Brian Johns

Photos look great Brian!! Very sweet Ken, just for fun with Brian! - Georgia from iPhone

One of these pictures has twice as many views as the others. - Brian Johns

wow! very nice! - Jonathan Disher

No data repository is foolproof. Redundant repositories with different companies is essential. Although, I'd say having a local copy is still imperative since legal authorities could swoop in on several cloud companies simultaneously. That's one reason I'm comfortable with Dropbox (and to a lesser extent Evernote): I have a copy of all the data locally, so it would just be inconvenient if they vanished. - Kevin Fox

So you're just using it as an online cache for convenience, but you have the canonical copy at home? Or the canonical copy is online and you have a mostly-up-to-date backup at home? Either way, the idea of a simple, magical, safe online data storage area is apparently still not possible. This time, just for political reasons. - Brian Johns

Dropbox syncs up changes bi-directionally with all connected repositories in realtime, so 'canonical copy' doesn't mean much. I don't know exactly what happens in a race condition, as that doesn't really happen with my personal storage. - Kevin Fox

Your datacenter could go banko, lock the doors, and turn off the pipes, so it's not a cloud thing, it's a remote single master thing. - Todd Hoff

I see. The local/cloud syncing of dropbox sounds cool. - Brian Johns

Todd: Good point. People trust banks with their money because there's a history of customers getting their money back when things go wrong. If the same failure mode doesn't exist for data then I don't see how people could have the level of trust that cloud purveyors are trying to sell us. - Brian Johns

You can never trust a single company with your data. When a bank loses your money you can sue to get it back because it's a fungible item. When a company loses your data, you're screwed. - Kevin Fox

I keep both my $ and data under a fully replicated mattress, so I'm safe :-) - Todd Hoff

I write my data on my money. - Kevin Fox

My data IS my money. Mo' Data Mo' Problems. It's the $1 and the lack thereof that constitute my data worth. - Roger N

Orange tree in your yard? With oranges this time of year? HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN!? - SAM

We get about 3 crops per year. This is why the real estate costs more. - Brian Johns

But seriously, GPS support in LR4 is awesome. It would also be awesome if they refactored Photoshop, so Photoshop CS5->CS6 is like Photoshop 2->2.5. - Kevin Fox

I haven't had a chance to play with the new Lightroom yet since I only had time to watch the videos before bed last night, but I'm most thrilled about the geotagging. The book making looks nice too, but I only make about 1 book per year. Of course, the develop module changes are the most important. - Brian Johns

Why do do you need GPS support for LR4 or are you speaking of the mobile apps? - The Real sofarsoShawn

Nice shot! - Rachel Lea Fox

Thanks! I'm falling behind on sorting, editing, and keywording this year. But there's some good stuff in the set. More to come, hopefully. - Brian Johns

wow that's great. Trying to learn camera stuffage - could you tell me the setting you used - Tv? ISO? etc? - SteVe C

Steve: You can check the EXIF info on flickr for all the details, but in this case, it was a Canon 40D with a 70-200/2.8 lens. I was at ISO 400 (thanks to it being a day game) set to Av, so I could dial in the aperture at 4.0 or 4.5 and let the camera pick the shutter (1/1000th in this case). I almost always shoot sports in Av and make sure the ISO is high enough to keep the shutter speeds up, but you could do it the other way too. (shoot in Tv and hope you have enough aperture) - Brian Johns

The downside of using something as small as f/4.5 (instead of closer to 2.8) is that the crowd in the background is more in focus. If I were going to print it for a poster or something non-journalism-related, I would add more blur back there. - Brian Johns

Thanks so much Brian, learning lots from you folks on FF - SteVe C

I'd think that Romney's fundraising for the SuperPAC would imply he gave people reasons to donate to it, and that would imply that the PAC is going to follow through on those reasons (ie raise awareness of the candidate) and that in itself feels like telling them what kinds of ads to run, even if it's as general as 'ads in favor of me or against my opponents'. - Kevin Fox

The fact that it's all so blatant, yet coy, is what amuses me about it. - Brian Johns

"Now I'm not saying you should run an ad about my new spending plan, and I'm definitely not saying you should hit the primetime senior market in Iowa. I'm just saying I liked True Grit." - Kevin Fox

Of course not! But I enjoy getting my news fix throughout the day too. - Brian Johns

Via a feed reader stocked with various sources. - John (bird whisperer)

Friendfeed, Google Reader, Google News Search, public radio - Victor Ganata

Hacker News, and feeds. - Jimminy, CoG of FF

FriendFeed Feeds/Hacker News/TechMeme on a computer. Pulse when i'm mobile. - Ross Miller

Google Reader, Twitter, and to some extent FriendFeed and G+. - Tinfoil 2.0

Friendfeed, Twitter, LA Times, SF Chron and random stuff... - Spidra Webster

Friendfeed, Twitter, sometimes the news apps on my phone if they push alerts. I don't like watching news on TV because I can't avoid stories I don't want to hear about like children being hurt. - Zulema ⋅ spicy cocoa tart

