Slashdot Mirror

This is a bit over the top. On Facebook, for example, you can restrict practically any information you put into it. Now, Facebook themselves could technically do what they wanted with it, but if you're worried about the information getting out to the internet as a whole, you just go into your preferences and tell it what to make public, friends-only, completely private, or what-have-you, and they'll restrict it as appropriate. Just because most people don't enable this restriction doesn't mean it's not there.

If you're worried about Facebook selling your information to other entities, etc., take a look at Facebook's privacy policy, which states pretty clearly what they will and will not do with your information.

I have a feeling, though, that you've already made your decision and just want to hear from others who feel as you do.

He's there, you just have to use the Search feature.

We've got a list-in-progress of politicians pages here on our wiki ... other links (and formatting cleanup) greatly appreciated.

jon

Beer and mead and cider are so fun to make.

Beer and mead and cider are so fun to make.

Beer and mead and cider are so fun to make.

OT, but I was wondering if you had a source on the facebook chat XMPP thing or if it was just a rumor.

Yes — I originally read about it in the Wikipedia article; it cited a facebook developers blog post as the source.

It failed for me, so I tested it and took a screen shot, and posted that to Facebook:

http://photos-320.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sf2p/v336/183/39/578793320/n578793320_854188_1264.jpg

You can write "bugmenot dot com" to bypass the protection, it works, I just tried. Or you can also link to the Slashdot article, like this:
http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/05/1741207

In the chatrooms of Suomi24, a Finnish site, they prevent hotmail.com addresses to be posted but no other mail service. In OkCupid their censorship is rather humorous, the only word not allowed in their IM is "Michael Jackson".

Really? I tried "bugmenot.com" as my status just before typing that comment, refused...

Warning: This Message Contains Blocked Content
Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users.

However, that is for http://www.new.facebook.com/ but switching to the old one, does allow you to use it, but as anyone who has a Facebook profile should have noticed (if they are using the old one) it has a Notice at the top, saying that it will be manditorily switched to the new one "soon"

New Facebook will soon be the only Facebook
Soon, we'll be switching Facebook over to its new design. You can see it ahead of time.

there is no reason why they cannot do this. it is their website, their policy.

Certainly true. However, there's no reason everybody shouldn't be mad at them for an abusive and manipulative policy like this.

Facebook has a feedback/suggestions form:

http://www.facebook.com/help.php?suggest

I just sent 'em the following message:

"Is the recent story on Slashdot true?

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/05/1741207

The idea that facebook might redact or transform communications I send to my friends is pretty maddening, and certainly provides an incentive against using it for messages."

From your 'blog':

"... it's appalling for Facebook to block anyone from even mentioning the site -- it's plain and simple censorship, and it's unacceptable!"?

Why is it 'appalling' and 'unacceptable'? You do not own Facebook, and when you created an account, you pretty much waived your rights. If I recall correctly, Facebook is still a privately-owned company. They can block whatever they want, whenever they want, for as long as they want.

If you don't like this policy, familiarize yourself with the Terms of Service before you sign up to similar services.

You're always free to build your own alternative to Facebook; until then, you want to play in their playground, you play by their rules.

I'm not too sure it is censored it is my status right now http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=651175262&hiq=isfeld%2Cstill&refurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Fref%3Dsearch%26init%3Dq%26q%3Disfeld%2Bstill

I just fired up vanilla versions of both IE8, Chrome, and Process Explorer and opened the same two tabs: the Facebook login page and Wikipedia (English).

Process Explorer tells me IE8 is using 389652 KB of memory. Chrome is using 260668 KB of memory. Both have three processing running.

Ouch! That's what Opera uses with about 80 tabs open (after a fresh start, admittedly). Firefox usually gets there around 30 tabs (probably more with FF3). This kind of memory usage for only two tabs is pretty extreme.

Now I upped the ante to 9 tabs, which for brevity, I won't list. IE8 with 6 processes was using 958524 KB and Chrome with 11 processes was using 783840 KB.

