Dedric

Is there evidence that the Sodomy charge is a PR stunt by Anwar himself to draw attention to his re-entrance into Malaysian politics? - Dedric

the PLOT tHICKENS http://snipr.com/2uhfo Disappearance of key witness compounds Malaysia murder intrigue - International Herald Tribune [www_iht_com] - Dedric

This article was fascinating. Reshared from Chris's feed. For once, I wish that our FOAFing were less aggressive so I could just "like" it and more people would see it... - Ana

Heh I shared this on Reader as well with my personal favorite "Please do the needful" as a comment. - Erica Baker

Reminds me of a recent episode of Radio Lab on NPR. I never knew about tonal languages before hearing it. Fascinating. - ha3rvey

The title is misleading. Languages have been spoken imperfectly by foreign speakers since time immemorial, but has that impacted the way the standard dialects are pronounced? Also iiuc you don't have what's defind as a dialect until you have a group of native speakers. - j1m

@jim Yes. Language is ever mutating in large part to cross-cultural saturaton. Every language historically shows this. - Michael W. May via twhirl

well, we have similar effect in Russian where language norm is kept more stringently (since Russian empire) - like changing noun's gender for irregular (borrowed) nouns, etc - silpol

it is fascinating to see so many French words in english traced back to 1066 normandie conquest. - Pokai

English is very much like Chinese: damn simple grammar and words you can't imagine how to pronounce right given their written form: http://www.mipmip.org/tidbits/... - 9000

@Michael: do you have any links to interesting descriptions of historical examples? (Where foreign-resident populations' grammar choices effect how the language is spoken where it is primary, without invading like the Romans and Normans, and where this is driven primarily be foreign-resident speech, not by speech patterns adopted by immigrants?) But rereading the article, I guess they don't mean to suggest that, just to talk breathlessly about how English is spoken overseas....which of course is a startling new phenomenon this last million years. - j1m

The article doesn't really suggest Chinglish will spread back into core standard English, but that it will become recognized as a first class language variant. I'm not sure about that - people in places like China speak English to engage with English speakers abroad (or with people who do, or to orient themselves in that direction), and I think that prevents their dialect from "centering" in a way that intellectuals will strive to codify and honor its local rules. - ⓞnor

Having spent time in Malaysia & Singapore, Chinglish is already the dominant language but not just Chinglish but throw in a bit of Hakka, a bit of Hokien, a sprinkle of Malay and you have thousands of variants based on an English kernel. metaphorically, English will become Facebook and the variations of English will become the mob wars or super pokes. Even though you may not understand it completely, you get the gist and understand why others use it. - Dedric

Can I enshrine that in some sort of metaphor hall of shame? :) - ⓞnor

I'd rather you didn't. Not my best work. - Dedric

Honestly, what does Twitter offer me that Friendfeed doesn't already take care of? The benefit of twitter was the ability to have mass conversations and those are near impossible. FF is so much easier to track. - tsudohnimh

I'll tell you a BIG difference: friendfeed seems to take itself very seriously. This can help facilitate a certain type of conversation, which has its place. I feel like twitter gives me space to say whatever I want, without it falling flat. - rambn

i don't see why it's one or the other. they both work in different ways and have a different reach. twitter can perhaps work to enhance friendfeed. it doesn't work so much the other way around, as friendfeed just offers more flexibility not to mention the ability to write more than a limited amount of words like i'm doing now. - Cee Bee

Cee Bee, I'm guessing if you play a lot of zero-sum games, you tend to see the world as one "x vs. y" after another... - Karim

I agree that the Twitter dudes are too lax at sensing user dissatisfaction. The relaxed California attitude, (Twittering about soy lattes after being down all week), is foolish. And the arrogance of listening to their $15,000,000 VC friends telling them 'don't worry about current defections, there will be a crowd there when you get there', is equally foolish. It was the excellent attitude of the original shop 2 years ago, that got them here. - Ed Shaz/NextInstinct

