Slashdot Mirror
Man Claims 84% of Facebook, Gets Order Blocking Assets
Cyrus writes "According to a Bloomberg scoop, a New York man claiming to own a majority of Facebook has gotten a signed court order to block Facebook from transferring assets."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Under Paragraph 3 of the contract, the Seller and Purchaser agreed that for each day after January 1, 2004, the Purchaser would acquire an additional 1% interest in the business, per day, until the website was completed ... Upon information and belief, the website, thefacebook.com, was
completed and operational on February 4th, 2004.
Zuckerberg appears to be the Seller and Ceglia appears to be the Purchaser. I know this all happened before "thefacebook.com" had a massive user base but from what I can tell Ceglia dropped a grand to Zuckerberg under some agreement that if the website wasn't finished on a certain date then Ceglia would accrue a point of that business per late day? Is that a standard clause or was this some sort of loan shark that the Z-man found on campus after he stole the ConnectU code?
And then, Ceglia waited past the six year mark for the statute of limitations to run out on a breach of contract in New York? He watched Facebook's rise to popularity past MySpace?
Seriously, what kind of contracts do fledgling websites write? And where do they find people to borrow money from that apparently live under a rock in the Appalachians of New York state? Sure is entertaining one way or the other.
My work here is dung.
His facebook account is so canceled! But I bet he could do commercials for MySpace. "I designed the look and feel of facebook, but now I use MySpace."
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Please win. Please win. Please win.
He owns Faceboo
given the "issues" Z-man has, one may wonder how many of these skeletons are in his closet? A bent sapling never grows straight.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
Please win. Please win. Please win.
While I can't be bothered to consult The Google on this, methinks he just felt it was an opportune time to make a move on all those UNITED STATES DOLLARS he's been smelling. Granted it may not be the most profitable company as of yet, that's not to say they don't have what he considers a good plan in place now. But w/e just a web site for Christ's sake.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
How are they going to win? This is a pretty clear cut case of the statute of limitations barring such a lawsuit.
This contract does seem kind of shady and plus sounds like a college made deal its probably written in pencil on scrap paper from an old algebra test. That's not a joke when I went to college two CS majors did that for a contract. I seriously dough this will stand up in court Facebook is not going to change hands.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
I was kidding. But one can only hope something shuts down that huge pile of crap.
Regardless of whether or not the guy wins some money in the lawsuit, nothing will change. Zuckerberg might be slightly less rich. But he will still be rich, and an asshole. Facebook will still suck.
My other sig is clever.
The story gets even jucier:
In 2009, New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo obtained a restraining order against Allegany Pellets, a western New York wood pellet company owned by Ceglia and his wife Iasia. Cuomo accused the company of defrauding consumers by taking $200,000 in orders but not delivering any products or issuing any refunds. That case is reportedly ongoing.
An odd detail is that 84% number is said to be as of 2004. Why 2004?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Don't be bitter just because you don't have enough friends to play Farmville.
yes, there is no bigger pile of crap then a social media site that has made it easy for me to get in touch with family and friends, stay up to date in their lives.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
see this article in cnet news. At the bottom a flash window has all the pages of the suit and the contract in the appendix. According to the contract the 50% ownership is unambiguous. it's the primary compensation and it is listed right up front. Also they show other documents indicating that the name changes were registered as ficticious (placeholder) names in NY. It's going to be interesting....
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I like that pile of crap. It allowed me to relocate and connect with old high school and college classmates. I also learned about the reunion through facebook
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
How are they going to win? This is a pretty clear cut case of the statute of limitations barring such a lawsuit.
Statue of limitations. English--learn it!
This could be a good thing for Facebook.
I hate to put it this superficially, but about 60% of the trouble is in can be traced back to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's immaturity with handling people. If someone does indeed own 84% of Facebook they could simply order him to stop making public statements.
In fact, he could take it a step further and put out spin how FB is under new derangement, with new policies and better tech coming down the road.
