Pete Brown › Likes

You've never actually played RISK, have you Wil? My brother-in-law nearly lost an eye in a horrific wrath-inspired dice toss. We refer to it as "The Kamchatka Incident." - XDpaul

You haven't played RISK until you've played the Giant Game of RISK: http://www.flickr.com/photos... :) - Nathaniel Payne

Of course the endless desire of the far left to constantly find conspiracies to blame for the failures of their ideologies is nothing like this right? :) - Soulhuntre

"endless desire" and "constantly find" -- and who is this "far left" guy you're talking about. You're speaking idiot talk. - Dave Winer

It's amazing the amount of defensive deflection that comes from the right in order to avoid open debate on the issue. The comments on this article include a neocon troll who demonstrates the point. Take not of the lack of responses after the group chimes in to rebut him. - Jim McCusker

Ridiculous article. - Spencer

Dave, you've chided Obama for being, in essence, too conservative. You've accused him of backing down on his liberal principles (e.g., the FISA bill). Obama is the most liberal senator; he's farther left than any politician in American history. If he's too conservative for you, that puts you on the far left of the far left. You'll notice, though, that I didn't resort to childish name calling to get my point across. - Gregory Pittman

Dave, if you don;t see that the far left is conspiracy driven then there is no point in arguing it. I specifically said "far" left so that mainstream folks wouldn't feel blindsided. However, if you think they don't exist start on Daily Kos and cross ref to Prison Planet. You want to ask for more info, do so. You want to be insulting you're welcome to do that too - but don't expect me to take you seriously. - Soulhuntre

Gregory, 4 years ago Kerry was branded "the most liberal" Senator by the very same group that is now branding Obama with that title. Do you REALLY think that Obama can come along in 4 years and amass a more "liberal" body of Senatorial work than Kerry, who had years and years and years of being liberal in the Senate? What, is Obama some kind of leftist superhero, leaping over conservative obstruction in a single bound, emanating a concentratic, caustic liberalism so powerful that it even overpowers... - David Worrell

... Kerry's previously mentioned super-liberalism? Man, the next Democratic Presidential candidate is probably going to have to generate some kind of liberalistic black hole, eating everything in its path, in order to top Obama amongst the liberal-o-phobia set. - David Worrell

The article itself is a example of exactly the bias it claims to rail against - personal bias and (it seems) hatred of an ideology clouding judgment. No doubt it will play well and get linked by the ton but in the end it says basically nothing. - Soulhuntre

David, it's all based on voting record. Obama wasn't around four years ago when Kerry was running. Yes, he has out-liberalized John Kerry. And yes, according to his supporters' actions, Obama is some sort of leftist superhero. Any other questions? - Gregory Pittman from twhirl

Let's see the full paragraph: "But it is important, yet again, to call out the endless neoconservative search for new enemies, mini-Hitlers. It is the product of an abstract over-intellectualizing of the world, the classic defect of ideologues. It is, as we have seen the last eight years, a dangerous way to behave internationally. And it has severely damaged our moral authority in the... more... - Sean McBride

Joe Klein got it exactly right: the neocons, driven by messianic xenophobia (seeing ethnic and religious enemies everywhere, all the time), have squandered America's moral authority and military power in Iraq. We now have very little leverage to apply against Russia. In any case, Georgia, by invading South Ossetia, is responsible for starting this mess, not Russia. Nearly all the... more... - Sean McBride

I, for one, am looking forward to all of the neocon patriots signing up for military service in advance of our Glorious Endless Struggle Against Communism ... Oh, wait, they won't?!? Oh, in that case, I guess they need to STFU, cuz I'm not interested in yet another version of "Let's You and Him FIght". - Steven Perez

"Moral Authority" never counted for much of anything in diplomatic circles in any case. What will make diplomacy possible is honest discussion between leaders that share a relationship and experience level. The ability to find common ground, not to preach at someone. They don't care how we FEEL about what they did - they care what we will do about it. - Soulhuntre

Gregory: Read what you just wrote. Compare the length of Kerry's voting record (just the length right now, we'll get to the contents later) to Obama's. Read what you just wrote again. Repeat until comprehension dawns. You'll thank me when you're finished, trust me. - David Worrell