9 tabs and you risk running out of system memory? I was hoping Chrome would be a good heavy-duty browser like Opera, and possibly a fine successor, but these numbers suggest they have quite a bit of work to do.

IE8 even moreso ofcourse, but I don't think anyone is surprised by that.

I guess I'll stick to Opera and Firefox for now.

My first question is what web pages define their average? I just fired up vanilla versions of both IE8, Chrome, and Process Explorer and opened the same two tabs: the Facebook login page and Wikipedia (English).

Process Explorer tells me IE8 is using 389652 KB of memory. Chrome is using 260668 KB of memory. Both have three processing running.

What the heck, I'll try again. I fully restart both browsers and open up Slashdot and Newgrounds. IE8 with three processes, 465348 KB; Chrome with four processes, 358128 KB.

Now I upped the ante to 9 tabs, which for brevity, I won't list. IE8 with 6 processes was using 958524 KB and Chrome with 11 processes was using 783840 KB.

Admittedly, this is a small test to find an average, but what do I need to do to see the difference TFS[ummary] speaks of?

Thanks. Wait, tribbles have tags?

Why yes. If you look closely at the footage from TOS, the tags could be there :-). To quote a brilliant parody: "Merchandising! It's where the real money from the movie is made!"

Really, though, it was cute to see little colonies of tribbles hidden in corners throughout the set and the store. It was a little crass that both the "experiences" exited in the gift shop.

Rabid fans will be glad to hear the next movie opens May 8, 2009 and lots of spoilers are available here.

If you're a student, figure out whether your vote matters more in your home state or your college state:

http://apps.facebook.com/becounted/

(They've made it easy.)

They roll out Tiny Adventures for Facebook (which is still having some issues it seems) then drop their social site. I wonder if this is part of a plan to focus on "apps" or ways of connecting to the already established bases of MySpace/Facebook?

1) I'm sure more than a few D&D/P&P RPG fans are on those sites already.
2) More visibility. Running your own site dedicated to just RPGs will only attract a certain crowd.

Regarding #2, I'm slightly above "casual" P&P RPG follower, but I hadn't really even heard of their site until this /. posting.

http://www.facebook.com/s.php?k=100000080&id=760575156 Hah!

One thing you forgot is that the middle tile needs to be a double word score. Went ahead and fixed that: http://apps.new.facebook.com/wordscraper/?action=newgame&similarto=56609

I've just recreated the Scrabble layout. You can play a original Scrabble game on facebook by clicking this link:

http://apps.facebook.com/wordscraper/?action=newgame&similarto=54248

I know I'd rather play a real Scrabble layout on Wordscraper than to use anything else. Enjoy.

I've created a "Boycott Hasbro's Scrabble Facebook App" group:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=28435882177

They actually made an excellent version of Chess called Chess Pro. It has a very similar interface to Scrabulous. http://www.new.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=7908576820

bawwwww my expensive toy doesn't work like it said it would now i have to drive my H3 to buy cory doctorow books
why won't someone suck me off because i'm bored since 4chan went away
#
AND THE MAN OF THE HOUR, PACIFICO:
#

#
  - [pacifico] is connecting from straightskid@75.182.72.65 75.182.72.65
#

#
  - POSSIBLE DOX:
#
  - Name: Joe Biaso
#
  - joe.biaso@gmail.com email
#
  - http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/s.php?ref=search&init=q&q=joe%20biaso
#
  - http://talk.hope.net/profile.php?id=666
#
  - http://www.criticalsecurity.net/index.php?showuser=1681
#
  - Areas Of Expertise:
#
  - > PHP, Linux
#
  - Resume:
#
  - > Joseph Biaso, aged 21, Chapel Hill, NC.
#
  - > I have worked at several local corporations doing IT work,
#
  - (mostly system administration and web design), however do many over-the-air freelance jobs, as well as donations for other sites.
#
  - > I am advanced in PHP, perl, and other knowledge. I can understand the inner workings and make something that would normally not
#
              work, do just that (work) under whatever circumstances. I'm not NEW to rentacoder, but am finally looking to get serious with it.

