6031769 writes "After recently claiming that only 400 to 600 Linux users visit the BBC website, the BBC's Ashley Highfield has now admitted that they got their numbers wrong. The new estimate is between 36,600 and 97,600 according to his blog post. He stops short of describing how Auntie arrives at these two widely different sets of numbers and how their initial estimate is two orders of magnitude out."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week I was wondering why the various mobile operators couldn't just be honest to customers in explaining the limitations of various service plans. A report had come out saying that people were sick and tired of service providers lying about service and features -- and it seemed to me that a company that was honest would get a lot of customers as a result of that honesty. Of course, this also came only a few days after we were wondering why Comcast couldn't come out and give an honest explanation for why it was jamming certain types of packets. Blogger Tom Lee from the Manifest Density blog, has responded to both things (though, incorrectly refers to Techdirt as being anti-telco, which we're not at all -- we're anti-telco-stupidity, which is quite different), making a very perceptive point. He basically says that it's impossible for any of these service providers to be honest with customers because doing so would require them to first admit the truth to themselves: they're just commodity dumb pipe providers, and all their efforts at pretending to be something more are pretty much meaningless. Until they can admit that (and Lee's assertion is they won't admit that), they can't be honest with customers. There's definitely a large chunk of truth in there, and it explains part of what the problem is -- but I still don't think that precludes service providers from being a lot more honest, even as they try to provide additional value-added services that might not matter. Being honest and transparent with customers is a good marketing idea for these companies, especially as they're being challenged to be anything more than a commodity dumb pipe provider. Being honest can actually be a part of their differentiated appeal to customers.

Today on Boing Boing tv:

...a wistful glimpse at the blinking, bloated tech expos of days gone by. We revisit a pre-dotcom-crash edition of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, through the eyes of the one human on earth capable of matching E3's hyperkinetic chaos with ample frenzy of his own.

In this BBtv episode, "comedy terrorist" Tim E. Woodsman high-kicks, dry-humps and generally freaks the hell out all over the LA Convention Center. Press access rules changed forever after this incident. E3 isn't huge and awesome anymore, either, so there's not much left to bum rush anyway.

Link to video.

As expected, today Google took the wraps off of the gPhone (as the media have for months been referring to the rumored project). Google is "leading a broad industry alliance to transform mobile phones into powerful mobile computers," and will be licensing its software to all comers on an open source basis under the Apache license. (The Wall Street Journal's Ben Worthen demonstrates a miserable grasp of what "open source" means.) Google's US partners include Nextel and Sprint, but not AT&T nor Verizon. Phones will be available in the second half of 2008 — not the spring as earlier reports had speculated. News.com's analysis warns that Google won't take over the mobile market overnight, though they quote Forrester in the opinion that Google may be one of the three biggest mobile players after several years of shakeout.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Whenever I look back at how Boing Boing has grown since its early days as a photocopied 'zine, I'm always most amazed by the sheer number of people who now visit the site every single day. It's mind-blowing to consider how many people in the world seem to share our tastes in Internet esoterica, anomalies, and curiosities. The only thing that we regret about relaunching the discussion feature back in August is that we didn't do it sooner. We're so thankful to all of you who take the time to comment on our posts and share links to even more relevant information. Today marks another leap in the evolution of Boing Boing with the introduction of a slew of new community features, including profile pages and the ability to tag your favorite posts and share those with your friends.

We have quite a few folks to thank for their help building out Boing Boing's community system. Federated Media's Jonathan Schreiber, Ivan Kanevski, Ken Snider, and Chris Stankaitis, in collaboration with the folks at Apperceptive, had the technical fortitude to make this project happen. We're very grateful to our sponsor, Hewlett Packard, for supporting the development of all our new community features. Thanks again to Federated Media's Josh Matison for connecting us with HP. We tip our propeller beanies to FM's Jason Weisberger who tirelessly guides us as we grow. Finally, a big thank you to Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Boing Boing's community manager, who always keeps the conversation lively and flowing.

A journalist once asked Timothy Leary what people should do after they "turn on." Tim said, "Find the others." We hope we can help. Here's Teresa with more on the new features:

Here's the big change: all registered users at Boing Boing, Boing Boing Gadgets, and Boing Boing TV now have a profile page, which they can customize if they want by adding a bio and the avatar or image of their choice. On that page is a list of the comments they've posted. Other users can read it when they want to get a sense of that person and their participation here, or use it as a quick way to keep track of their BB friends' most recent comments.

