Geek Stuff category archive

Facebook as The Man?

(Frankly, Facebook’s explanation sounds double-talky.)

Via Mr. Feastingonroadkill.

I was just greeted with the dreaded “Unable to connect to database” error message. (That’s the same error that led to my losing three months of posts three years ago and into my first venture in BASH scripting).

Not good.

I logged into my hosting account and, fortunately, was able to connect to the blog database with phpmyadmin, so the database wasn’t toast, just slightly singed. I ran a check, a repair, and an optimize on it and, violin, I’m back.

Now back to studying Grub.

Is social networking killing soap operas?

Mike Gruss, writing in my local rag, thinks so:

Log in to Facebook, and you’ll find someone prattling on about the family business, someone boasting about carrying a gun to a church, someone dating her husband’s best friend. And those characters are not played by up-and-coming Hollywood starlets; they’re played by someone you went to high school with. Depending on the year they were born, there’s a good chance, too, they have a soap-opera name like Starr, Rex, Blair, Bo or Cole.

Even so, Victor is still my hero.

This is just creepy.

THE WOMEN will always be linked by their macabre deaths, their hard lives leading them to society’s fringe, where a killer or killers waited.

But the eight identified online call girls and prostitutes whose bodies were found in Atlantic City and Long Island – their murders remain unsolved – share another bizarre connection: They have all been reborn on Facebook.

(snip)

Authorities last week discounted links between the two high-profile investigations, but in someone’s twisted mind, the killing sprees have become intimately related. Facebook pages have been created for all eight women, along with missing New Jersey native Shannan Gilbert.

The BBC describes how social networks make money by selling users to the highest bidder. A nugget:

UK theme park Alton Towers is holding an event where you are only allowed in if you let Facebook know you have arrived using its geo-location Places service.

The promise of matching people with products makes social networks attractive to advertisers, and Facebook deals add location into the mix. Users check in on their mobiles and get special offers in return.

If you spend much time on social networks, you should read it. It might help you spot the manipulation.

Your value as a Facebook user went up.

For Facebook.

Ads on Facebook Inc.’s site cost 40 percent more per click last quarter than in the previous three months, as the company’s social-networking dominance let it command higher prices, according to Efficient Frontier.

The increase was on Facebook’s self-service ads, not the higher-priced premium ads that run on user home pages . . . .

Mike Gruss, writing in the local rag, composes the letters of apology that should have been sent after the recent data breach at Epsilon, which exposed millions of email addresses.

A nugget:

Rest assured, we take your privacy very seriously. When we say “very seriously,” it’s in the same vein as “very important” – like when you call us and wait on hold for 25 minutes and a recorded voice says, “Your call is very important to us.” That’s how seriously we take this.

Remember how we started this email by calling you a valued customer, even though our nearly public records show that you bought flowers from us only once? We mean “very seriously” just like we meant “valued.”

Read the whole thing. It’s a hoot.

At the convenience store.

“What’s Fluxbox?”

“It’s a window manager for the Linux OS.”

“Never heard of it.”

“That’s why I wear the hat.”

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source.

What: Monthly TWUUG Meeting.

Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.

Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk-Employee Cafeteria. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.)

When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, April 7.

Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)

Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). (Map)

Roger Chesley, writing in the local rag, has some hints for using social networks safely.

OMG it’s tribal:

Following pop stars on Twitter is clearly a brilliant way to pass the time. How else are we supposed to know that Craig David is off to the gym to “fine tune the physique … lol” or that Taio Cruz has “had a couple weeks of no shades wearing”? It collapses the barrier between pop star and pop fan, encouraging dialogue (mainly things like, “@onedirection OMG Harry if you don’t follow me back I’ll cry 4ever, plz RT”) and gives the pop star (or his/her record label) access to millions of fans that can be crowd-sourced in no more than 140 characters.

