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Boycotts aren't supposed to be easy. Neither is any other passive protest. Ghandi didn't go "oh well shit, this is hard, you win".

If you really want Facebook to pay attention, start letter writing campaigns to their advertisers. Start boycotting their advertisers

Better solution: Also harass them, using the phone lines. Jam down their lines.

Facebook, Inc.
156 University Ave or 471 Emerson Street
Palo Alto, CA 94301

Phone: 650-543-4800
Fax: 650-543-4801
Press: 650-543-4811
Unknown: 650-853-1300âZ
http://www.facebook.com/

"I will never join Facebook"
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=98715165356
Has a total of 9 members

Wrong. http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

Your account will be deleted within a few days and they'll follow up with an email asking if you don't mind sharing why you've decided to delete it.

I've done it (last year sometime); I recommend you do, too.

I did it with this.

What's funny is the delete form now says:

Deleting due to change in Terms of Service

Are you deleting because you are concerned about Facebook's Terms of Service?

This was a mistake that we have now corrected. You own the information you put on Facebook and you control what happens to it. We are sorry for the confusion.

- The Facebook Team

Here's a link to this group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=77069107432

In related news, I've also deleted my facebook

I hope you deleted it properly.

Mark Zuckerberg recognizes their TOS scared the pants off of people and posts this public reply: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=54434097130

By logging into Facebook to read the reply you signify that Mark can have your wife and sell your children.

Do you have a link to the 'skanky bikini amateurs' webpage?

Yes.

Facebook users should join this group to help spread the word: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=68090176688

A lot of people seem to think that you can not delete your account, only disable it. That's not true any more. http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

In my meme theory, a key indicator that meme growth is entering death phase is when politicians pick it up.

Cf. the macarena with the Clintons and now CA Attorney Gen (and candidate for governor) Jerry Brown w/ 25 things (his fb page)

I'll be the first to say that almost all facebook apps are pretty useless. Probably 95% are a twist on the ididotic "poke" concept.

[full disclosure: start shameless self-promotion]

That's why I built a decent facebook app. You can see it at http://apps.facebook.com/birthdayfund/ (or http://www.thebirthdayfund.com/).
Basically it just facilitates creating a birthday fund for yourself or for someone else, so instead of getting a few "meh" gifts, you can get whatever you really want. Everybody wins. :-)

Possibly like me or tons of slashdot readers you're a developer with big or cool ideas. Best of luck to you, and if you want to help someone out with theirs, please check out the app on facebook and let me know what you think.

Using the instructions here:

http://developers.facebook.com/get_started.php

Answer the phone. If its a telemarketer, or the dreaded 2 second pause while _they_ pick it up, just put the phone down and walk away. If everyone does this, each of us will get half as many calls, because each call will take twice as long. Telemarketing will be half as effective. Companies and organizations will stop using it. Join this group http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=59627788672 and report if anything interesting happens.

Because they didn't report it first either? The posting date on the article is from January 27. This topic was posted by the student teaching the decal on January 22, to a popular foreign (i.e. not Korean) starcraft website. Or you could just link to the facebook group, or the class website.

For a demo of OpenArena, see this video (no registration required).

Just another reason why everyone trying to hire new employees should post listings themselves on their social networking profiles!

When big companies screw up *this* much it opens up a lot of opportunity for alternatives.

(I'll have you know that my mother was one of them.) Ahh, precisely my point. No one with any talent would WANT to work in television! http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1015971480430&oid=13211036113

Ironically more people seem to get kicked off Facebook for posting breastfeeding photos of themselves than for posting lewd sexual photos.

That remains to be seen. Thus far what we have are promises, nothing more. If we should reserve judgment on the potential for disappointment, then we should refrain from claiming success as well.

Reserving judgement. What a great idea. Tell that to the people who started NOBAMA IN 12--how 'bout we let him at least be INAUGURATED before assuming that we don't want him running things?

Do you see OpenID anywhere on the front page to Facebook?

There's your problem, people don't know that OpenID even exists.