Before we get excited at the prospect of this guy winning against Facebook, it's worth reminding ourselves that Zuckerberg - founder/owner of Facebook - is heavily ingratiated with a number of high profile political figures.
An example would be a video chat he held with UK Prime Minister David Cameron just a few days ago, the courteousness all too apparant. I can't remember a firm being seriously damaged through the legal system so soon after establishing itself as a ubiquitous and accepted tool by the establishment. The hoohah over the panic button they're now putting in to 'protect the children' is proof that Zuckerberg's cavalier attitude towards privacy will stand, and that we can expect more of the same from Facebook in coming years.
The most feasible way for Facebook to become less influential would not be financial woes through lawsuits...it would have to be another exodus of the same flavour that led to Myspace's relatively irrelevant/musically inclined position. But pride does come before a fall though, and arrogance is certainly something young Zuck isn't short of.
Though you may not like it, I rather like having a readily assessable self-maintaining address book (phone and e-mail anyway) of my friends and family, including nieces, nephews, and cousins when they age and move out from home.
Having a readily assessable place to store photo albums and send links to family is nice too. My Grandmother had to spend 6 months in Europe and I was able to send links to albums with captions of my trip to Alaska. Both she and I enjoyed this.
I don't know how one can use e-mail and slashdot, but think facebook is a scourge to the internet.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Statue of limitations. English--learn it!
If you insist on correcting someone's spelling, you had better make sure you're right.
It was correctly spelt as statute.
No matter how big an jerk you may think Zuckerberg is, and no matter how bad you may think Facebook is, it is practically always possible to get worse.
Not knowing anything that I didn't learn in the last 5 minutes, upon seeing this article, this Ceglia guy certainly has a running start on both. The enemy of your enemy may not be your friend - just a different enemy.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Bojangler likes this
I don't know how one can use e-mail and slashdot, but think facebook is a scourge to the internet.
Cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy come to mind.
A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs a state, city, or county...
$ unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
I have family on different continents and never saw the need of using Facebook to connect with them or stay in touch. Email/phone/IM is way better. As for friends/family around me, I usually get together with them quite a few times each year, again, phone/email/IM is there too. I don't see the need for Facebook to connect with people I care about. For people I don't care about, even when they added me on Facebook I simply put them in a limited user profile group and they didn't see jack. I guess I am too anti-social to understand why people use Facebook, I did use it a bit though, but realized that the stuff I wanted to communicate with them, I already did with IMs, emails or simple phone calls, or better in person. The way I see it, if I really care about a person, I will make sure to stay in touch and no need to re-connect.
A personal IM, email or phone call IMO is way better to communicate with friends/family than posting some crap on Facebook your friends can see, it's more personal, private and puts emphasis on that person to tell this person: you are important to me. Facebook removes this facet of personal communication.
No... Statute is right. Look it up. ... Oh, no, nevermind. Can't trust you to do that yourself. Let me do it FOR YOU.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/statute
And, for the follow up.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/statute+of+limitations
Yeah, I learned about my last reunion on Facebook too. Ever since then, they've made it a policy never to announce reunions on Facebook.
I first need to move my crop of tomatos to an other games network.
And did i mention i just got a orange cow?
stay up to date in their lives.
Your brother has found a pig in Generic Farmville Clone. Do you want to help him feed it? Click here.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
...but it's a legally binding bar napkin!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
a social media site that has made it easy for me to get in touch with family and friends,
You're just being lazy. Admit it.
I was kidding. But one can only hope something shuts down that huge pile of crap.
A proposed settlement.
I don't have many friends who play farmville. And those that do know not to send me that crap :)
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
I don't know how one can use e-mail and slashdot, but think facebook is a scourge to the internet.
I sometimes see email addresses, but I don't see a commercial 'email logo' stuck all over crap everywhere in life. There's a 'See us in Facebook' sticker on the glass door of 'Fashion Bug' which is essentially a strip-mall women's clothing store. The marketing of Facebook has gotten out of hand and is repulsing.