Man let this whole FriendFeed vs. Twitter thing go! They don't even compete in the same space. FriendFeed has a completely different objective. FriendFeed benefits from Twitters or other services. I can't believe you are even comparing the 2. I'm getting tired of all these Twitter vs. FriendFeed comparisons. The more people who join Twitter, FriendFeed doesn't care, in fact it benefits. FriendFeed is like those multi-service instant messaging clients. - Michael Narciso

rambn: Twitter gives you the space to say whatever you want without anyone listening. :-) It's no place to have a conversation. Half life of conversations on Twitter are about four minutes. On FriendFeed? A conversation can go on for hours. - Robert Scoble

BUT!!! One of the real ills of society, indeed the latest generations, is the lack of staying power and loyalty. A shallow, superficial, impatient human condition serves none of us well. There are terrific hardworking inspired people inside Twitter. And perhaps Evan, Biz, and Jack had to shut out the signal for the noise, But they do need a better sense of reality. This ain't new. - Ed Shaz/NextInstinct

Robert, in other words FriendFeed is like a newsgroup or forum conversation...but feels broader in cross-section. Twitter is more positional - people do not converse, they simply state positions. - Craig Thomler

how many of those followers on FF are overlapped with followers on Twitter though? I know Im one of them, relatively late to the twitter game but got on to FF fairly quickly after it launched. - Devlin Dunsmore via twhirl

I'm guilty for saying it. - Franklin Naval

Franklin: me too. - Robert Scoble

Usually when someone says "just don't get it" in the situation described by Mark, it is preceded with "You" as in "You just don't get it". That is not the sign of Mark giving up, it is the sign that the person trying to convince Mark has just given up because he is not listening any more. In any case when those words are uttered the person who is making the proposal is standing up and heading for the door already. - Dedric

Hang on Robert - how many times have you said "you just don't get it" to me? :) Mark is right of course - "you just don't get it" means you've failed to explain yourself properly, or you're not listening when someone comes back at you with a reason why you're not right. - Ian Betteridge

Ian: you just don't get it. :-) - Robert Scoble

For the record: sometimes you just have to say "you just don't get it" and move on. There's lots of people in the world who aren't worth convincing. That's one thing that Mark doesn't get. Maybe Mark thinks he's worth convincing. Since he's a billionaire I can see how he got that opinion. But even a billionaire sometimes isn't worth convincing. Try convincing someone who hates technology that they should come on FriendFeed. You just won't be able to do it. It's better to simply say ... - Robert Scoble

I just don't get not getting it! :) - Ian Betteridge

..."you just don't get it" and walk away to save your sanity. I forget why I told Ian that he didn't get something, but it probably was something along these lines. At some point it just isn't worth my time and I give up. - Robert Scoble

You were, of course, wrong :) I did get it, but simply didn't believe you were right. And that's the other place where "you just don't get it" is used as an excuse to curtail discussion without having to think about your own position. It's a phrase I try never to use for that reason. - Ian Betteridge

Ian: nah, you didn't get it then and you don't get it now. :-) (of course, I forget what we were even arguing about back then, would be nice to have a refresher so I can come at it with a fresh perspective). - Robert Scoble

I totally agree with Mark. You wouldn't be coming to me if you didn't have some respect for my intelligence. If I sound like I don't get it then either you haven't provided me enough clarity into the brilliance you illustrate or the idea just doesn't click with me like it does with you. Either way, don't insult me. Only my wife can say that to me. - ☛ Adam Helweh ☚

Adam: that's a good point. If I'm in Mark's office, that means I'm trying to pitch him on something. Probably to try to get him to buy something. If I were doing that I'd never tell that person they were clueless, even if I thought that after the meeting. Why does this sound like a social media expert told him this, though? I've seen a few of them try this tactic and it usually ends up in disaster. - Robert Scoble

Robert, I can't remember either - but I'm sure you were wrong :) - Ian Betteridge

Ian: I'm often wrong, it wouldn't have been the first time. Won't be the last one, either. - Robert Scoble

This should be the famous last words before walking out of the room. Not any soon. - Muthu Ramadoss

I'm never wrong. Except when I just don't get it ;) - Ian Betteridge

Sometimes I wish there was the ability to digg some of the comments and not just "like" the main post. - ☛ Adam Helweh ☚

Adam: Same here. We should be able to "promote" comments to first-order FF items. - Ken Sheppardson

