Geek Stuff category archive

The internet is a public place.

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What it was, was football.

Attempts to identify a famous (English–ed.) footballer hiding behind a privacy injunction have spiralled into an online battle over freedom of speech, as internet users responded to high court action by repeatedly naming him on Twitter.

Read it. It’s delicious.

Also, the free market place of ideas, UK (where there is no legal protection for free speech) version. A nugget:

Twitter and other social networks were accused of making “an ass of the law” by the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and politicians after a number of celebrities with injunctions were allegedly exposed online.

As Dickens said, “The law is an ass.” As it is already in that condition, it needs no help from twits on Twitter to attain it.

I do sympathize with those who do not wish their privacy invaded. And the British tabloid press may well be the least-principled, sleaziest media in the English-speaking world, making America’s National Enquirer look like the Journal of the American Medical Association.

At the same time, I have no sympathy for persons who feed at the public trough, but who wish to protect themselves from the consequences of their own bad behavior.

All in all, I lean towards the idea that fresh air is better than no airings.

. . . here’s the new OS for your computer:

Click the image for more information.

May 20, 2011 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Geek Stuff | Bookmark this post

Another reason not to use Bing!

Microsoft added more Facebook features to Bing today so people searching on Bing can see what their friends think of various search results.

Science 2.0 reminds us of a news a recent news story:

A US court just slashed alimony payments (Cardone v. Cardone, 2011 WL 1566992, Conn.Super. April 4, 2011) to an ex-wife because of her blog posts, which detailed how she was sailing around the Caribbean for months with her new boyfriend while she rented out her apartment. The poor sap ex-husband had been paying for 10 years and the court reduced it by 70% because she was clearly living with someone else and being subsidized by her ex-husband. Get back to Connecticut for a moment. The guy was being forced to pay until she died or got remarried. 10 years.

The article goes on to suggest five rules for staying out of this sort of trouble.

No, “don’t get married” is not one of them, though “don’t get divorced in Connecticut” does make the cut–they are five rules for on-line behavior. Share them with your friendly local on-line hothead.

It’s reaching a critical mess.

It has been revealed that Facebook embarked on a smear campaign against rival Google.

The social network has admitted that it hired a PR firm to plant anti-Google stories related to user privacy.

It has already been well established that privacy is a concept that Facebook does not comprehend. Guess it felt lonely and wanted some company.

Facebook, of course, denies that this was a smear campaign.

Details at the link.

Given that, according to Zuckerberg, at Facebook “the default is social,” this surprises us how?

Access to hundreds of thousands of Facebook accounts may have accidentally been leaked because of a flaw in some applications.

Security firm Symantec discovered that programs were inadvertently sharing access tokens which could be used by advertisers.

It estimates that, as of last month, 100,000 applications were still enabling leaks.

This sort of stuff is exactly why you don’t see me logged into Facebook very often.

You also don’t see me walking naked on the beach very often either.

Boo-bleepin’-hoo:

Facebook has asked the Federal Election Commission to confirm that advertisements on the social networking website shouldn’t have to abide by campaign regulations which require a disclaimer on who paid for the ads.

In a 14-page letter sent to the FEC on April 26, three lawyers working on Facebook’s behalf argue that small campaign ads on the social networking site should be exempt because displaying disclaimers would be impractical. TPM was alerted to Facebook’s letter by a source.

Facebook touts its status as a “gathering point for the American electorate” and argued that changing the size or format of their ads “would cause a significant disruption to Facebook’s basic advertising model.”

To paraphrase Church Lady, “They’re so special.”

Warning: Mild language.

. . . except in Kent County, Delaware:

The draft proposal would expand rules that already prohibit Levy Court employees from using government computers or even private smartphones for social media sessions during working hours.

New provisions would bar workers from posting materials on or off the job that disparage co-workers, disclose confidential information or “reflect unfavorably” on county government, unless rated as a “legitimate matter of public concern.” The same proposals also would create a “duty to report inappropriate use of social media by co-workers or supervisors.”

Delaware’s other county and state governments already aggressively use social media as communications tools and tolerate limited worker use of public systems for private postings. From the moment he took office, Gov. Jack Markell has made heavy use of everything from blogging, to flickr, to YouTube.

Two thoughts:

• This sounds like overreach as regards personal behavior at home.
• What are the county fathers and mothers afraid of?

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, May 5.

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)

Clicking on “Don’t Like”:

Facebook Inc., the world’s most popular social-networking site, was sued for not getting parents’ permission before displaying that minors “like” the products of its advertisers.

The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of Facebook users in New York state under the age of 18 who had “their names or likenesses used on a Facebook feed or in an advertisement sold by Facebook Inc. without the consent of their parent or guardian.” The suit was filed in federal court in Brooklyn yesterday.

Much more at the link.

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 . . . .