Another change is that anyone can now mark particular Boing Boing posts as favorites. We'll be tallying which ones get marked. A list of the posts a user has marked will appear on that person's profile page. It's another way to get to know people.

The sign-in page is now part of Boing Boing proper, so if you bookmarked the old sign-in page, you'll need to update your bookmark.

You know the header line at the top of Boing Boing comments? At the far right-hand side of that line there's now a small, unobtrusive button. Clicking on it prompts me to look at that comment, putting it on a list for me to review. It's not just a mechanism for noting problems, though it'll be useful for that. Feel free to use it on comments that surprise or delight you. I expect I'll be able to tell the difference.

Just so you know, the system will also tell me who clicked on the button, so if you're just playing with them, I'll know about it.

Some guiding principles:

• Don't be evil. (Yes, it's Google's rule, but it's a good rule. More people should use it.)

• What's right and wrong on Boing Boing is our call. What we do with that power is try to keep your brain stuffed with interesting new things, and create a good place for Boing Boing's readers to have conversations about it.

• Say something interesting. Do something useful. Have fun.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Researchers at the University Of Alabama In Huntsville have discovered that some x-rays thought to come from intergalactic clouds of 'warm' gas are instead probably caused by lightweight electrons — leaving the mass of the universe as much as ten to 20 percent lighter (in terms of its ordinary matter) than previously calculated. In 2002 the same team reported finding large amounts of extra 'soft' (relatively low-energy) x-rays coming from the vast spaces in the middle of galaxy clusters. Their cumulative mass was thought to account for as much as ten percent of the mass and gravity needed to hold together galaxies, galaxy clusters, and perhaps the universe itself. When the team looked at data from a galaxy cluster in the southern sky, however, they found that energy from those additional soft x-rays doesn't look like it should. 'The best, most logical explanation seems to be that a large fraction of the energy comes from electrons smashing into photons instead of from warm atoms and ions, which would have recognizable spectral emission lines,' said Dr. Max Bonamente. The work was published Oct. 20 in the Astrophysical Journal."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Researchers at the University Of Alabama In Huntsville have discovered that some x-rays thought to come from intergalactic clouds of 'warm' gas are instead probably caused by lightweight electrons — leaving the mass of the universe as much as ten to 20 percent lighter (in terms of its ordinary matter) than previously calculated. In 2002 the same team reported finding large amounts of extra 'soft' (relatively low-energy) x-rays coming from the vast spaces in the middle of galaxy clusters. Their cumulative mass was thought to account for as much as ten percent of the mass and gravity needed to hold together galaxies, galaxy clusters, and perhaps the universe itself. When the team looked at data from a galaxy cluster in the southern sky, however, they found that energy from those additional soft x-rays doesn't look like it should. 'The best, most logical explanation seems to be that a large fraction of the energy comes from electrons smashing into photons instead of from warm atoms and ions, which would have recognizable spectral emission lines,' said Dr. Max Bonamente. The work was published Oct. 20 in the Astrophysical Journal."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For years, we've joked about how Wall Street's dealmakers don't care if they're merging companies or breaking them apart: they have a script for both. When there are merger opportunities, it's all about the "synergies" of companies working together. When it's time to break them apart, you talk about "releasing shareholder value" that is hidden within the larger company. All it really means is another opportunity for another deal -- with the Wall Street folks taking their cut whichever direction things are going in. The latest to go through this pendulum is Barry Diller's IAC -- which has always been an odd conglomeration of internet companies. For years, we've wondered where all the synergies were that Diller promised the world when he started putting them all together -- and the latest answer apparently is that even Diller doesn't know. He's going to break the company up into five separate pieces in order to, yes, you guessed it: "increase shareholder value." While some are saying that this is classic Barry Diller -- a sign that he's more of a dealmaker than an executive, the timing of this might not be so crazy. After all, Diller did most of his buying during the dot com downturn, when many of the properties were undervalued. These days, with all the talk of the new bubble, and new enthusiasm on Wall St. for internet plays, the opposite is true. So while we tend to snicker at the "merge 'em up, break 'em down" thought process that goes into these efforts, in this case, it might actually make sense.