The way I see it, the only defense Obama has about how liberal his voting has been is to say "don't worry! you've seen so little of me in government you don;t have any idea what I stand for! So you can't be mad at me". That is not much of an improvement :) - Soulhuntre

Soulhuntre -- you're sounding exactly like John Bolton again. Moral authority, good reputation, being liked, etc. in the world community provide enormous advantages in waging diplomacy over being universally despised and hated. But that is neither here nor there: thanks to the neocons, we lack the military resources to go to war against either Iran or Russia, not to mention against Iraq, Iran and Russia all simultaneously. - Sean McBride

I for one am proud to be a liberal and when you poll Americans on "Liberal" issues a majority of them are too. So, keep throwing it out there. All we need to do is define it. - Brad Nickel

@gregory Pittman Have you looked into any of the critiques of the National Journal rankings? See, for example, http://www.tnr.com/politic... - Michael Markman

Oh yeah, while there are a large number of liberals on DailyKos, you must be an avid Oreilly fan that doesn't actually choose to read anything, because there are also a significant number of conservatives, libertarians, and all other stripes of people actually discussing issues. "We" on DailyKos actually choose to call out our corrupt party members and cleanup the Democratic party, while Republicans choose to laud corruption and try to get better at it. That is what DailyKos is about. - Brad Nickel

We NEVER had the resources in modern times to go to war against China alone - let alone in combination with other enemies. Unless you want us to go nuke right off - then we might make it happen. Of course goodwill is a useful tool and an important thing to court - but it is NOT the only thing and it is not often something you get at the time. Do you remember the anti-US hatred in Europe during the cold war? Yet now Obama holds the events in Berlin at that time up as an example of a great human event. - Soulhuntre

Sometimes you wind up doing somehting unpopular. Often, you will be deeply hated for it. You need to follow your own ethics (and that's anyone on any issue, not just "my" side) over popularity or endlessly chasing outside approval. - Soulhuntre

What. Does. Obama. Have. To. Do. With. This. Article. - Steven Perez

Soulhuntre -- would-be despots and tyrants who follow their own "ethics" (that is, sociopathic bullying impulses) against the democratic will of the people usually end up like Mussolini -- hanging from a lamppost. That's why we have democratic procedures, checks and balances, the rule of law, etc. -- institutions which the neocons are trying to destroy. In any case, Bush is no more likely to go to war against Russia than he is against Iran -- he is not entirely crazy, apparently -- or so we hope. - Sean McBride

Michael, no point in covering "what ifs." The fact remains he has the most liberal voting record of anyone in the senate right now. And, the article to which you point contains a major factual error. Obama has, in fact, recommended the nationalization of at least one industry: healthcare. - Gregory Pittman from twhirl

Again: What. Does. Obama. Have. To. Do. With. This. Article. - Steven Perez

Steven -- what Obama has to do with this article is that the points that Joe Klein makes in the article are too subtle and complicated for some people to discuss in a substantive way. A diversion is required. - Sean McBride

Ah, classic diversionary stratergy. Kinda like when Bush decided to invade Iraq instead of continuing to look for Osama bin Laden. I gets it. :) - Steven Perez

This "soulhuntre" guy is a classic troll. One minute he's an asshole making sweeping generalizations about the "far left" -- next he's a sniffling sensitive feelings-hurt metrosexual who doesn't want to be my friend if I don't play nice. Heh. A classic idiot troll, this type has been around forever. I went to school with these kinds of idiots in NY. - Dave Winer

Proclaiming that "neocons" are raving war mongers who try and find new little Hitlers is "subtle"? Seriously? That's what you consider subtle? Frankly the rhetoric in here is getting to be too much. policies you don't agree with is not the same thing as trying to destroy the "rule of law". That kind of exaggeration almost sounds like folks looking for a new fascist threat to rally against... I wonder what Joe Klein woudl say ? :) - Soulhuntre

Gregory, Ted Kennedy has been advocating the "nationalization" of the health care industry for thirty freaking years along with gun control, student loans, social security, Head Start, Medicaid/care, civil rights, woman's rights, reproductive rights, etc. All those nasty "liberal" programs that the American public loves. To say that Obama is more liberal than EMK is simply laughable. The poll you cite exists for one reason and one reason only... to label the Dem running as the most liberal ever. - Jeff Jones

