I remember the day I signed up for Twitter. At that point I’d never heard of microblogging and all I really knew about twitter was that everyone suddenly seemed to love it. Every third blog post that came through my Google Reader seemed to talk about Twitter. Politicians and move stars were eating it up, but so were school administrators, business people, and teenaged kids. So I looked at it….

It looked pretty dead to me. And I was clueless (at least at first) as to how to get it to do anything.

I’ve been on Twitter for a while now and I think it’s pretty neat. But I remember today the difficulty I had getting started because I came across a post by Darren Rowse: 10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners. If you’re relatively new to chirping on twitter, he has some good suggestions….

© cambodia4kidsorg

By:  Greg Cruey                        Source

Most of the time, I really don't care who you are. My little portion of the blogosphere is about ideas and information - and it doesn't matter whether you're really a 60 year old gay Republican from South Carolina or a dock worker in Oakland who just likes to pretend they teach at a college.

So all the fuss about the Lori Drew-MySpace case has me a little skeptical. If you're unfamiliar with the details of the case, you can find most of them here. Long story short…. a mom is St. Louis supposedly created a MySpace profile for an imaginary 16 year old boy in order to trick a 13 year old girl in the neighborhood into telling her stuff (and because she was mad at her) and the girl committed suicide. The mom, Lori Drew, is being charged with "accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress" - and tried in Federal Court in Los Angeles, where MySpace has its servers. One key to getting a conviction is evidently the idea that Drew violated MySpace's terms of service - by setting up a profile that didn't accurately reflect her own personal information.

And everyone is saying, "OMG! I cold go to jail because I joined that forum on turnip recipes and since I didn't want anyone I know to find out how much I like turnips, I made up a fake name. I am in such trouble (or at least I could be)."

Let's make a few distinctions….

Anonymity is the idea of not having a personality or persona on the web. You leave a comment on my Google blog that has no name attached to it. If you do it again tomorrow, I don't know if it you or some other anonymous comment-leaver. You can't form cyber-relationships, really, because when you come back, no one can tell it's you. That real anonymity.
Partial anonymity is the idea of creating a some meaningless code for an ID. You can be A14key9 or Parrothead32 at a forum or in a chat room. If you key that ID for a period of time, people know it's "you" (by which I mean that they know it's the same user they talked to last time), but they also know there's only limited disclosure coming from you.
A false identity is an identity that is made to seem real (which allows other people out there to become more emotionally involved with you) but does not actually represent who you really are. Sometime these sorts of false identities are only partial. Someone creates a chat room ID that says they're Sue L. and they're a 17 y.o. high school junior who likes to cheerlead. In truth they're a 36 y.o. male, and you get the picture….
Partial disclosure is the idea of creating an online profile at some site that represents your true details. You say you're Sue L. and you're really name is Suzanne Leicht. You say you're 28; maybe the truth is that you're 31, but, hey, it's close (and you tell people you're 28 in the office where you work, too).
Finally, there's reasonably full disclosure. My name is Greg Cruey. I'm 48 y.o., married, have two grown kids and a spoiled dog, and, well, again - you get the idea.Anonymity is not going away because of this court case. Even if there's no place else on the web left for it, you'll always be able to comment anonymously at my personal blog. Its moderated; but there are very few comments I don't approve. The issue in the MySpace case isn't anonymity or violating the terms of service at MySpace. Those are tools in the commission of a crime, not crimes in and of themselves.

A comment at the Concurring Opinions website addresses the problems with the blogosphere-geek point of view on this case that the sky is suddenly falling and we're all going to go to jail if Lori Drew loses this case. A few quotes from comment:….I see nothing absurd about this. First, you say that it is vague. But it isn't. it says, you access websites on their terms. What is vague about that?

Second, you say it allows them to write the criminal code. Um, so? We often allow the permissions of others to define lawful conduct….. Now, look, I am sure there is a lot of lying going on, on the internet. Okay. But all of it is related to crimes or torts? I doubt it.

"Why is this case being prosecuted at all?" Because a girl is dead.

"Why is this case going to trial?" see above.

….I always tell my clients that the simplest way to avoid legal trouble is this: if it seems like it ought to be illegal, it probably is. …. This is a classic example of that principle in action. And more power to the government for doing so.The comment was left by A.W. - not what I call full disclosure and vague enough to qualify in my mind as partial anonymity. Maybe he's Andrew Williams. Maybe he just likes A&W rootbeer….