It's probably too late, but if they had some other apps that weren't infringing on Scrabble then they could perhaps walk with that. If Facebook takes down their app they lose all that traffic and ad revenue. It seems mad to have not tried to get their 500k daily users to adopt some other apps too. This was clearly going to happen one day. Scrabulous has the online traction that Hasbro will find very hard to catch in any way other than legally. Commenting as an independent board game publisher ( http://www.gifttrap.com/ ) it seems to make sense that they should broaden their offering to reduce their risk, We'd created a Facebook app in the vein of Free Gifts to help us promote our game which is about exchanging the right virtual gift. It's like Secret Santa but as a board game. Take a look at our app if you are interested http://apps.new.facebook.com/gifttrap/ Our game preceded the whole virtual gift thing, but it's all about being in the right format at the right time. We've just viewed Free Gifts et al as a great vehicle to promote the concept of "Virtual Gifts" (Unlike the Free Gifts app your friend gets to choose their own gift, the question is will you match. We have turned virtual gifts into a game.) Hasbro should view Scrabulous as a great vehicle to promote scrabble, but they they have prove their manhood. On a more serious note our board game got copied by Mega Brands with another game about exchanging gifts. It looks like we won that war simply because we had to greater momentum and an original design. If Lego didn't beat Mega Brands I didn't fancy my chances.

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Vastly? Facebook has 80 million active users.

The summary is wrong, but let's not compound the issue with more incorrect information.

What would they think?

Seriously? I just checked both sites, and they look kind of similar, but not much. They're not even the same color, or the same language. I seriously doubt anybody would confuse the two.

http://www.studivz.net/
http://www.facebook.com/

It's not about getting the two confused, it is about stealing their code.

Rumors say that the bunch of students that founded studivz payed some ukrainian it-students to crack facebook to steal the code. And after studivz took of they sold it to the Holtzbrinck publishing company for 50 million Euros. :D

Actually, according to their terms of use: http://www.facebook.com/terms.php/

32665, FACEBOOK, THE FACEBOOK, FACEBOOKHIGH, FBOOK, POKE, THE WALL and other Company graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts and service names are registered trademarks, trademarks or trade dress of Company in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Nothing about trademarked fonts or layouts.

Seriously? I just checked both sites, and they look kind of similar, but not much. They're not even the same color, or the same language. I seriously doubt anybody would confuse the two.

http://www.studivz.net/
http://www.facebook.com/

>CFLs don't flicker...

CFLs cause me migraines and other visual problems. I recently changed all my home lighting, where possible, to CFLs.

After a week, I began suffering from an extreme migraine. As the CFL's made it difficult for me to read or focus on small objects - I instantly held them suspect. To test my theory, I changed all the lighting back, and by the next day my life had certainly improved.

I gave it a month and tried the CFL's again, and again after a week a migraine set in. I intend to remove them tomorrow. My girlfriend (as in a living 3D female human-being) who doesn't normally suffer from migraines has been complaining of symptoms while I had the CFLs in.

I think CFLs definitely have a use but not as a be all and end all of general home lighting. The most pleasant affordable technology for me is halogen lighting. I am looking forward to what LED and OLED technology has to offer in the near future.

--
Deceive the rich and powerful if you will, but don't insult them.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703

Until someone misconfigures an addon

I though FB app devs had full access to all your data, regardless of your privacy settings. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems the only thing "protecting" you is Facebook's developer TOS.

Facebook is currently affiliated with the following sites:

        * Art.com
        * Blockbuster
        * Bluefly
        * CBS Interactive
        * eBay
        * ExpoTV
        * Fandango
        * Gamefly.com
        * Kiva, Kongregate
        * LiveNation
        * Mercantila
        * NY Times
        * Overstock.com
        * Redlight Mgmt
        * Seamless Web
        * Six Apart
        * STA Travel
        * TheKnot
        * Travelocity
        * Viagogo

http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=57

The first bloody Google result |: |

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=facebook-affiliated+sites&spell=1

There is a group on facebook to lobby Senator Obama and follow-up groups to lobby every Senator individually:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17961184023