If I started seeing the Slashdot Log stuck all over Radio Shack, I'd probably feel the same way about Slashdot. If all the casual iPod games I download and play for a little while pushed 'Post about your success on Slashdot' I'd feel the same.
Fuck you, Zuck.
statue of limitations?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
please substitute "Slashdot logo" for 'Slashdot Log' in above.
The order baring transfer of assets was only good until July 9th, it is now July 13th. So what happened?
No offense, but 10 years ago, everything you wrote was being said about instant messaging, and before that, about email. [Citation needed], but I wouldn't be surprised if the same applied to telephones. So while I actually agree that Facebook is pretty grating and annoying, the arguments above are just the new "Get off my lawn".
t allowed me to relocate and connect with old high school and college classmates. I also learned about the reunion through facebook
Come on, this is Slashdot - you only found out about the reunion because you were stalking your old high school and college "classmates" (tellingly, you didn't call them friends).
(Only joking - although my wife was stalked by an ex-boyfriend via a social networking website. He even found her address through another site that sells access to things like the electoral register, and then turned up one night on her doorstep).
I can only speak for myself, of course, but I guess a lot of people who want this to happen (I am one of them) does so because of Zuckerberg rather than Facebook. Humans are naturally drawn towards justice and fairness, and see Zuckerberg as a person who denigrates his customers, abuses their privacy and takes advantage of their personal data - and always, ALWAYS pushes the boundaries of what Facebook is allowe3d to do and only retreats after a big community backlash. And so, people feel Zuckerberg does not deserve the fortune he has.
Facebook could, otherwise, be a useful and safe tool, in the hands of an ethical leadership.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Maybe you shouldn't use Facebook then, and let the millions of other people who actually do enjoy using it, use it.
I do hope you're trying to be funny. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_limitations Statute as in law, not statue as in carved three-dimensional art.
I keep trying to click the link but it doesn't appear to be working.
I disagree. But then I have to add, I deleted my Facebook profile. My problem is my family and friends are ALL in other countries, and most are in timezones where I cannot call them easily. When we want to send personal messages, e-mail sure is what we use. But Facebook is perfect for posting updates and photos of our 1 year old daughter for family (and some friends) back home to see.
Also I do appreciate (even the impersonal) updates... makes me feel like I'm still home.
I've blanked-blocked almost all applications a long long time ago anyway, so I've never seen these "Farmville" updates people speak of.
My wife will keep her profile and do these updates, but I personally don't like Facebook's policies.
It says the hearing was scheduled for july 9, what was the outcome?
stuff |
Hey glad something works for you, guess you're not everyone!
I was kidding. But one can only hope something shuts down that huge pile of crap.
So I take it anything you don't like is a huge pile of crap? If you don't like it then don't go to the site. As simple as that.
There are many things about FB I don't like however I have got back in touch with many friends from high school and also enjoy keeping up with distant family seeing as I live several states away from them.
This is a far out suggestion. But the autumn a movie about Facebook's rise called The Social Network is coming out. Its supposed to talk about Zuckerbergs's naughty habits, if anyone cares.
While you may feel that way, he did put in work to get the site popular, and convenient. Sure people are upset about the privacy, but the whole point of the site was in fact to gather data on other people. A lot of people just don't get that - of course he wants to invade your privacy, he wants more data to mine and sell! It's a business, just because people don't pay to make an account and login doesn't mean Facebook is not allow to make money, they have to just too, just keep the service running and the employees paid. And frankly, before the privacy debacle, anyone was on there was a google search away from finding out whatever dirt they themselves posted on that site. I think people are getting bent about it because they feel violated that someone has access to data that they themselves and their buddies dumped on the website. To be upset that someone put in some hard work to be successful with a social web project from the get go that was (and still is!) about data mining, is very much like crying over spilled milk. Get over it.
