Buying fake Twitter followers a 'sin': Saudi cleric

RIYADH: A Saudi cleric has said that adding fraudulent followers to your Twitter account is a sin. Senior Islamic scholar Sheikh Abdullah said that purchasing followers to boost your Twitter popularity is a 'lie and slander'.

According to the New York Daily News, Abdullah's comments appear to be aimed at a common practice among celebrities and religious figures inSaudi Arabia, who add fake followers to increase their popularity.

(Source)

The Statue of Liberty was originally brown!

It's because of the copper the statue is made out of. Copper is initially brown, yet when it begins to oxidize, it changes color. The traditional green color we see today is extremely different from what we would have seen when it was initially built.  Since it was built right on the water however, it would have oxidized relatively quickly, and because it was built in 1886, we don't have any color photographs to show what it would have looked like. 

The reason the metal changes color is because of the moisture and elements it is subjected to. After arriving from France brown, the head of the statue of liberty would have begun to change as rain, salt, and moisture bombarded its copper exterior. As the copper interacts with these elements it slightly changes, forming a different form of basic copper consisting of a different color.  (Source)

Lenovo plans to be first to make a Windows 8 tablet

(Mashable) -- Windows 8 won't be ready for consumers until fall, but that's not stopping hardware makers from fighting to be first in line to build hardware for Microsoft's new operating system.

Lenovo is planning to be the "first to market" with a Windows 8 tablet, The Verge reports.

Citing a "source," the report says Lenovo is planning to be ready to ship the device in October and that it will have an Intel chip, so it clearly won't be a Windows-on-ARM device. Other than that, there aren't any details on exactly what the machine will be, although given those basic criteria (tablet, Intel, Windows 8), there's at least one suspect: the IdeaPad Yoga.

Lenovo showed off the Yoga at CES earlier this year, and it got a lot of attention due to its unusual form factor: a laptop with a keyboard that folds over completely to transform it into a tablet.

Mashable: How windows 8 tablets could challenge the ipod

Michael Dell had also said publicly that Dell would offer a tablet when Windows 8 launches, and Nokia recently confirmed months of speculation that it was working on a tablet as well. There have also been reports that HP and Asus are working on Windows 8 tablets as well.

A key differentiator among Windows 8 tablets will be whether they're based on a traditional PC chip or one that uses the ARM architecture.

While the new version of Windows has been engineered to be near-identical on both, ARM-based Windows devices are going to be "end-to-end" devices (meaning Windows would come fully integrated) and have a few special features, like an ultra-low-power mode. However, most legacy apps won't work on them.

Are you interested in Windows 8 tablets? What would you like to see in them? Let us know in the comments.

See the original article on Mashable

Reddit Stealth Bans, How To Tell If You Exist

What is Reddit Stealth Banning?

Stealth banning is a very clever strategy and a little oblique, when Reddit bans a user, that user doesn’t see change in their routine and experience. When the truth is, that know one else can see them, so in Reddit they don’t exist. When you are banned in their community, your everyday interactions are concealed so, no other user can view your votes and comments or interact with you and your posts.

The Reddiquette is very strict and must always be adhered to, without falter, banning in Reddit is a daily occurrence. It is quite easy to find yourself on the wrong side of Reddit’s over ambitious spam filter. Most long time Reddit users go through several accounts at first, until they get the swing of things and are able to avoid “The Filter”.

How To See If Your Banned

The more cunning part about the stealth ban tactic is that you don’t know your banned, great spam filter in my opinion, but a little over zealous at times. To check to see if your banned you can follow these simple steps to see if you’ve been hit by the ban-hammer.

1. Visit your user profile page while logged in. Example: “http://www.reddit.com/user/YourNameGoesHere/”
2. Copy the url from above and log out of your account
3. Paste the url into your address bar.
4. If you see your account your safe, if you receive a “Page Can’t Be Found” page then you’ve been banned.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 makes $1 billion--in 16 days

The good news just keeps coming for Activison's Call of Duty franchise.

The game developer announced today that Modern Warfare 3 generated $1 billion in worldwide sales in its first 16 days on store shelves. By comparison, the 2009 blockbuster film "Avatar" reached the $1 billion milestone 17 days after it opened.