Jeff, that wasn't my point. My point was that the article said Obama hasn't recommended nationalization of an industry. He has done just that. I made no assertion that no one else ever had. Pelosi has made the same assertion. Clinton has. Edwards has. That wasn't my point. The article referred to earlier as near gospel had a factual error in the first paragraph. - Gregory Pittman

Gregory, Your "point" was stated quite clearly, that Obama has the most liberal voting record of anyone in the Senate at the moment. I was just pointing out how ridiculous that assertion, and your point, was. - Jeff Jones

Jeff, that Obama has the most liberal voting record in the senate at moment is a matter of statistical fact not open to opinion. The numbers are there to support the assertion. Not much I can do to help you see that if you insist on keeping your eyes closed. But, that's not actually what you were arguing against earlier. You've jumped subjects now. Which is fine. I can keep up. - Gregory Pittman from twhirl

Gregory, One poll of VERY questionable method (I suggest you read the article Michael Markman links for a start) does not make this a cut and dried truth. The rankings do not take into account missed votes (McCain is not even ranked because he missed so many) and it uses the faulty assumption that a vote is either conservative or liberal based solely on how many of each caucus voted for it. - Jeff Jones

A really great example of transparency which should create long term loyalty. - AJ Kohn

This is a great example of why you want great PR people to work with. The S3 group has one of those PR teams and my guess is they had a hand. - Christian Anderson from fftogo

I think the guys at Twitter are trying, I was thinking of Comcast, who says nothing until they shut you off, deliberately, never apologizing, offering a refund, or explanation. If anyone from Comcast is listening, ultimately this is who you're going to be competing with. You're totally not ready for it. - Dave Winer

Pity that Apple can not do the same after their iPhone and MobliMe debacle. - joubert berger from twhirl

This is a good PR move by being more transparent and open with your customers when something goes wrong with the service your company provides. It pisses the customers less than if you are hiding the problems the customers are facing. When customers understand what's going on, then they tend to be more accepting or else they will walk to another company. - imabonehead

I think a lot of the bigger companies have tried the lame-o-Twitter approach, but the Exxon Valdez event & other experiences have convinced many that good communication can be cheaper in the long run. It's hard to battle the old "knowledge is power & need-to-know only". Amazon used to delete bad reviews and do slimier stuff. Now Amazon shows (a) the most popular good review (b) the most popular bad review - because many people like it. - Mitchell Tsai

Amazon needs to spend some time and resources to bring S3 in line with Web 2.0 developers' expectations for reliability and scalability. - Bill Sodeman

Increased transparency is also beginning in the areas of executive coaching versus traditional psychotherapy. During the past 10 years, there's more effort by coaches to bring their own issues into coaching sessions (e.g. ok, your discussion of issue X is making me fearful & yada yada). We've had 30+ yr veteran psychotherapists come to coaching seminars to learn how the new methods work. People often connect more deeply & faster with transparency (but can be initially scary for the one being transparent) - Mitchell Tsai

Jason, I had dealings with the guy the NYT wrote about, and he says nice things, but he isn't empowered to change anything. Like lipstick on a pig. I'm sure the Times didn't do any more digging other than talking to some users that the Comcast PR people directed them to. If he had done just a modest search the story would have been much different. Comcast does not have much goodwill among users, for good reason. Nasty company. - Dave Winer

Unlike those blogs. - Russellreno from NoiseRiver

This happened to me yesterday. - Michelle M

Excellent :) - Colin Walker

Incredible editing, dead on! - AJ Kohn

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111oneoneone - Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ

Absolutely speechless right now. - Gavin

Still crackin up on this! - Andrew Baron

I clicked the "like" button, and then I tried clicking it again. Very nice work. - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

HAHAHAHA this one is ALL kinds of awesome too http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Mona Nomura

Nobody will believe me when I tell them Sesame Street sent me on a M.O.P. music kick. - Jason Toney

So well done. :-D - Jason Wehmhoener

ossim!! - Yolanda

"ANTE UP!...KIDNAP DAT FOOL!" hahaha! - Carlos Ayala

Brilliant ! - Mo Kargas

Uh, oh. Puppets, they scare me now. - Oldengrey (Jay)