Arashtamere writes "A study on consumer perceptions about online privacy, undertaken by the Samuelson Clinic at the University of California and the Annenberg Public Policy Center, found that the average American consumer is largely unaware that every move they make online can be, and often is, tracked by online marketers and advertising networks. Those surveyed showed little knowledge on the extent to which online tracking is happening or how the information obtained can be used. More than half of those surveyed — about 55 percent — falsely assumed that a company's privacy polices prohibited it from sharing their addresses and purchases with affiliated companies. Nearly four out of 10 online shoppers falsely believed that a company's privacy policy prohibits it from using information to analyze an individuals' activities online. And a similar number assumed that an online privacy policy meant that a company they're doing business with wouldn't collect data on their online activities and combine it with other information to create a behavioral profile."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over at Network World, a reporter is noting that videoconferencing has supposedly been "the next big thing" since 1988 or so, and wonders why it still hasn't really caught on among a mainstream audience. Certainly there are some corporate users, and some people use it to talk to their family via webcams -- but it's still relatively rare. In response, I'd first point out that the promise of videoconferencing as the "next big thing" goes back well before 1988. There was a ton of hype around AT&T's plans to offer videophones back in the 1960s -- and it went nowhere. The reasoning is the same as it's always been. In most cases there's simply no need or no desire to have a video connection. You can accomplish just as much with voice communications, and the video is often seen as more of a negative than a positive. For a video call you need to make sure you look presentable, which isn't great for unplanned calls. It also doesn't let you do anything else while you're on the phone. In other words, it offers very little benefit and has some serious downsides that make it less than useful for many users. So, no, it shouldn't come as a surprise that after 45 years or so, there still isn't all that much interest in video conferencing.

I've given Leopard a chance, but it's pretty clear, this is not a good operating system release.

I've been out of the Mac loop for most of the last decade, just got back in a bit over 2 years ago. I don't know if early OS releases are generally as crappy as this one, but I wasn't prepared for where we're at now. If I had known, I would have waited, instead of upgrading most of my Macs to the new system.

Talking with a friend a few days ago, he asked what I thought of Leopard. He had installed the new version, like me, the first day it came out. "I'm not liking it," I said. He said something that was simple, profound and revealing: "It's like Windows." It is. It's that unpleasant to use. It disappears for long periods of time. Systems that didn't used to crash now crash regularly. On one system three hard disks were rendered unusable, and I lost a couple of full days restoring them (luckily I had good backups). The user interface is quirky. The new networking interface is a big step backward. The firewall moved and lost features! That's simply never done, you don't charge customers to remove features, esp security features. I think Apple doesn't understand how many people depend seriously on their Macs.

To Apple, I left Windows because it held my time and work in low regard. I was happy with the Mac because it seemed reliable. Now it seems my friend was right, I'm using Windows again, and I'm not happy about it.

An anonymous reader writes "Leopard's Finder has a glaring bug in its directory-moving code, leading to horrendous data loss if a destination volume disappears while a move operation is in progress. This author first came across it when Samba crashed while he was moving a directory from his desktop over to a Samba mount on his FreeBSD server."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MIT's stackable electric car, a project to improve urban transportation will make its debut this week in Milan. "The City Car, a design project under way at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is envisioned as a two-seater electric vehicle powered by lithium-ion batteries. It would weigh between 1,000 and 1,200 pounds and could collapse, then stack like a shopping cart with six to eight fitting into a typical parking space. It isn't just a car, but is designed as a system of shared cars with kiosks at locations around a city or small community."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Via John Battelle's Searchblog:

Om Malik's one-day conference on the future of video is heating up. YouTube founder Steve Chen has joined the lineup, as has the head of digital media for MTV, the head of MySpace TV, and many more.

Om has extended a 15% discount to pals of Searchblog, head here for the deal. Hundreds have already registered, it looks to be a great day of discussions. See you there!

Link

There have been all sorts of stories about counterfeit goods and knockoffs made in China. Last year, we even had the amazing story of how counterfeiters had set up an entire fake version of the company NEC. Rather than just knocking off the products, they built an entire fake Chinese version of the company, complete with offices and business cards. By doing so, they were able to appear much more convincing as producing real NEC products. It appears that other Chinese counterfeiters are learning to go above and beyond in trying to make their fake goods appear as real as possible. Reuters is reporting that the makers of a fake diabetes drug aren't just touting the wonders of the medicine, but have created an entirely fake version of China's FDA website in order to make it appear that the fake drug had been approved by the real Chinese Food and Drug administration. Of course, even the official quote from a Chinese FDA official sounds somewhat fake (or sounds like it should appear in The Onion): "This site is definitely not for real. These lawbreakers have got some balls!"