What, Ron Paul newsletters aren't enough for everyone? - Micah

ROFL, Micah - Victor Ganata

All different places, mainstream and alternative + twitter and Google+ and FF. What type of news and what volume are you looking for? - Jim

cnn.com, latimes.com - SteVe C

I kind-of want to see Obama give a speech with a huge 'Achievement Unlocked' banner behind him. - Kevin Fox

"Mission Re-Accomplished" - Stephen Mack

As "wars" go, this was a weird one. - Brian Johns

Not as weird as the wars on drugs, science, or climate change. - Kevin Fox

Why are these comments showing up as me??? - Brian Johns

Why can't I edit or delete these??? - Brian Johns

That's not my picture either! - Brian Johns

What the heck is going on here!? - Tinfoil 2.0

You are my favorite person at this exact moment Brian. I remember when you did this last time. Still awesome :) - Georgia

Brian's gonna figure out how I cloned him in 3,2,1... - Tinfoil 2.0

I'm guessing you used some sort of invisible character, or unicode or something, to get around the built-in "You" filter. Yours is better than mine since I have the dash and space in mine. - Brian Johns

Upsilon ;) - Tinfoil 2.0

Nice... - Brian Johns

This is almost like an Anonymous Confessions thread where various people are using the AC account o_O - Tinfoil 2.0

They log in using the same account? The downfall of our current method is when you hover over the "You" you see the real name. - Brian Johns

Yup, using the API key. - Tinfoil 2.0

API key, like posting from some other app authenticated as the AC user? So you don't actually have to log out of your real FF account? Handy! - Brian Johns

If "you" were really committed to this gig, you would both change your account details as well. - Stephen Mack

Oh hey - I didn't even realize the username field was editable! I'm a horrible hacker. - Brian Johns

I tried to become brianjοhns with an omicron, but it wouldn't let me :( - Tinfoil 2.0

Of course, once I change my screen name back to Brian Johns this thread isn't going to make sense. People of the future will come across this in the archive of human communications and wonder what was so funny. - Brian Johns

LOL, yup. - Tinfoil 2.0

I feel so lucky to have witnessed it in person! - Georgia

What are you doing surfing FF at this hour, Georgia? - Brian Johns

Oh, you! You got me, you. *wags finger* - Brent from iPhone

Well, tomorrow is a work at home day you, so I don't have to go to sleep so early. Plus, 10pm is my normal bed time. - Georgia

Hover now, that's the best I could do :p You might have to refresh. - Tinfoil 2.0

Where I come from, that's a compliment! - Brian Johns

Almost my bedtime too. Got an early morning tomorrow. - Brian Johns

"You" have a good one! - Tinfoil 2.0

You so cray-cray. - Starmama from FFHound(roid)!

That was exactly my thought process, Kevin. (Including the part about chucking a trashed fake number.) My theory is that unless you affect my tax return, you get a fake number. - Brian Johns

The thing that sparked this question was a bit on HuffPo about public schools not properly protecting student information, including SSNs. My first thought is "Why does the school even collect SSNs?" - Brian Johns

I can see providing a college with an SSN, since there is often financial aid tie-ins. But public elementary schools? I think not! - Brian Johns

I just picture the conversation with your 17 year old child. "What would you say if I told you I could make your permanent record just... go away?" - Kevin Fox

Too many places ask for SSN, they really don't need it, and it just becomes yet another liability for the individual. The purpose of an SSN is for Social Security, and we could argue for other essential *Federal* ID purposes (e.g., IRS). No one else really has a right to it. I wish there was an accepted and legal way to opt out or provide an alternate number. - Tinfoil 2.0

BTW, 078-05-1120 was used in 1950s-era wallets with a celluloid window insert that came with a sample Social Security card; it was a number validly issued between 1934 and 1951 in NY. This is a common "fake" one to use. Also: 987-65-<4320-4329> are allowed for use in advertisements. The other way to spoof one is to make one up that indicates your proper state, but the middle two digits of "00", which is an invalid combo for SSA purposes, but may satisfy less stringent checks. - Tinfoil 2.0

I've attended three universities and all three have at various times written to me to let me know that my SSN was compromised when their servers were hacked or computers were stolen. UC Berkeley had it happen twice. Seems like that kind of track record could be a reasonable justification for refusing to supply a school with an SSN solely to give them a handy unique ID. - Kevin Fox

In the not too distant past, one of my grad schools physically posted grades on a public bulletin board by SSN o_O It wasn't too hard to figure out which names they associated with either. - Tinfoil 2.0

I haven't come across this so far. I've been getting away with saying my kids don't have SSN numbers yet but they're still young. I think nowadays, I would tell them I feel safe only giving the last four. - Zulema ⋅ spicy cocoa tart

They should just use email addresses as unique identifiers like everyone else. :-) - Kevin Fox

I thought the use of SSN is something that is being faded out. My kids' school gave each of them a student ID. - Shevonne