, “You know what this is? It's one of those men-are-from-Mars, women-are-from-Venus things.” To which the attorney replies “I have not heard of this phrase but I understand immediately what you are saying.” “It's one of those American books where once you've heard the title you don't even need to read it.” “Then I won't.”
See also: Neal Stephenson at Google Talk.