Modern Warfare 3, which launched last month, has become the third Call of Duty game in as many years to reach $1 billion in total sales. However, Modern Warfare 2, which launched in 2009, took two months to hit $1 billion in worldwide revenue. Last year's Call of Duty: Black Ops needed 60 days to reach the milestone.

"Call of Duty is now amongst that rarified group of sustained franchises like 'Star Wars,' 'Harry Potter,' 'Lord of the Rings' and the National Football League that attract or engage tens of millions of people every year or every new release," Activision wrote in a statement today announcing Modern Warfare 3 sales.

Modern Warfare 3's success continues to defy critics who say that the time has come for the franchise to try out some fresh ideas, rather than stick to the typical run-and-gun experience that made it so popular initially.

"This is an exciting and rewarding game, but the series' signature thrills have lost some of their luster," Chris Watters, a reviewer at CNET sister site GameSpot wrote in his evaluation of the game. However, he couldn't deny the game's ability to deliver some of the more entertaining moments in gaming this year.

"Modern Warfare 3 iterates rather than innovates, so the fun you have is familiar," he wrote. "Fortunately, it's also utterly engrossing and immensely satisfying, giving fans another reason to rejoice in this busy shooter season."

Modern Warfare 3's latest sales feat comes just a month after Activision announced that Modern Warfare 3 made $400 million in its first 24 hours of availability. Launch day unit sales in the U.S. and U.K. hit a combined 6.5 million units.

Originally posted at The Digital Home

Samsung’s Next Tablet Could Have Retina-Beating Display [RUMOR]

Samsung is developing an 11.6-inch tablet with a 2560×1600 pixel display, which might put the display of Apple’s next generation iPad to shame, Boy Genius Report claims, citing a “trusted source.”

 

The tablet will reportedly run Android 4.0 with a 2 GHz dual-core Exynos 5250 CPU, and it’s likely to be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in February 2012. 

This latest rumor goes hand in hand with rumors of Apple’s next generation iPad. Its A6 CPU will reportedly be very similar to the one in Samsung’s upcoming tablet. 

As far as display resolution goes, the iPad 3 is rumored to have a 2048 x 1536 display, which would make Samsung’s rumored tablet superior in terms of pixel density (depending on the size of the iPad’s display). 

For comparison, the pixel density in iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S Retina display is 326 pixels per inch on a 3.5 inch screen. It’s been matched by a few competitors – namely the HTC Rezound and the LG Optimus LTE – but it happened over a year after iPhone 4 first hit the market. 

If the rumors are true, unlike the iPhone 4 at its launch, Apple’s next-gen iPad might not have the distinction of having the most advanced display on the market.

8 Weeks Later, How Do iPhone 4S Users Feel?

The iPhone 4S went on sale eight weeks ago Friday. So now that the hoopla has died down, the Apple store lines are a distant memory, an early bug with the phone's battery life has been resolved, and users have spent some time with Siri, how do they feel about their purchase?

Crimson Hexagon, a social media analytics firm, did some Twitter sentiment analysis to find out. The company examined more than 2 million tweets that mentioned the iPhone 4S, looking for strong opinions one way or the other as well as more nuanced, neutral reactions.

The result? Not quite as positive as Apple might wish. Some 37% of the tweets were generally favorable, 29% were negative, and 34% were neutral. More worryingly, the percentage of negative responses to the device is growing.

Not surprisingly, Siri dominated the conversation -- and by a slim margin, tweets about Siri are more negative (12%) than positive (11%). All of the neutral tweets were about Siri, too, detailing questions that had been asked of the 4S-based voice assistant, and the difficulty she often has in understanding users with accents.

Perhaps the most troubling news for Apple is that the battery problem with the iPhone 4S, supposedly solved by an iOS 5 update, does not appear to be going away. Some 11% of the tweets examined mentioned an issue with the battery draining faster than expected. When Crimson Hexagon did an earlier analysis of iPhone 4S tweets, in mid-November, just 7% had a negative impression of the phone's battery.

So how are you feeling, iPhone 4S owners? Are you happy with your purchase? Still getting used to Siri or dumped her altogether? And how's your battery life? Happy or regretful, angry or neutral, let us know in the comments.