Groups for Minnesota Senators Klobuchar and Coleman:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17065979228

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18283117073

There is a group on facebook to lobby Senator Obama and follow-up groups to lobby every Senator individually:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17961184023

Groups for Minnesota Senators Klobuchar and Coleman:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17065979228

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18283117073

There is a group on facebook to lobby Senator Obama and follow-up groups to lobby every Senator individually:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17961184023

Groups for Minnesota Senators Klobuchar and Coleman:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17065979228

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18283117073

There's a lot more information about the Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right my.barackobama.com campaign on the Get FISA right wiki. Check it out, and please join the group! Mike Stark's Will Obama feel the sting of social networking? on OpenLeft gives some great context on the campaign. And there's a Facebook group too. Are we web 2.0 or what?

If you used the service, you'd know that Facebook privacy settings are actually implemented very well. For example, I set up an account for my mother so she can look at all her siblings photos.

I started to use Facebook, and it seemed to be quite a good way to share things.

Then I read this bit of their terms of use :

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

I don't use Facebook any more.

Lets see, my ISP offers 'free' email, pop3, imap, and webmail access. They offer 'free' access to a reasonable number of usenet groups, and offer a small and fairly limited but entirely usable web hosting package, with tools to make it easy to setup multiple small websites, upload and share photos, and so on.

Is it really 'free'? Of course not, its bundled in with my internet access so I'm paying for it.

Yeah my ISP provides all those things too. All the ISPs I've used have. My hosting provider provides them too. I get these services as part of a bundle I pay for. Well, two bundles, since the web hosting package offered by my ISP does not fulfill my needs.

But you know what? I don't use them. I haven't used my ISP's mail since I lived on campus back in college. Before I got there, I did not use my dialup ISP's email service. Two reasons: a) email address lock-in; b) the interface sucks.

Nowadays I've solved the lock-in problem by paying for a domain and the sucky interface problem by having my MX records send all mail to a gmail account, The free-to-join, invasive, ad-supported gmail service works way better than any webmail, IMAP, or POP3 client I've found.

Sounds a lot like email, and that's worked out just fine. Lots of people using it. In fact, I can send messages to...

True. And I use email as a default medium for communication too. I've sent maybe 5 messages with Facebook's message service - to people for whom I don't have email addresses. I've had one IM conversation with Facebook's IM interface - with someone whose IM ID I don't know.

I'm arguing against accepting facebook lock-in, becoming a product, and selling your information in exchange for a features.

Lock-in? Hardly. I'm also on MySpace. I also use email. I also use IM -- Pidgin, so I don't get locked in to a specific IM service. I also use usenet, web forums, feedback forms, web chat, on and on. Different tools for different tasks. Facebook excels at the task of clustering my friends and exposing information about them.

My information costs me nothing to give away. My money costs me money to give away. I'd rather pay for services using a currency that copies on write than one with a 1:1 opportunity cost. Not that I share everything, obviously. Some information will cost to give away - my SSN for example. But most everything about me - my relationship status, my mood, my hobbies - I gain value by giving this information freely.

Its a fallacy that the only way we can have services like social networking or instant messaging is via accepting ridiculous lock-in, and closed standards.

IM is a service that started with ridiculous lock-in and closed standards. I still used it then. Eventually a service will arise to tie together your Facebook and Myspace networks just like Trillian or Pidgin did for IM.

Also, what closed standards?

Get the Big Photo application.

It's not ideal, but it works quite well. A friend of mine is a professional photographer and she puts all her work up there. Works well for her.

This stuff is cool either way, even if it is just "childish spam." Many of us only dream to work on something that will become this large scale.

Facebook started off (stolen idea or not) as a site with some php and a database. In the early years there were no applications or photos. They've managed to scale PHP beyond what most slashdotters will say PHP can even do. They've even contributed some of their stuff back to the PHP community.

Look at some other similar 'home grown' sites that have had to quickly scale and invent stuff just to stay a float.
Archive.org has their pentabox
Google has their Google File System and all of their own hard ware design.