If you guys "promote" comments, then we loose chronological order of the comment thread, which then won't make any sense. Don't change chronological order, but rather place little voting stars by the comments, this way folks can indicate a vote without disturbing the order of the original thread. Stars would have to equate to a numerical voting score (UIX tbd) - Susan Beebe

Susan: **** - David Cook

:o) thanks David! - Susan Beebe

Who has Cuban been dealing with Mickey Mouse? - Tim Leon

Perhaps Dr. Evil pitched him what he likes to call a <airquotes>micro-blogging</airquotes> service. http://sounds.wavcentral.com/m... - Karim

Message to Mark Cuban... when I said "I just don't get it", I was talking about my sex life.... - Kevin Shannon

The Washington Post used to have as their advertising tagline, "If you don't get it, you just don't get it" - Karim

Folks using that phrase are trying to substitute emotional manipulation for a compelling argument. - Michael Krigsman

One of the first things you learn when studying debate or argumentation is the circular argument: an argument that continually goes back to the same starting point is an argument that's not worth continuing. So, someone who keeps bringing up the same point you've already addressed because they aren't convinced is someone who's never going to be convinced. In that case, the only valid solution is to walk away and end the argument. I can definitely see a stubborn VC bringing up the same point over and over, even after it's been reasonably addressed, inciting an entrepeneur to exclaim that and walk away. - Mark Trapp

I don't think Mark Cuban gets most things - he must hear that a lot... - Kevin Cearns

Ah yes, that must be it. More of a life than to subscribe to me anyway, heh - jjprojects

There's a lot more women over on Plurk, at least looking at the people who are adding me lately. - Robert Scoble

Maybe it's the thought of being tracked everywhere online, not sure. Maybe it's the kind of conversations that go on here. Maybe it's not the case at all? - jjprojects

because the import sources are limited... where's my Twitter import? @robertscoble Plurk has better importing - Cait

Robert, I agree, there are far more wormen on Plurk. I've been using it quite a lot in a last couple of weeks, and that is definitely the case. I saw your question there about that, hence my question here really. Twitter is about 50/50 I think, well for me anyway. - jjprojects

We're here. But maybe we just wait to comment until there's something worth commenting on... <heh> - Linda Mills

yes, not a 50/50 mix, but definitely more. It's a more enabling platform for all people to be heard - Duncan Riley

lol. well....since you asked.... - Erin Kotecki Vest

Yes, there is something unsettling about the tracking; that's why I rarely post on BrightKite. But I've imported most of my twitter feeds here (a la Dave Slusher), and I'm loving the one-place reading and listening (to those who post audio files here). - Linda Mills

I'm here. I'll try harder to make my presence known :). - Annie Boccio

The majority of people online ARE women. We've also evolved to a point where we find blogging 'mainstream' according to recent studies. So it's only natural we're about to out number the boys as early adopters for social services like this.... - Erin Kotecki Vest

Linda, does that mean most of the conversations are about things men are more interested in at the moment? - jjprojects

so in other words, it's just you :) - Erin Kotecki Vest

women mostly follow attractive men hahahhahaha Seriously, it depends what type of woman you mean, the technically minded/employed are definitely here. Plurk doesn't appeal to me, the "forced" interaction is artificial I find. And I am all about information, not conversation... - Allison

Allison, Oh thx :P Yes, the conversations on Plurk are a bit forced sometimes, because of the whole Karma thing. You get points for being active and responding everywhere. The conversations are a lot more informal than here too, usually. - jjprojects

I find SNSing females (in general) to be attention whores that unnecessarily post useless pictures and videos of themselves. I prefer engaging in light, friendly interactions with an emphasis more on information exchange, like FF. I'm a huge fan of the female representation in here. Quality > quantity - Mona N. via fftogo

Importing is screwing up the numbers for FF... Women are more social online than email. There are dozens of services I can import 20+ women from (each service), but FF doesn't support it - Cait

Mona, you don't think men can "attention whores" as well, but in a slightly different way? Oh I think they can. - jjprojects

John, I don't think that's the conversations are uninteresting. It's just that the huge preponderance of action in my feed is tweets, which are pretty much like brain farts, not requiring response. I'm here now! - Linda Mills

@jjprojects FF updates very slowly for me, not enough contacts... and I'm not looking up everyone's email to invite them - Cait