Love! - Hutch Carpenter

I just captured a local version of this for my personal collection. - Andrew Baron

This is cute, but do people really like that "music?" I grew up with rap, but lately a lot of the forms it's morphing into just sound like garbage. I guess I'm just getting old... *sob* - iTad

This is totally awesome!!! - Jonathan Greene

Hate to make you feel older Tad, but that song is 8 years old. - Chris Nixon

Swell... - iTad

Also, even if the music is not your style, its just so perfect for this particular performance. So zen. - Andrew Baron

dead on - so impressed - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Like? More like LOVE!! - ::Kristen::

I didn't think they could top the "death metal" skit. I was wrong! - Iain Baker

this is great, actually Ernie and b - Chris Conway

Bert are more hard core than your average rapper today. But not M.O.P. Those guys are def. Brooklyn bad ass - Chris Conway

I haven't heard this song in ages, still love it. Thanks V! - Todd

Ever listened to Minor Threat? One of Ian MacKaye's previous bands. Great band, number 9 on my Last.fm top artists list... Oh, just noticed that the the new Last.fm design is now official, on for everybody. Nice. http://last.fm/user... - Vincent X

:) - Andrew

great song....ever heard that band one last wish that guy piccioto from fugazi was in before he was in fugazi? they were so great and so sadly forgotten! - mike

Everybody's movin'! Everybody's movin'! Everybody's movin' movin movin'! - connor

oh man, great song, that brings back some memories. - Sawyer

Seeing Fugazi play this song at The Roseland actually, seriously, changed my life when I was 17. - Timothy Shey

Every time I hear this song I end up endangering my hearing and my speakers. - Jason Wehmhoener

Link returned a 404 error for me? - asiriusgeek

Same here - borked link - metaverseoz

Good post Dave. While I love many of the iPhone features I still don't like the closed platform, short non-replaceable batter, and single carrier aspects of the product. Seeing people stand in line like sheep just amazes me, but it's their right to be able to get one and run home to show off to their friends, or perhaps to be part of the 'in' crowd. - Jim McCusker

Fake Steve Jobs prescient answer:http://tinyurl.com/ytfk68 Don't like walled gardens? Have fun w/ OpenMoko or waiting for Android - Steve Weis

Jim, not to be a fanboy, but to say the iPhone isn't the best phone on the market is misleading. I don't get camping out for a phone, but in a world of walled gardens and not, when the walled garden is the only good thing on the market, you bet that is where people will go. I would love to see carriers open up networks and platforms, but barring that, having one cell phone that doesn't suck is still a step forward. As in most things, "It works" beats out ideals in head to head competition every time. - Robert Cooper from twhirl

The iPhone is good - but it is not the best phone on the market for many people - and for many uses. It simply lacks a number of features that a lot of folks use on their phones every single day. No tethering, no MMS, no stereo bluetooth, no background processing for 3rd party apps, no copy / paste, no Java, no flash, no turn by turn gps, no tether to third party gps receiver for car use, no removable memory, no ability to swap for a spare battery. As a smartphone it is feature poor. - Soulhuntre

Great post! Left you some comments here http://friendfeed.com/e... Remember Trolls are magical. ;-) - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Dont get me wrong, what it does do it often does brilliantly, but for peopel who need the features entirely lacks it doesn't work at all. - Soulhuntre

@Robert, the iPhone definitely has major differentiators from any other phone on the market. But the fundamentals of being a phone, like battery life & carrier choices, reception and sound quality are definite negatives that have been noted. For anyone who doesn't care about those issues the iPhone is by far the best. I personally think Apple can and will do better in future releases. - Jim McCusker

Funny. I had an idea for another type of meme ... thinking of talking to Gabe and Atul Arora about it ... - AJ Kohn

But still tech news (or heavily oriented that way). I would like even more specialized info and discussion -- like what is going on in F1 racing, the bicycle world or other subjects I am or could become interested in. I thought the rooms feature would do it but it doesn't cut it (or maybe the people here are just interested in things that interest me) - Brian Sullivan

true. find news is easy. find useful post/article is really hard. - Rafał Nowak

We need a SMARTER filtering services, I really need this kinda service, data flowing everywhere ... Yes Scoble, I love FF for the same reason, let me ask you, did u bookmark your fav. users ? ;) - Alemsah Ozturk