Hopefully the site will recover. 540TB of data and 500k images per second while at the same time being able to process photos near instantly in the background to 4-5 different sizes is nothing to ignore. Fortune 500 companies could probably learn a thing or two...

Well I guess it helps the storage problem by disabling the ability to add photos to groups, which seems to have occurred in the last few days... (for a few people at least)

I know /.'ers don't admit to having facebook accounts, but a link in case any lurker wants to see the comments about this
issue.

I've had no end of trouble with MySpace. I'm not able to prevent my music from playing when you load my page, even though that's how I set it in my profile. I've always allowed downloads of my MP3s, but at some point they stopped being downloadable. I had to delete them all and re-upload them to get the downloads back.

I have actually found MySpace pages that had been customized in such a way as to make FireFox crash just by loading the page!

My only complaint about FaceBook is that it doesn't allow for downloading MP3s - but that's a lack of a desired feature, and not an actual bug.

Most young people these days are trying out both. I don't think it takes much time for them all to figure out which one is better.

I made a Facebook group for you:

Leave Facebook when One Million People Join This Group

Really? Personally, I find that kinda hard to believe, ya know?

What's next, using MySpace and LinkedIn to promote political campaigns?

Sent: Sunday, 15 June 2008 4:49 PM
To: Dean Collins;
Subject: Re: And so now it begins......

What motivation would they have to do that? Just dumb or nefarious in this instance?
----

Andrew Cuomo - gets press, and to be seen to be doing something, (probably being advised by people who have 'ulterior motives' and he's too stupid to know the difference).

Verizon - heaps of reasons; far too many - but here's my interpretation.

Usenet is an ancient 'spooky' space on the internet that no one but geeks and porn swapping perverts visit, by blocking 99.7% of UseNet's under the guise of getting rid of kiddy porn Verizon are able to establish a precedent that 'managing' internet access for the betterment of society is a good thing.

The thin edge of the wedge has been struck.

After that it's easy to start blocking off entire country domains, I mean no one has any good reason for reading blogs in Iran correct?

Ok now lets move to something that some people will care about but with 2 sets of prior acts Verizon will be covered. Lets block all P2P traffic, I mean P2P is only used by people swapping pirated music and video's - yes some 5% of the population may complain but most of them will be kids and not voters so we should be able to cover any publicity backlash. ....now lets move onto the juicy bits. - That pesky Vonage traffic is travelling over our users networks and Verizon don't make any money form this, lets start blocking that traffic. ....You like watching video's from Netflix using their Roku internet set-top box, cool we'll just have to charge you for this. .....Listening to a radio station that isn't in the Time Warner 'family', sorry this is tier 2 internet class traffic so the audio might be a little jittery from time to time, sorry about that.....

If you want to hear from people who are far better at explaining this check out http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/net-neutrality.html

Like I said it all started with some dumb politician who had probably never used Newsgroups before and had some carrier stooge whisper something into his ear about 'think of the children'......the rest is history.

As a society we should be strong enough to accept that any technology solution to a society problem will never work and any politicians who suggest otherwise are either too dumb to be making that decision (e.g. swallowed a story from a lobbyist) or is acting in coercion.

But what do I know, I'm just a disgruntled geek.

Cheers,
Dean

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22212833295

This Facebook group is to provide a resource for the debate about "The great 'Firewall of Cuomo'

Imagine if you went into work on Monday and only 8 out of every 1000 websites you saved in your browsers favorites folder was deemed 'cuomo' friendly?

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22212833295

This Facebook group is to provide a resource for the debate about "The great 'Firewall of Cuomo'

Imagine if you went into work on monday and only 8 out of every 1000 websites you saved in your browsers favourites folder was deemed 'cuomo' friendly?

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22212833295

http://photos-252.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sf2p/v123/82/89/51804252/n51804252_31773826_2085.jpg

I got you beat, 4.7 L Magnum V8, Full Red/White lightbar with amber traffic arrow in the back, 100W PA/Siren, and a 45 Watt VHF Radio.

I also get to play super hero several times a week. You need to join your local volunteer fire department.