More annoying to me (and more relevant to Slashdot) are sites that support Facebook Connect, but not OpenID.
This made me giggle, you win :)
For best results, avoid doing stupid things.
If you could toss Zynga on to that fire, I'd really appreciate it.
You've got to use stalkers.
"It would be really... neat if the lawn got mowed."
"I think the paint is flaking off the side of the house. I think this colour would look really hot, don't you?"
THEN you get a restraining order.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I was kidding. But one can only hope something shuts down that huge pile of crap.
Says the person with a twitter signature?
Don't worry. Zygna is baling-wired to Facebook.
Thank goodness baling wire will hold up to fire, too.
Yes.
Now,
You. My Lawn. Get off it.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
At least in Farmville you can actually have a virtual lawn where your avatar can stand and shake his fist at the kids.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Also I do appreciate (even the impersonal) updates... makes me feel like I'm still home.
Agreed, it may not be quality conversation, but it's nice to know when they're doing well, or if they're unhappy. If all is well, fine, if something is wrong, I can phone/etc
I deleted my facebook profile and all my friends and family declared me dead and tryed to sell off all my shit. I really didn't get annoying though until they tried to bury my ass.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
If only it had been marketed that way! "Hey, folks, c'mon down and gimme all your personal information!"
No, I'm afraid FBook's market draw has been the tasty worm with a well-hidden hook. Yes, it's in the T's and C's, but the rage is about the fineness of the print that the hook is printed in. Sure, caveat emptor and all, but if you become wildly popular and obscenely rich borderline-lying about your product, don't expect to be widely admired and greatly beloved.
As to getting over it... I have no stake in this at all, since I consider all online social networking as different varieties of snake oil, and recognized the Devil's bargain from the outset, but again, just because I have the sense to not fall afoul of hucksters and con-men, doesn't mean I have to stand silent while they work. There's an amazingly fine line between "getting over it" and "aiding and abetting".
It's going to look like a bit of an overstatement, but "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Even if, as in the case of Facebook, it's a trivial evil in the cosmic scheme of things. Evil is still evil, for all its venality or narrowness.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I don't see a Nazi reference in his post...
Humans are naturally drawn towards justice and fairness,
When did that come about? Humans in general are more True Neutral than Lawful Good.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
Holy shit it's a website where people can talk to each other stop being so melodramatic about it
I'm glad empty cynicism and apathy are working out so well for you. Keep up the good work.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
But don't you see? I have anecdotal evidence that in my experience, I didn't need Facebook to do this, so you don't either!
Why? Most people websites cater to will have a Facebook account, and if your users have Facebook accounts, sites can push their content to the FB users' friends. OpenID is great, but apart from being a mechanism to authenticate yourself, they are completely different.
yeah seriously, how are people at work supposed to hook up? They can't email each other, because their "special someone" checks ze mail. They can't call or txt each other, because the same person checks that too! It's only via the top secrete profile that they are able to exchange secretes like russian spies!
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
Google will make sure that Zynga stays.
Best "String" Ever!
Yes, I know.
The problem is that tommorow, one of your friends will be playing Other Generic Farmville Clone, and next week, five of them will start five other games, and the week after, twenty other friends will find something to play and...
I don't know about you, but I have better things to spend my time on than updating ignore lists.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
A lot of people at my job site play this game. They have given up trying to hide it. They take "calls" while they play it and switch between screens... a little off topic but how can they switch between a command prompt style system and farmville but have no clue how to print or other basic functions such as "do you see my computer? can you open it? You need to click on it. Yes, no, yes that's right. No, close that and open my computer. No close that again, now open the other one."
In other news, my mom who is N0 years old was asking me about it because she saw her friend playing it and said man, must be a good game because she's addicted to it... she won't take my calls because she says she has to harvest something lol. This is not what I want my mom to be doing in her retirement!
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
Can't you create a (password + optional SSL protected) website for posting those updates? Hosting is cheap these days and it does not look like you would use a lot of hard drive space and/or bandwidth. The hosting company is also less likely to sell your data to advertisers.