Brian: those will happen when FF grows. Right now the feature set here is retarding its growth. They are rewriting the backend so they can add new features to let us talk to the database in new ways. WHen that happens it'll take off in growth again and bring in less geeky kinds of people. - Robert Scoble

Alemsah: nope, I don't bookmark anything. There's way too many to bookmark at this point. And I refresh so often that I see all good stuff anyway. - Robert Scoble

Have you spent much time on Twine, Robert? I get the impression they're tackling this problem--in their own way, of course. - Ken Sheppardson

we're trying to do that with Regator... although we do have business in there, there is much more to it and it doesn't dominate unless it is really top news in the whole blogosphere. We are working to make quality blogs and interesting posts accessible for average people as well as tech geeks... some people just don't care that twitter bought summize - can you believe it??? hit me up for a login if you are interested in taking a look. Please forgive the fairly blatant plug. :) - Scott Lockhart

Twine is more of the semantic analysis/social news thing. Also has a "grouping" mechanism, but it is user driven. I think we are talking about techmeme for tech blogs here. - Rob Diana

Whatsnewandhowtomeme? - Charlie Anzman

My biggest problem is still redundancy; I'm not subscribed to that many people here (relatively) and even so I'll still see the same story linked five times, if not the same outright link. The next Google will be the guys who can nail personalization, recommendation, and filtering, as well as a sort of aggregation of conversation by topic. So far no one has gotten even close. FF might, but it's still got a ways to go. - Eric P

Ken: I have to spend some time on Twine. I should have done that long ago. You like it? - Robert Scoble

What if a search engine or filtering system, similar to summize for FF ? - Alemsah Ozturk

hey eric, did you hear twitter acquired summize??? about a million times. - Craig Ritchie from twhirl

@Alemsah: Take a look at this. You will love it! ;-) http://friendfeed.com/e... - Erhan Erdoğan

I definitely still hope rooms take off as the diversity of folks (from an interests point of view) grows. I'm with Brian though in looking for more interaction on other topics beyond the hot tech and social media world... - Gus Perez

Scoble : did you use feedhub for rss feeds. Basicly, it creates a personalized RSS feed from your RSS feeds .. And it learns with your help (you say I like this one, it changes the algorithm so on...) Would it be nice if similar idea can be applied to FF ? - Alemsah Ozturk

If "editorializing by algorithms" then you need criteria for what is important; what would be the criteria? how about leveraging likes ? still fixing and open to suggestions :http://www.thredr.com/ - LPH™ and his dog P™

Have you tried Gyzork? http://www.gyzork.com - Rebecca Povio

Rebecca: I just looked at Gyzork. It's worse than TechMeme. Less useful stuff and even more regular old news. Sorry, that's what http://news.google.com is for and it doesn't have an awful name, either. Alemsah: too much work. Never will take off, sorry. Needs to be easy for lazy types. - Robert Scoble

Try Technorati's Percolator or Blogrunner. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

This is why I started reading magazines again! - David Weiner

Hey guys. This is pretty close to what we're trying to do at socialmedian. The idea is collaborative filtering at the topical level, wiki-like scaling to an infinite # of topics. We call topic-based networks, "News Networks" and anyone can create one and bring in feeds, posts, and people to track, share, and discuss news of interest. We then add an additional layer/filter by enabling people to follow "Newsmakers." It's a tough problem to solve: Turn the volume up and turn it down at the same time. - Jason Goldberg

Robert: have you checked out SocialMedian.com? Its coming out of alpha now. It lets you enter the topics and the sources you want -- In effect, its a customizable Techmeme. - Christian Anderson

I like friendfeed because it does a pretty good job with sharing photos and videos, not just text. I've been experimenting with the open source twitter client, Witty, to add videos, drawings, and photos for this reason too. I think friendfeed activity also suggests that TechMeme is going to need to add comments if it wants to keep current. - Loren Heiny

Christian: I just got added to SocialMedian yesterday, will try it out. - Robert Scoble