Before the election last year I wrote to the MPs who ran in my electorate and posted the replies in facebook group forum..

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=29834002818&topic=5497

Would be good to get some feedback from others.

I found a censoring application on Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/censorit

I guess nobody read the TOS.

Did you?

From the Facebook code of conduct:

Inappropriate Content

While we believe users should be able to express themselves and their point of view, certain kinds of speech simply do not belong in a community like Facebook. Therefore, you may not post or share Content that:

        * is obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit
        * depicts graphic or gratuitous violence
        * makes threats of any kind or that intimidates, harasses, or bullies anyone
        * is derogatory, demeaning, malicious, defamatory, abusive, offensive or hateful

So what is a woman nursing? Pornographic? Violent? Bullying? Malicious? Abusive?

I'm aware Facebook can remove content at their sole discretion, but nursing doesn't seem to be explicitly covered by their TOS.

What the average Slashdotter wants to know is: Is she hot ?

Here's some more Kates. Take your pick.

What the average Slashdotter wants to know is: Is she hot ?

You be the judge.

I thought court proceedings were public records -- why did it take a year for the transcript to be available?

1. The transcripts aren't free. I think this one cost around $2500.

2. For awhile the court reporter was on maternity leave. I don't know about other delays.

3. This was a gift from the Joel Fights Back" legal team. If they hadn't gotten me one, I don't know if I'd ever have seen it, because the RIAA lawyers do not have the courtesy to share transcripts with their adversaries.

Once upon a time the British learned first hand that Al burns...

Please, continue.
What did Al Burns do?

first, Dubai doesn't have that much oil. Not nearly as much as those crazy Canadians.

second, if the Netherlands wants a skating surface (I'll assume you meant rink) outside, it wouldn't take any electricity, unless they used electricity to clean the snow and smooth the surface. The Netherlands is quite far north you know. More north than all of the Great Lakes. (assuming a seasonal rink, which is only logical)

third, if the builders in Dubai pumped water through those pipes and then used that same water for things like showers or laundry (ie. things that _need_ hot water) you could have a net reduction in energy use.

In summary, don't panic, stop hating the places you don't know, don't panic.

--
Boring conference call? Try Fable Island

You know, a capitalist society would say, "let me pay for what I want to use", and a socialist society would say, "bill everyone the same and give everyone the same opportunity."

I'm surprised American's so dislike free play with micro-transactions and prefer to pay a large monthly fee.

You know, universal health care might work for you guys.

---
Boring conference call? Try Fable Island

It's pretty impressive that Facebook has been able to grow so quickly and handle so much traffic. Their down time has been pretty insignificant related to the sheer number of requests that blow through their servers every day.

There's probably a thing or two that can be learned from their developers and IT folks. I just wish I knew more about the whole underlying structure so I could appreciate exactly what they've done.

Well, call me cynical but the things that interest me about Facebook are what has gone wrong. Like hackers selling account details for pennies. This is the end result:

The scam works by a victim clicking on a spam link that appears to be coming from one of their Facebook friends or someone in their address book which lodges spyware in their machine. This then records all the information, including passwords, when they log in to various sites.

The passwords can then be sent on to money-laundering gangs who use them to infiltrate users' bank accounts.

While this is true of any other networking site, I think this severe security issue needs to be address successfully one of these days.

All I've seen Facebook do to remedy this is explain how to clean it off your computer.

I fear for the millions of homes where a kid logs onto Facebook, gets mail from Timmy. Clicks the link, finds nothing and leave. Mom and dad log into their online banking/credit card statement later that night and ... it's only a matter of time.

Assuming you're all in the same office...

One-on-one meetings in a comfortable and somewhat informal manner. Make it regular (twice a week or so?) and find some way to give them advanced notice indirectly, like doing it at the same time every week or passing by their office/cubes a few minutes before jumping in to ask for the informal report. If you startle them, leave and come back in a few minutes (really!). Their desks should be oriented in a manner that makes it hard to sneak up on them; if that's not the case, buy a mirror for their monitor.