Statue of limitations. English--learn it!
Holy shit! That's the funniest thing I've read in a while.
For the record, you might try Googling "Statue of limitations" next time and noticing that Google changes it to "statute" automatically for you.
It's a clue, you should follow it.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Unless something really funny is going on, the judge would not have issued such a preliminary injunction if the case was that clearly beyond the statue of limitations. There might be disagreement concerning which limitations apply in this case.
You obviously aren't looking close enough!
Humans are naturally drawn towards justice and fairNess, And see Zuckerberg as a person who denIgrates his customers
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
If they do not already have a decoration like that, someone needs to write it. I would be willing to play farmvillie for a while just to get that.
Excuse me, but all of those technologies were open, competitive and/or regulated (even if they were monopolized). Facebook is neither... just like Twitter, I would greatly hesitate to say that Facebook even compares to those. Yes, I have an FB account, but I don't post anything there anymore; Email, RSS feeds and IM keep me connected enough.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
You could move him yourself. You're just being lazy. Admit it.
Oh, humans are in general lawful good, at least from their own perspective. People love justice and fairness from their own perspective... which rarely has anything to do with actual justice or fairness. Go in to any bloody conflict and you will usually hear both sides saying they are trying to equalize things or bring about justice for past wrongs.
You see... Twitter lets you talk about yourself all day long and Facebook makes you read about your friends and family. Who wants to read bout your friends and family when you have so much of yourself to talk about?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
The way I see it, if I really care about a person, I will make sure to stay in touch and no need to re-connect.
by your logic, you only REALLY care about people you write long hand written letters to that are carried via pony express.
Using facebook I am more up to date, know more about what is going on, and it also connects the whole family with on post.
It seems like if you cared, you would wan't more information sooner.
To quote me:
"welcome to the future, mother fucker."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You're the kind of guy that writes 3000 times the same thing, because writing a script is being lazy, right?
You call it lazy, I call it better time usage. If I can spend less time doing useless stuff like spending a week to find an old friend I lost track of, that's more time I can use to actually talk to him or do any other interesting stuff.
Dilbert RSS feed
So you don't like Facebook. Why should you care if others do?
"But this one goes to 11!"
So block the app. It's not that hard. My friends all play those inane games, and I never see a peep of them. Only when a new one comes along do I see it, and that's very, very rare. 10 minutes of work too much for you to keep in touch with your family?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
secretes... hehehe. Funny. :-)
Heh, I just don't care about Facebook for myself, I would like to see it crumble down solely because of all the privacy issues they have which will make innocent people victims.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
So basically you are saying since you don't think Facebook is the most effective way to communicate, nobody else should either.
"But this one goes to 11!"
This is not what I want my mom to be doing in her retirement!
Why not? Farmville *CAN* be intellectually challenging - how best to pick my crops to maximize the time-value of my "land" so that I can buy virtual trinkets. It allows for logic and skill-based tasks to help reward ourselves with desirable things.
There's a reason it's so addictive.
There's also a reason I stopped playing it. 3 hours managing a farm everyday was just a timesink I couldn't afford.
M.U.L.E. 0WNZ all your crappy newfangled web games and always will.
since the beginning of time.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Apparently you must live somewhere that has no local music scene. Because Facebook is very good at letting bands inform their fans about upcoming shows, posting pictures, and displaying band merchandise, etc. - and all for the cost of zero dollars. Yeah, boy does it suck. I have never used Facebook to try and tell others how "cool" I am, but then again I am over the age of 12, physically and mentally.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Sure. Facebook isn't going anywhere either. But one can dream.
Only humans can complain about being offered a free service that they can choose to use or not use. It is really simple - if you don't like Facebook, don't use it. The rest of us who choose to use it don't care why you don't want to use it just like you don't care why the rest of us do choose to use it.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Did I write this and lose the memory of it? That's pretty much my situation. I signed up for Facebook because I got sick of hearing about my friends third-hand -- and these are friends with whom I speak regularly via skype, googletalk, text message, and telephone.
