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I’m on Facebook. And I don’t want to be. But let’s face it. Anything Facebook does, another web service somewhere does better. But that’s not the point – the point is that Facebook is the default. Everyone is on Facebook because everyone is on Facebook. It’s a business model based on tautology.

We talked with five ad pros to find out what they predict for the future of social media marketing.

pgptag writes "This talk by Dr. Suzanne Gilbert (video) explains why quantum computers are useful, and also dispels some of the myths about what they can and cannot do. It addresses some of the practical ways in which we can build quantum computers and gives realistic timescales for how far away commercially useful systems might be."

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An anonymous reader writes "Ireland's Computer Emergency Response Team differs from what you can find in most other countries, since it's not government-backed and relies mainly on the good will of several security professionals. In this interview, the founder and head of the CERT, Brian Honan, talks about how the CERT was formed, what equipment they use and what challenges they face in their daily work without having a government to back them up."

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In this collection I would like to show you very handy and useful online applications for developers.

Apparently Google's graphic designers spent Labor Day weekend on the job because the search giant rolled out a funky new homepage logo today that's (wait for it) pretty baller. Visitors to Google.com today are greeted with a swarm of moving, brightly colored circles.

Stoobalou contributes a link to this story at Thinq.co.uk, from which he excerpts: "Torrent-tracking site The Pirate Bay is currently unavailable as reports come in of co-ordinated police raids against file sharers across Europe. Police in up to 14 countries carried out raids against suspected file-sharing servers this morning. According to file-sharing news site TorrentFreak, the bulk of police action seems to have taken place in Sweden. Swedish Internet service provider ISP, which hosts both The Pirate Bay and whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks, earlier denied rumours of a police raid, saying that officers had visited them to ask questions over two suspect IP addresses, and that no computers or other goods had been seized."

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theodp writes "Late on Monday, Oracle announced that ousted HP CEO Mark Hurd has joined the company as a co-president and a director. Hurd resigned from HP a month ago, after an investigation by the board into a personal relationship with a contractor turned up questionable expenses. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a personal friend of Hurd, criticized HP's board at the time, saying it was 'the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs.' 'Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he'll do even better at Oracle,' Ellison said in a statement Monday. 'There is no executive in the IT world with more relevant experience than Mark.' Stepping down to make room for Hurd was Charles E. Phillips Jr., who had some personal relationship issues of his own."

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If you are looking for these tools, then look no further. Here you will find best list of free online website testing tools. Read about each of the seven entries and determine yourself which one is most useful for you and bookmark-worthy.

Packed with beautiful images and behind-the-scenes details, this rich tribute to the classic '60s sci-fi show is a must-have for any Trekker. Get a first look at the book and enter to win a copy.

telomerewhythere writes "Michael Strano and his team at MIT have made a self-assembling and indefinitely repairable photovoltaic cell based on the principle found in chloroplasts inside plant cells. 'The system Strano's team produced is made up of seven different compounds, including the carbon nanotubes, the phospholipids, and the proteins that make up the reaction centers, which under the right conditions spontaneously assemble themselves into a light-harvesting structure that produces an electric current. Strano says he believes this sets a record for the complexity of a self-assembling system. When a surfactant is added to the mix, the seven components all come apart and form a soupy solution. Then, when the researchers removed the surfactant, the compounds spontaneously assembled once again into a perfectly formed, rejuvenated photocell.'"

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Collections of 10 Inspiring Website Designs

An anonymous reader writes "I bought a bunch of old Wing Commander games for Windows, but they use DirectDraw, which Microsoft has deprecated. They don't work too well under Windows 7, so I ended up reimplementing ddraw.dll using OpenGL to output the games' graphics. I wrote an article describing the process and all the fun workarounds I had to come up with, and released all related source code for others to hack on."

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Sony just released its 3.42 software update for PlayStation 3 owners. As a mandatory update, owners other must accept it if they want to continue accessing the PlayStation Network or PlayStation Store. While Sony's American mouthpiece isn't saying much about the release, Sony Japan says that it fixes a "hardware security issue," and that's it. Sounds like a patch for PSJailbreak and its open-source variants to us.PS3 3.42 software update reportedly patches jailbreak, hates fun originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 01:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink   |  PlayStation Japan [translated]  | Email this | Comments

The Federal Government has granted environmental approval for what's expected to be the world's biggest coal gasification and storage facility.

