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Now all of you can experience for yourself how Kindle freebies wind up locking you in to that platform!

Today’s Kindle Nation Daily brings this post: KND Kindle Free Book Alert, Monday, May 2: OVER 60 BRAND NEW FREEBIES THIS MORNING!

Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 5.0: When In U.S.?

This is basically a smaller Samsung Galaxy Tab without having to deal with the issues I mentioned yesterday:

No, it’s not 7″, it’s 5″. But I’d take this over any damned current 7″ tablet out there right now.

Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 4.0 and 5.0 PMPs launched internationally

The Galaxy S WiFi 4.0 will be first available in Russia and then rolled out to other countries, while the Galaxy S WiFi 5.0 will launch first in Switzerland. Still no word on a U.S. release date for either device just yet.

And no prices listed. And why isn’t it coming to the U.S. yet?

Update: Link to Samsung’s global site for the Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 5.0

Update 2: Samsung Galaxy S WIFI 5 3D Model

Twitter As It Stands Is Still A Waste

Twitter Just Had Its CNN Moment

Which means the next time my dad asks me why anybody would use Twitter, I’ll finally have a good response.

And if he’s smart, he’ll ignore you.

I didn’t learn about Bin Laden’s death until I woke up this morning. Given it happened during TV’s prime time, I’m probably — as usual — one of the last to find out.

And so what?

What difference would it have made if I’d heard about it within minutes of it being rumored on Twitter?

Previously here:

Bin Laden’s Doom Tweeted Live
More About Twitter
Facebook Wakes Up While Twitter Snores
Twitter’s New Sign-Out Page
Bailing On Twitter: Timing!
Another Lost Opportunity For Twitter
Now Only Here

Blog Notes: Spam Bucket

A new thing has cropped up in the last month or so: Akismet spam filtering has repeatedly been reporting problems with processing spam.

Today I just discovered three legit Comments that were flagged as spam and appeared only today in that bucket.

So if your Comment takes a while — as in days — to appear, it’s not a conspiracy. It’s just another software failure in the WordPress machinery.

The Mystery Of The Woman

My Experience as a Female CS Major

He once told me that even though the females are fairly quiet, and the boys in the class showed off a lot, when it came down to projects and exams, the female average was often higher. When I walked by a departmental career fair, I paused to look at some of the companies I might want to apply for next semester, and he told me to sign up for some interviews for that day. I said I didn’t feel prepared and wanted to wait a semester until I felt like I had more of a basic foundation. He turned to a professor next to him and said “Jean doesn’t know how good she is.” He probably would not remember that exchange, but for me his support was eye-opening. I realized that while I did decide to major in CS fairly late in the game, I really was good at it, and my harshest critic was really myself.

I’ve seen all that myself time and again. Puzzles the hell out of me.

Maybe it’s true that we men are poisoned by testosterone.

Why Techies Are Different

The Hot/Crazy Solid State Drive Scale

I feel ethically and morally obligated to let you in on a dirty little secret I’ve discovered in the last two years of full time SSD ownership. Solid state hard drives fail. A lot. And not just any fail. I’m talking about catastrophic, oh-my-God-what-just-happened-to-all-my-data instant gigafail. It’s not pretty.

Emphasis in the original.

Well, that just killed their appeal for me.

The record at the link is horrifying: Not one SSD lasted a full 365 days!

In the real world of non-techies, people don’t religiously backup. They trust their storage with precious data: photos, videos, music, eBooks, etc. A catastrophic failure such as those mentioned in that post would be devastating and incalculable.

If this is the same technology used in the MacBook Air SSDs, Apple is going to be facing a lot of bad press in the coming months. Maybe that’s why Apple is pushing towards a cloud service with a rumored price of free. If they give OS X owners free backup, they have a legal out against future litigation. Even so, I’d still side with the people who lost their data. And I think any jury would.

Bin Laden’s Doom Tweeted Live

Osama Raid Live Tweets

Aside from that, I want all of you to notice the link does not go to Twitter.

#FAIL!

Freedom Tower, May 2011

Photo taken yesterday, Sunday May 1, 2011:

Click = big

Previously here:

Revelation 13:4
Freedom Tower, April 2, 2011
Freedom Tower, February 2011
Freedom Tower, NYC, Thanksgiving 2010

Revelation 13:4

I was asleep when this news broke …

Click = big

They worshiped the dragon for giving the beast such power, and they also worshiped the beast. “Who is as great as the beast?” they exclaimed. “Who is able to fight against him?”

So, can we dismantle the goddammed TSA now?