Though now that I have a Facebook account, I've reconnected with several friends from my younger years, so that's kind of cool.
As long as you are careful of what info you put online - and of course avoid the crappy apps - Facebook can be a very useful tool. I use it for keeping in touch with friends in several countries (Thailand, Nepal, England, USA etc.) I also use it for monitoring the general well-being of immigrants and international students that I'm involved with looking after in my own city. I can scan their comments and status reports once a day and see when they are being severely affected by culture shock or need counselling/help for any other reason. Saves me a stack of phone calls and emails and it is non-invasive.
I really don't know why people hate facebook so much, when all it really is, is a very well developed descendant of usenet groups.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
The way I see it, if I really care about a person, I will make sure to stay in touch and no need to re-connect.
That's an excellent point and I would have agreed with when I was a teenager and my long-lost friends were the ones I didn't have classes with that semester. Then I got older and realized that sometimes people move without remembering to notify everyone they've ever corresponded with. I parted ways with some old friends - Navy buddies, college pals, neighbors, etc. - before email was popular among non-geeks and had no way of getting in touch with them short of hiring a private investigator.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
As to getting over it... I have no stake in this at all, since I consider all online social networking as different varieties of snake oil, and recognized the Devil's bargain from the outset, but again, just because I have the sense to not fall afoul of hucksters and con-men, doesn't mean I have to stand silent while they work. There's an amazingly fine line between "getting over it" and "aiding and abetting".
This is a sentence about social networking. Social networking.
Then you go on to declare social networks as an evil. Once again, someone who has to create an imaginary enemy so that their fight against it feels that much more valiant. Go on, continue to white knight the masses who have no idea about the insidious hands that slowly wrap around their throats in the form of Facebook. You are saving everyone; everyone owes you a life debt for what you have done to help them. Alas, no one will ever know of your heroism because like a true tragic hero, you work behind the scenes, unknown to all.
Do you actually need friends to play that game? Its worse than running around some zone along in world of warcraft killing monsters all day long as far as I can tell.
Just install facebook purity and you block all spam (it works with firefox, chrome and safari)
I used to feel the same way about Facebook. Until I realized that I was able to have short conversations with friends who live thousands of miles away, at least once a week. And while I really don't care when my ex-sister-in-law is buying donuts for her office, it is great seeing the pics she posts of her son as he grows; and to see the sonograms of my friends' baby in Ohio; and all the other little things that, before, I would rarely or never know is going on among my far-flung friends and family. Yes, it was possible to share all of these things, but it's so much simpler to have one place for all of it. Which makes people more likely to share it in the first place.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Can't you create a (password + optional SSL protected) website for posting those updates? Hosting is cheap these days and it does not look like you would use a lot of hard drive space and/or bandwidth.
(I am not the author of the GPP.) I can, but I don't expect all my friends to do so, especially all my non-geek friends. For myself and virtually everyone that I stay in touch with: (free + convenient + slightly evil) trumps (cheap + hassle + ideologically sound). Probably doesn't bode well for the future of personal privacy, but there you go...
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
secretes... hehehe. Funny. :-)
Secretes is Socrates reclusive brother.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I think this is the first time a judge's incompetence in relation to computers actually improved the internet as a whole.
Sent from my CR-48
I was kidding. But one can only hope something shuts down that huge pile of crap.
Does Facebook hurt you? Are other people not allowed to choose what to do with their time? Is it wrong that hundreds of millions of people blindly give away their personal information while Facebook wildly profits from it? Are you somehow harmed by those hundreds of millions of people helping to effectively justify privacy invasion and a slow erosion of civil rights?
WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA!?
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
But only one geek is needed among the circle of friends. For example, I could create such a site and all of my friends could use it.