@jjprojects of course. Hence the reason there are more males on FF... HA! - Mona N. via fftogo

@jjprojects don't you fnd that generally there are more men than women on the 'net? technology is more of a man magnet - Allison Miller

@Allison, do you mean sites and services or the Internet as a whole? - Mona N. via fftogo

Is this your first day on the internwebs? There's like only 2 girls on this whole thing. And even THEIR gender is in question until we get pics! ;-) - Adam Turetzky

i think more men... girls where are you?? - hunee

HERE! @mona I just posted a pic of the keg setup at this party I'm at. How is that for useless ;) - Michelle Marie Miller

The good thing about the women who ARE on the web - they, at least outwardly, appear to be more thoughtful and intelligent than the "common woman." (Am I going to regret saying that?) - Vince DeGeorge

@michelle NO braggage rights until there's one of you doing a keg stand! ;) - Mona N.

@vince. YES hahahahhaha! - Mona N.

male attention whores? scoble jumps to mind - Allison

Allison, actually no, I think that used to be the case, but these days I think the gap in narrowing, especially in social media. I'm really talking about social media. If you look at Facebook for instance, there are just as many women as men, if not more. - jjprojects

I don't have many women following me, of course my profile pic ain't that flattering - Dedric

I think there's a lot of women around too, but not as many on FriendFeed. Although I also have a limited number of contacts on here so less inclined to comment. I get people who follow me on Twitter but do not follow me here. It feels (IMO) that FF is much more formal, but then I said that to you the other day, didn't I John! :) Meanwhile, I like FF a lot for this reason.. the comments and conversation. - Penny

We keep saying that ff is quite formal, but I've actually had some quite informal conversations here too, mostly with people who've responded to tweets in ff. I might experiment a bit with trying to start different types of conversations here, not just tech or industry related ones, and see what happens. - jjprojects

second that. i only have Twitter and bright kite on FF but i'm thinking of narrowing it to one - Mona N.

I have Twitter, Pownce, Plurk and Brightkite. Nobody wants to see the same message more than once here. - jjprojects

I'd love a pie and peas right now thanks :) - jjprojects

....that's why I don't use ping.fm, socialthing, etc =\ - Mona N.

JJ, I've found the need to mix them up, I also don't import everything everywhere as well - Duncan Riley

I was fretting about that the other day. I've already unplugged SU. I think I'm going to cut it down to only the sites on which i originate content, plus de.licio.us, Google shares, and YouTube. - Chris Baskind

I crosspost on Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku (using Twhirl) but only feed Twitter into FF. - Leo Laporte

Was this a microblogging presence baiting trick post? :D - Mark Forman

Mark, no it wasn't :P - jjprojects

smart... which ones are you excluding - specifically? if identi.ca is added... no change right? - Susan Beebe

Duncan, that's what I've been thinking too. When I want to be very informal, I'll post to plurk, when I want to share files I should do it on Pownce or plurk. Sometimes it's hard to decide. I think 2 is ok, but anymore than that becomes spam for subscribers really. - jjprojects

I'm using FF - loving it - it is plurk'ish in the replies but far more content generated. But the conversations with "share something" posts are awesome. I am sold - if I could migrate everything - including the community it would be FF - Dave Gray via twhirl

Just disconnected Disqus, Reddit, and Digg. - Chris Baskind

Here is my quandry - I use twitterfeed to add blog and tumblog posts to Twitter but I have both those feeding FF as well. I also have unique status updates on Twitter. Should I disable the Twitter-to-FF updates? Or just depend on folks to block my Twitter content? - tsudohnimh

I have FF as my inbox and ping.fm as my outbox. So when I have something to say then I shout it on all my SNS via ping.fm. If someone has something to say to me then I check my twitter replies, FF, occasionally I check Plurk. I am also using a greasemonky script that has created a group of people I usually am interested in what they have to say. Another script allows me to filter via service on FF so that I can keep everything plugged into my FF. - Dedric

Actually now that I think about it, without the greasemonkey scripts, FF turns into a dogs breakfast - Dedric

tsudohimh, Yes you can get a kind of a loop going with these things. I don't really use auto-updaters for this reason. I do crosspost image from Brightkite to twitter which both feed into ff. I should fix that I think. There's a certain amount of duplication that's unavoidable I guess if you want to crosspost at all. - jjprojects