Recently, that dialogue has been enhanced by the creation of so-called Twitter tribes, a way for fans to pledge allegiance to their favourite pop star and feel part of their world without having to part with a £30 annual fee for a badge and photocopied autograph. Nowadays, it’s all about deciding whose side you’re on, and hashtagging like your life depends on it.

The internet is a public place, even in north Jersey:

The Record newspaper reports that the teacher wrote about feeling like “a warden” and referred to her 6- and 7-year-old students as future criminals.

The teacher, whose name was not disclosed, was removed from the classroom this week after several parents who saw the posts came to Paterson School 21 and asked that their children be removed from her class.

Not so much social as celeb-gazing?

Researchers found that a staggering 50% of all content consumed via Twitter is generated by only 20,000 “elite” Twitter users, such as well known journalists, celebrities, and formal representatives of established organizations. So basically, any link you click on from your Twitter feed was most likely originally generated by @BarackObama, @SportsGuy33, or @Sn00ki, which is probably most fitting for where we are as a society in 2011.

The study looked at roughly 260 million tweets generated between July 28, 2009 and March 8, 2010 found some other striking revelations. Such as the fact that only about 20% of Twitter users reciprocate follows that they receive from other users. This of course is in stark contrast to Facebook’s near total reciprocal rate, wherein all “friendships” are mutually held. Plainly said, only about 1/5th of all Twitter users will bother to “follow” someone who follows them…well thanks A LOT Snooki!

Facebookers goes through a rough spell.

Welcome to Hotel Facebook.

You can log off, but you can never leave.

The person of interest in a Suffolk woman’s homicide was officially charged with murder, after investigators used a Facebook page to develop leads in the case.

Add “Facebook depression” to potential harms linked with social media, an influential doctors group warns, referring to a condition it says may affect troubled teens who obsess over the online site.

Researchers disagree on whether it’s simply an extension of depression some kids feel in other circumstances, or a distinct condition linked with using the online site.

The story goes on to list the myriad dangers of Facebook. Only towards the end does a doctor get quoted to the effect that, to the extent that Facebook has an effect, it is limited to potentially exaggerating tendencies that already exist. I guess scary sells (it certainly sells in politics).

I certainly do not think Facebook is inherently a grand and glorious thing. It can be a useful tool for many things, including recreation and reconnection; as with other tools, such as a sledge hammer, one can just as easily drop it on one’s foot if one doesn’t pay attention.

(One of the dangers of making computers easy to use it has been that it has made them easy to use for everyone, including those who don’t bother to learn how to practice safe HEX.)

Every few years come alarms from “experts” about this thing or that thing which is ruining our youth.

When I was a young ‘un, it was comic books ruining our youth.

Then it was television, followed by long hair on boys, disco dancing, and video games.

It is, in fact, global warning. It has one constant: those issuing the warnings are rewarded with articles, interviews, and book contracts.

I am more optimistic.

I am confident that our youth are quite capable of ruining themselves without help.

Charlie Booker considers the twitting (and Facebooking) of Rebecca Black. A nugget:

Certainly, the more insecure the tweeter, the more unhinged their behaviour seems to be. Some of the most virulent Rebecca Black abuse came from teenage girls showing off to their mates by tweeting the singer directly to gloatingly wish death upon her.

Hilariously, many of them attacked the wrong Rebecca Black, and were actually beaming their hatred at an etiquette coach of the same name, a woman who regularly appears on US TV to discuss the merits of civil discourse. The worse their abuse, the more gracefully she responded, which somehow made them look infinitely more small-minded than they already were.

Max Berry explains.

H/T to Henry.

Facebook’s login page now defaults to all spying all the time “Keep Me Logged In.”

If you log in with that checked and you later close the page without explicitly logging out, you remain logged in. Facebook can continue to track your online behavior so they can sell you to the highest bidder.

Furthermore, if you uncheck the box for one login, Facebook rechecks it the next time you open the login page, so that you must clear the checkbox each time you open the login page.

Facebook, no doubt, will assert that they have done this for your convenience.