Group meetings at a less often interval (weekly or every other week) where everybody talks about what they're doing, and you reveal the long-term strategies, etc. Doing this over a free lunch or end-of-day beers (5:30p is "beer thirty" on "frosty friday" or "thirsty thursday," etc.) is always a winner. You already know most of the answers, so this is actually all for their benefit; this is when you report to them and they report to each other. This helps emphasize the philosophy that when co-workers are all friends, more work gets done with less apparent effort.

Never criticize them for something you also fail at. Instead, announce that you're looking to improve that aspect in yourself and they'll get the message.

You read Slashdot, so you're probably very IT-savvy ... older software engineers are a bit removed from that, so be careful about introducing new services (e.g. software services for bug tracking, wiki, source control, project management, social networking). When you do such introductions, make sure they are walked through, and the installation process is trivialized (all the above examples are web-based to eliminate client-side installation).

Finally, pick up a book on agile development practice and consider migrating the team to a scrum cycle. Even if you decide it's not the right idea (or if you're already doing it), it will give you some management insight.

Not quite - it's on City Walk, by the fountain outside the Canberra Centre

Meh, get the girlfriends to come along too - it's not like this isn't attracting mainstream attention. The sign-up for the event on Facebook seems to be going reasonably well - here's the Melbourne one, and it's got links to the other capital cities' events too.

Why limit the action to open source software ?
Why not make viral license for patents
like the GPL for software.

This question did me and my friends discuss
a few days ago and we made a facebook group for the perpose.

join us at
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=39345211199

This is funny, only a few days ago I was talking about with some friends about the patent problem.

We got the idea that the solution was to make
public patents license which does for patent-rights as the gpl does for copyrights.

We made a facebook group to devlop our idea
you may join it if you like.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=39345211199

I think Canadians (and others) should get organized to get better prices through group buys, take on carriers, etc. Is there a site for this purpose? I have a facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=27303694525 but it only has 16 members.

Facebook group against this
Pledgebank ISP boycott
Wikinews story

The technical press are swarming. Dunno if the national press are too as yet.

The IWF apparently sought the advice of police before blocking. Now, the police in the UK are notorious for trying it on with censorship cases, so that doesn't mean the image is illegal.

The album was released in 1976; child porn was illegalised in the UK in 1978. If the album was distributed in the UK since 1978 with that cover, it's probably legal.

The album cover has been reprinted in many books. Most of those books are in the Briitsh Library. Are those now obscene?

Question for all: Has this precise image ever come to court? In the UK, in the world?

The IWF had it pointed out that they were censoring encyclopedia text, which was clearly not illegal. The IWF responded that they needed to block the page to block the image effectively. This is of course utterly ludicrous bollocks, but apparently that's the advice the IWF have received.

They were also asked if they'd be censoring Amazon as well. They said they'd have to get back on that one.

It's the clbuttic error, but this time on a top-10 site for everyone.

Disclaimer: I do press for Wikipedia/Wikimedia in the UK as a volunteer (and I've been on my email and phone all last night to about 2am and today since 9am). However, I am not a WMF employee and cannot legally claim to speak for them, only as a volunteer editor.

here's some updates, Donnie's postings to the article at chronicle.com:

Hey to all the haters -
You are all bigots! Until you know what it's like to suffer discrimination, you do not deserve to speak. White people get all of the best medical attention and certainly if there were a couple of dollars more to be spent on medicine that helps minorities, I won't lose sleep over it.
If you still want to debate what I have done, add me on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=90402020&v= ...

I have an essay to write and can't read this stuff anymore. -- Donnie Northrup Nov 26, 03:25 AM #


I took down my facebook to protect it from all the spam you have been sending me. This doesn't mean that I am afraid. I stand by my motion, because white people still get the vast majority of support from this, and I doubt that any money is being sent to the middle east or india.
Please take a minute (or several hours) to step outside your small conservative boxes and understand what racism is really like.

dnorthru@canada.com
-- Donnie Northrup Nov 26, 07:36 PM #


So as much as there are protests over what this meant, it shows that his words were not taken out of context.