Nowadays it’s the changing preference of logo design companies from custom-made logos to online logo design contests. Here are the advantages a logo designer can earn from logo design contests.

Kilrah_il writes "In recent years the number of people killed on roads in New South Wales, Australia has dropped, but strangely enough, the number of pedestrians killed has risen. Some think it's because of the use of iPods and other music players making people not attentive to road dangers (the so-called 'iPod Zombie Trance'). Based on this (unproven) assumption, the Pedestrian Council has started a campaign in an effort to educate the people, but apparently it isn't enough. Now, some are pushing for the government to enact laws to help eradicate the problem. 'The government is quite happy to legislate that people can lose two demerit points for having music up too loud in their cars, but is apparently unconcerned that listening devices now appear to have become lethal pieces of entertainment,' [Harold Scruby of the Pedestrian Council of Australia] said. 'They should legislate appropriate penalties for people acting so carelessly towards their own welfare and that of others. ... Manufacturers should be made to [warn] consumers of the risks they run.'"

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GovTechGuy writes "On Friday we discussed news that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott opened a probe into whether Google ranks its search listings with an eye toward nicking the competition. Google suggested the concerns have a major sponsor: Microsoft. In question is whether the world's biggest search engine could be unfairly disadvantaging some companies by giving them a low ranking in free search listings and in paid ads that appear at the top of the page. That could make it tough for users to find those sites and might violate antitrust laws. Abbott's office asked for information about three companies who have publicly complained about Google, according to blog post by Don Harrison, the company's deputy general counsel. Harrison linked each of the companies to Microsoft."

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Over the weekend, we noticed Craiglist had replaced a certain notorious section of its site with a black bar reading censored.A longtime and well-known digital resource for prostitutes and the people who engage their services, Craigslist has come under fire many times over the past few years for its erotic/adult classified ads. Craigslist has stated it does everything it can to comply with government and legal stipulations and has an attorney manually screen all of its Adult Services ads. The company once said that 700,000 ads were manually rejected in just one year.Still, this hasnt stopped sex trafficking on the site, nor has it stopped the site from coming under harsh criticism for its business.In a recent poll, we asked if you thought Craigslists Adult Services section should be censored. Here are the results.Our readers are surprisingly liberal-minded about the Adult Services section. The vast majority of you (71.37%) said you thought the site should not be censored for a variety of reasons:Among our readers who thought the site should be censored, two-thirds found the Adult Services section objectionable because they felt it allowed Craigslist to profit indirectly from prostitution.Of those who thought the site and the adult sections should remain uncensored, almost half of you (46.15%) felt the censorship was unwarranted because prostitution should not be illegal in the first place. These broad-minded folks comprise almost 33% of everyone who voted in the poll.Others who were against the censorship in this case thought that Craigslists anti-prostitution policies were sufficient or stated another reason for opposing Adult Services censorship.As of this moment, were not sure if or when the sites adult section will be back online or why it was taken down in the first place. While prostitution isnt likely to become legal in the U.S. any time soon, well keep you posted on Craigslists dilemma as more details become available.More About: censorship, craigslist, prostitution, sexFor more Social Media coverage:Follow Mashable Social Media on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Social Media channelDownload our free apps for iPhone and iPad

jamie tips a post at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog about an extremely unusual astronomical phenomenon originating from a binary system about 3000 light years away. Quoting: "The name of this thing is AFGL 3068. It's been known as a bright infrared source for some time, but images just showed it as a dot. This Hubble image using the Advanced Camera for Surveys reveals an intricate, delicate and exceedingly faint spiral pattern. ... Red giants tend to blow a lot of their outer layers into space in an expanding spherical wind; think of it as a super-solar wind. The star surrounds itself with a cloud of this material, essentially enclosing it in a cocoon. In general the material isn't all that thick, but in some of these stars there is an overabundance of carbon in the outer layers which gets carried along in these winds. ... AFGL 3068 is a carbon star and most likely evolved just like this, but with a difference: it's a binary. As the two stars swing around each other, the wind from the carbon star doesn't expand in a sphere. Instead, we see a spiral pattern as the material expands."

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