The way I see it, facebook is useful if you want to find new (or long lost) friends, but if you just want to keep in touch with a fixed list of people, there are better ways.
People can communicate effectively without it. I say that Facebook merely lowers the bar as did everything else before.
I mean, culture has changed, too, but whenever some old letter (Civil War, etc.) makes the news, I'm always in awe at the prose. Telegraphs made things quicker. You still had to plan ahead but rather than taking weeks and months, it'd be, what, sent nigh instantly, recorded, and delivered within a week?
But the phone brought us real time conversations. It's all shoot from the hip though it does help if you have some semblence of what you'd like to talk about.
Email? Back to letters but pretty much instant and has no limit. Pack in as much audio, images, or movies as you feel like doing.
Twitter? Sort of announcements-lite. No more dealing with windbag press conferences. Oh, looky. Shortened URL to the transcript of said conference.
Facebook? In a word, automated. Grumblystuff is feeling grumpy. Would you like to send him a cute puppy picture? You just uploaded a vacation photo. All your friends know you went camping in the mountains. Profile updated. Single now? Aww, I'm sorry to hear that. Alert! Alert! It's your friend's birthday! Click hear to send a card and an e-gift.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that it is a way to communicate but I'd hardly call it the most effective. It's very good at keeping people abreast with whatever life is throwing at yah but that still requires you to do the updates (I'm sure that'll be changed in Facebook 2.0) making it the same as everything else.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm really looking forward to retirement, when I can just sort of zone out and play video games all day. Who cares if they're mindless as long as they're fun?
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
damnit, bad mod (being undone)
OpenID is a festering turd of poorly executed nonsense. Federated identification is great in theory, but it never ends well. It just plain sucks.
Although don't get me wrong, I've seen Facebook Connect implementations that suck goats, too.
Sony ha
Are you a professor at Glenn Beck University? You could be! ;)
Yeah, Secretes is the one who committed suicide by beating himself over the head with a ham hock, right?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Who cares about the openness of them? That wasn't the argument being made.
(BTW, I lean more towards the "Why use Facebook?" very regularly side, but do think the argument was a valid one.)
Yeah, he has to move the statue out of the way to see the case to figure out if the statute applies.
"Give me a few of your tired, some of your poor, and a reasonable proportion of your huddled masses ..."
I think you may need new friends. I don't use facebook, and I have lots of friends, and this has never come up.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I figure it this way, I fought it as much as I could but everyone left myspace, so I use facebook the same as I used myspace. I had a picture, a brief summary, pictures from (clean) things that I've been to and done, along with every real physical friend attached to that profile.
So basically it's myspace, but with a different interface, for me.
Oh, and lots of "you buy you buy!!!!" kind of things on my screen.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
The difference is that e-mail (and, to a lesser extent, instant messaging) were based around open networks, where any client that followed the necessary protocol could communicate. That's not the case with Facebook. Facebook, as a network, is totally owned by a single entity. As such, its much more restrictive about what you do with it, and what it does with your information.
I have no objection to the concept of social media. My quarrel is with the current implementations. They're all very closed and centralized. As Facebook has demonstrated repeatedly, they have no qualms about using your data in ways that you didn't intend for them to use it. That's not true with e-mail. That's not true with IM.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
You still fail to see the point. Not everyone will go to your site constantly to see your status.
With a list of contacts, and a status update news page, you can see everything in one foul swoop.
This stuffs been around for at least 5-7 years...
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Apparently the statute of limitations applies from the time of the breech, not the time of the contract, so the allegation is that the breech of contract occurred sometime within the last 6 years.. so within the first year after the signing.
If the contract stipulates some kind of ongoing profit sharing, it could be argued that Zuckerberg is continuing to act in violation of the agreement, and thus the statute of limitations would not apply.
And you know what, 10 years ago they were right.
A phone call is more personal, more private, and put's more emphasis on the person than an email or an IM. It also provides more immediate feedback, which allow conversations to more more quickly to topics of mutual interest.