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Florea Marius Catalin

By:  Greg Cruey                        Source

Just click on his entry in the IMDb. Pretty astonishing. But Italian screenwriter Ennio De Concini wasn”t merely prolific; after all, he won an Oscar for his screenplay for Divorce Italian Style and wrote for the likes of Michelangelo Antonioni, Mario Bava, Raffaello Matarazzo, Duilio Coletti, Riccardo Freda, Clemente Fracassi and Mario Camerini.

Following a long bout with illness, Ennio De Concini died yesterday at the age of 84. La Stampa broke the news; here’’s the latest, in Italian, from Paolo Festuccia.

By:  dwhudson                        Source

Well, firearm deer hunting season opened in Missouri yesterday. It runs through November 25, so that means that for 10 days I have no window of opportunity for going to Roundrock. Sure, I could visit my own property with the law on my side, but I’ll just be prudent and stay out of the forest.

Of course it may have happened that I took a day of vacation on Friday to go out to Roundrock to get a few chores done and to set out the two game cameras in an attempt to get some furtive shots of tool-using primates who shouldn’t be there. If I did do such a thing, I don’t suppose I’ll have anything to show for a couple of weeks, so stay tuned.

No, that wasn’t my house (or driveway) in the Wordless Wednesday photo, though the house on the right side of the heart is for sale for something like $750,000. The house was built more than a hundred years ago for a brewery president. The neighborhood is iffy due to crime, but it was once the swank part of town. If you go to the ZIP code 64123 in Google maps and hunt around a bit, you can find the heart yourself (if you want).

Our long national nightmare has ended. (Not what you think.) Long live the queen!

Don’t forget to make your submissions to the next Festival of the Trees. It’s being hosted at A Neotropical Savanna. Send an email of your links (posts, photos) to panamaplants (at) gmail (dot) com no later than November 29. Be sure to put “Festival of the Trees” or “FOTT” in the subject line.

The January February March slot is open if you’re interested in being a host. And don’t forget to visit the current Festival over at Via Negativa.

The folks over at Nature Blog Network are doing a find job of aggregating outdoorsy blogs to bring more attention to them. Roundrock Journal is listed way down near the bottom of the 500+ blogs they list in their membership. Last week they started a new feature in their own blog section: an interview with one of their members. They’re off to a dubious start though. Via Negativa

I have a ginkgo in my back yard up in suburbia. We planted it more than twenty years ago, and it’s just now growing out of its gangly adolescence. In the fall, generally after most of the other trees have turned and dropped their leaves, the ginkgo’s leaves turn a lemony yellow color that I really like. Then, it seems, all of them fall from the tree at once. They started last Wednesday, and by Friday nearly all of them were on the ground. I’d love to have some ginkgo trees at Roundrock, but they’re not native to Missouri, so I won’t be planting them there.

What’s Pablo reading now? I’m finishing an 1811 German novel called Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist for a discussion group on Wednesday evening. In a democracy, your vote counts, but in a monarchy, your count votes. Based on an actual event, the basic story involves a capricious economic wrong done to a man who, after exhausting attempts at redress through legal means, turns to violence to gain revenge. If that plot line sounds familiar, it was re-imagined in Doctorow’s novel Ragtime, which happens to have a protagonist named Coalhouse Walker.

Missouri calendar:

Canvasback, redhead, scaup, merganser and ringneck duck populations peak.

Today in Missouri history:

W.C. Handy was born on this date in 1873. Considered the Father of the Blues, his most famous work is the St. Louis Blues, inspired by the hard times he experienced in that city.

By:  Roundrockjournal                        Source

If your fish are bored (and how would you know?) give them this new playground — the aquarium washbasin. Wash your face and watch the goldfish frolick. Completely watertight, with a sand bed for fish, it provides the necessary lighting, circulation, oxygenation and filtration to keep your fish happy.

Two openings, one on each side of the basin, under the soap dishes, allow access for cleaning purposes or changing the arrangement. The washbasin is mounted on a chrome finish brass stand provided with a front towel rail.

It”ll put you back a little more than your standard acquarium; $4,700 at Home Click.

I don”t know, it sounds a little fishy to me (sorry).

By:  Sarah                        Source