My 1 year old daughter often tries to hit keys on my keyboard, so I grabbed an Apple //e that's already been through life in a US school and hooked it up to our TV. Then I threw together a progam that changes the screen colour and plays a sound every time she hits a key. This has been fine so far, as she randomly bashes keys, but likes the result.
Pic here.

I wouldn't worry about more detail than that until your child cares about the difference between pressing "A" or "B".

Cheers,
Nick.

Actually, it already has a "Dead" status.

http://www.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf
In the "Termination" section:
"When we are notified that a user has died, we will generally, but are not obligated to, keep the user's account active under a special memorialised status for a period of time determined by us to allow other users to post and view comments."

Dean Kamen has been presenting this thing for months now... I even got to sit in it at the FIRST Championship earlier this year. More. photos. here.
Aaaand obligatory photo of this poster driving it.

Dean Kamen has been presenting this thing for months now... I even got to sit in it at the FIRST Championship earlier this year. More. photos. here.
Aaaand obligatory photo of this poster driving it.

Dean Kamen has been presenting this thing for months now... I even got to sit in it at the FIRST Championship earlier this year. More. photos. here.
Aaaand obligatory photo of this poster driving it.

There is a growing but now well-established community of techies focusing on this at the federal level, especially for the U.S. Congress. There are open-source projects like my GovTrack.us http://www.govtrack.us/getinvolved.xpd and oGosh!: Open Government Open Source Hacking http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php/OGosh and on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=45606565313.

There's no end to what techies can do to work on improving civic life. I really encourage you to check out any of those links to get involved.

Put an end to DRM FB group!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2207668375&ref=ts

I wish you were correct, but:
http://www.facebook.com/
Appears to indicate the opposite...

And since Ms. Ileana Buhan is on Facebook, we have her photo along with her friends...say 'cheese!'

You're exactly right. I often have people ask me why I don't post all of the pics I post to my personal website on myspace or facebook. My short answer is - I *pay* for jcrouse.com, the hosting of my data, etc. and it is [essentially] my little spot on the `net. When I put it on Faceboook, there is an always changing EULA and the fact that I have no control over their servers, their policies, or *anything* that they do with my data. I don't even know if I even 'own' the pictures I post on those websites anymore. Since I make the EULA on what is posted on my website, I have a better feeling I own them.

This of course is not withstanding the EULA I have with my hosting provider. I know some, like godaddy have some weird things going on, and I am not trying to get into that discussion with this post (I don't use godaddy for that specific reason) - my point is, posting your [presumably] valuable information on something like Yahoo or Facebook could be problematic. You *don't* own the domain, you *don't* pay for the server space. You have no recourse if they delete, modify, censor, or otherwise (in your mind) misuse your data.

Sheik Tantawi

Oh, right. Let me quote something:

"To Shaykh Tantawi, a Muslim who renounced his faith or turned apostate should be left alone as long as he does not pose a threat or belittle Islam. If the Muslims were forced to take action against the apostate, he said it should NOT be because he or she had given up the faith but because he or she had turned out to be an enemy or a threat to Islam."

Very liberal-minded, indeed: he only wants to execute those dissenters who are vocal about their dissent.

Adultery is not a punishable? I'd dare you to find one RELIGION where that's not punishable (and no, Hedonism doesn't count).

Let me clarify here: I meant criminal, and punishable by corporal punishment (up to death), not by some ethereal Hell in the afterlife. I can live with the latter.

Sayyid al-Qimni ... aren't considered apostate by most other Muslims.

"When Mahmoud asked al-Qimni whether he faced any physical or verbal attack by the radical Islamists, he replied, 'Ideologically and physically...'". A pretty long list of incidents follows. I have also found quite a few notes to the effect that the guy is borderline apostate, and the only reason he's not yet officially one is because he chooses his words very carefully.