Robert: i too am interested in the "this is cool" type stuff. that seems to be what is popular on socialmedian. I'm still playing with how to create a really tight "news network" for essentially engadget for web 2.0. Setting up the specific topics like iPhone apps is easy. setting one up around "how to take a better picture" is harder. - Christian Anderson

Robert: We enable people on socialmedian to fully customize their news networks to include all types of sources (e.g. business news, blogs, etc., or just a few favorite feeds). Up to you. It's far from perfect yet but getting better by the day thanks to awesome feedback from our alpha users. - Jason Goldberg

Jason: All we know how good SocialMedian is! ; ) Great job, congrats again! - Erhan Erdoğan

Erhan Erdogan are you on socialmedian? best you could do if you want to help us is let me/us know 3 areas we're f*cking up - Jason Goldberg

Robert: RE Twine... I'm just beginning to take a serious look at it. I like the concept of joining affinity/interest groups and having members pool links to resources they come across, but it's not clear to me yet how/if it differs much from a social bookmarking system with tags, tag clusters, etc. - Ken Sheppardson

Although there have been about a million "so and so buying so and so" posts on FF today - James Joyner

Jason: Thanks for your invite. ; ) I got the mail for - and also send me a feed back form or just send an email erhan(at)erhanerdogan.com.tr ;-) - Erhan Erdoğan

I want a site like Techmeme, but with a way to buy books. You can't read news all the time -- you need books too. Maybe that's why I'm always going to amazon.com. - Gabe Rivera

Have you tried http://www.rssmeme.com/ ? From what I've seen, it comes close to achieving this. - Mark Krynsky

Regator.com is in private beta right now, but I want to do a friendfeed experiment (even though this thread is a little old now). I have just created 30 invites that will use the code friendfeed. Just go to www.regator.com and pop in the invite code and see what you think of our site. Its definitely not Techmeme but take a look and see what you think. We're eager to get your feedback on what sucks and what rocks and what is just kinda okay. I will put this on my feed as well and see what happens... :) - Scott Lockhart

But that's what Lifehacker is for! ;) Of course, I may be biased. - Tamar Weinberg

@Gabe: Why not develop a bookmeme site then. I'll gladly help. - AJ Kohn

@AJKohn - I would be more than happy to handover the domain you may be alluding to (in your comments up above) Gabe if he is interested in using it. - Atul Arora

my post coming soon... - MG Siegler

LOL - catepol from twhirl

▀█▀ █ █▄ ▀█▀ - Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ

lemmings. sheep. fail. - Andrea Baker

Hooray! - Maryam Ardakani

Let me just say it again: I am so, so glad I didn't wait in line. - Akiva

ROFLMAO - Rob Witte from Alert Thingy

Great ! - Amir Homaiy

LOVE IT! - George Smith

Awesome! - iTad

Don't have a Jesus (or Mary) phone yet, so I can't judge. I would like to be able to judge, though! - Alex von Halem from twhirl

my interpretation: http://www.flickr.com/photos... - Holger Eilhard

awesome! - andy brudtkuhl

cool. we can forget the wale...say welcome to the failPhone - Dan V from twhirl

lets hope the failphone stays failing for a few more hours - my iphone error page is doing quite nicely in pv :) - Allen Stern

great picture! - Corey Hammond

My RogersBlackberry is humming along fine too ;-) - AJ Batac :)

My updated iPhone (old school) is humming along just fine (I updated it yesterday and had no problems). - Jennifer Dittrich

Right...but its Rogers...and its Blackberry. See? - The Fat Oracle

hey steve if your phone is down, i can let you borrow my samsung ace - it works great, super fast speeds, and an awesome opera mobile browser :) - Allen Stern

Hang out for a while. It finally comes on. I was down for 3 hours trying to update this AM, though - Francine Hardaway from twhirl

I am a committed late adopter to expensive change... vote McCain - NoahDavidSimon

Brilliant! - Sarah Crisman from NoiseRiver

Wow. First time I've seen an item with triple digit likes. - Mark Krynsky

beauty! i had a 1.0 brick all day - Bob DeAmbra from twhirl

i think this is one of the most liked posts on FF - Susan Beebe