Dedric, I've been taking the update all approach for a while, up until now. I realise it doesn't make for a good aggregation here, I think. - jjprojects

yes as I recall the Matrix was filmed in Australia (whatever the frack that means).... - Mark Forman

Dave, yes Plurk seems to be more for very casual conversation, which is good I think. If the same sort of conversations were going on in each network, there would be no reason to use all of them. - jjprojects

Mark, are you saying we in Australia invent and control reality? Yes, absolutely :) - jjprojects

they should. because i'm one of those Twitter only users who hasn't even caught on to Pownce or Jaiku. Twitter is like being in a relationship that you know is bad for you but can't leave. We sit around just waiting for them to fix it over and over and over again even though there are probably better fishies in the sea. what's up with that huh? heh. - Christine Lu

Jaiku is dead in its current form. Look out for the infrastructure to be implemented in Android. - Jamie

You gotta figure that there is major work being done on Jaiku to be Google's angle on the Twitter issue. With a strong integration with gTalk, some form of filter and track and the muscle of the Google servers, they could have a play that could give Twitter a run for the money, especially in it's current crippled form. - Aron Michalski via fftogo

Jaiku is not able to talk about reliability, as it was down for several days a while ago, I believe after their one and only database server lost it's hard drives. If they still don't have more infrastructure in place, the last thing they'll want is more users - Ewan

Not sure what is going on with Jaiku, but I figured Pownce would have done something. Even a lame attempt at a viral campaign will get them some publicity. Somehow Plurk got a lot of attention, but it has a UI that requires more attention than something like the simplicity of Twitter. - Rob Diana

Just wish Twitter get it all sorted. SMS, open API, nice UI, lots of applications to help usability. Setting up a new batch of followers would be a pain. While current problems may be related to existing code, for taking my share of hardware resources a clearly identified ad every 250 messages received wouldn't be a pain (for me). - AlexBowman

Agree, at the same time, Twitter should be highlighting all the tools in their ecosystem which help Twitter users - e.g. Status blog, Twiddict etc.; mmm re other comments, will Google take over micro-blogging with Jaiku (some day)? I don't want Google taking over everything - I'd like to have competition between the different providers etc. - Justin Guy Souter via twhirl

Christine is absolutely right: Twitter use is like a dysfunctional relationship. There are very few businesses these days that can consistently annoy and piss off their customers yet still retain them. User interface has a lot to do with it but the best thing Twitter has going for it right now is critical mass. I'd switch to something else if I knew enough of my Tweeps were using it as well. I don't, so I can't switch. - David Erickson

The lack of poaching by Twitter competitors gives the impression that they aren't so sure they could handle the new load themselves. So far I have not really seen a complete replacement for all of twitters features either. - Mark Nassal

What's interesting is that people speak of Plurk as a competitor and acceptable substitution, yet I don't really see anyone heading that direction and find that I'm happy right now with the parts of Twitter that work... - Marc Vermut

Agree 100%. - Ole Begemann

I agree that where you are born impacts which religion you choose, but zealotry = prejudice? (I'm assuming you mean racial prejudice) You can say that for any geographic metric you want to, not just by religion. Unfortunately, many racial lines follow religious lines, but we all know that's not always the case. Aren't you being a little prejudiced yourself by making such a statement? - Shey

agree! - andy brudtkuhl

Before the rest of you jump on the religion = prejudice bandwagon, at least state your reasoning. I'm not seeing the relation here. - Shey

Where you're born influences the religion you follow - I would agree with that but being a fanatic or whatever degree of the word zealotry you want to go by is downright narrow minded - Julian Baldwin

There's an ancient Greek concept (oikumene) that geography impacts most things about a person. Having a Divinity school degree, due in part to where I grew up and how impt religion was in that part of the world, I agree with you. - Sam Harrelson

agree. if you take a new born and put them in the woods and return 20 yrs later, they won't know anything about God or religion IMO. they might have even made up their own religion based on their dreams and lack of not understanding the environment around them. - Chris Harris

What's so controversial about the statement? Kind of obvious, isn't it? - Paul "Maverick" Denlinger

Disagree. My parents were atheists and I am LDS. - Judy Jones