Perhaps that's the reason so much communication on Facebook/Twitter/etc. seems to devolve to "I'm taking a shower now. Oh look, I'm out of shampoo. Must remember to go to store and pick some up."
Alternately, maybe I just have really boring friends...
I'd have to agree.. be it playing video games, programming, tearing engines apart and putting them back together, or polishing/collecting antique glass bottles in the garage... it's about YOU then.
Of course, your relatives are usually pretty dear to you so you want to spend time with them as well, but you still have time to veg with an antique PS2 game as you open your 50 year old scotch that you bought at 30 ;)
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Thanks.. that was already clarified in another response. I was just making (yet another) statue/statute joke.
If you want to go down the philosophical trail, there is no true justice and fairness as it's mostly relative and subjective.
One civilization may believe that all life should be cherished, another may believe that a woman has the right to govern her own body. (e.g. abortion, birth control, etc)
One civilization may believe that when a person does a certain crime, they should have no mercy shown to them and be extinguished, another civilization may believe that every person's life is immutable and should never be humanly hindered. (European vs. Middle-eastern corporal punishment)
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
I really didn't get annoying though until they tried to bury my ass.
Nonsense! you were annoying long before this whole facebook thing started :P~
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than have to have a frontal lobotomy."
Wtf... no one ever says their too cool for social networking (one gay ass name lol)
People say they don't like the evil tactics of Facebook's administration.
Get it right!
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Is it wrong that hundreds of millions of people blindly give away their personal information while Facebook wildly profits from it?
Yes.
And it's not blindly. Recall that when a profile was set to private that the information was suddenly available.
This was a couple years ago, and since then things have creeped up.
So, yes.
Are you somehow harmed by those hundreds of millions of people helping to effectively justify privacy invasion and a slow erosion of civil rights?
Remember what America fought for in 1776, by ideology? We like to continue the ideology, just a touch.
I sincerely hope you're being a devils advocate and not really a douche.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
add RSS and you get the notifications. But to each his own I suppose.
Correction:
It's a really well-developed information gathering service hidden behind a thinly veiled marketing platform.
Facebook's real customers aren't you, the "user". It's the marketing companies, law-enforcement agencies, scammers, spammers, etc that pay big $$$ to have access to this giant database of personal information.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
is not at stake here. Whatever smacks facebook down, it will be like killing napster. 10 more p2p clients sprung up then, some of them still in wide use. The worst possible thing this could do is give myspace another shot. (it wont though)
Social networking, wether we want it or not, is here to stay. Facebook may be dirty, but it's still an awesome way to keep up w/ acquaintences & distant family. Clsoe Friends you will call or they will call you.
A recent study showed that most people have between 4-7 "groups" of friends that they belong to. Socialnetworking may be obnoxious some times, but it helps me know when parties w/ my outlying groups happen. THIS is where I do my catching up, not online.
As for the content of the article, I didn't read it! I'm just responding to the responses which 1/2 of which are critical of facebook, the other 1/2 can't stand social networking in general. and a small population who sees it for what it is... not much, just a way of saying hey to mult. people @ once, and sharing photos, vids, endorsing products like Cheetos, the cheeze that goes crunch, and sexual preferances.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
I sincerely hope you're being a devils advocate and not really a douche.
Neither. Well, douche maybe, but it's better than advocating all those things I obviously didn't mean seriously.
*sighs* I hate Slashdot. There used to be people that could detect sarcasm.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I don't see statute of limitations as an issue whatsoever.
You sign a contract, exchange some money, and gain ownership to something. You have absolutely no obligation to prove your ownership within five years.
I'm sure he contacted an attorney years ago, and has been waiting to play this card. Why not let Zuckerberg and all the FB employees work really hard to build something for you, and then come and take it if it's yours?
But if google/word autocorrects it, why does he need to learn it?
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Who cares about the openness of them? That wasn't the argument being made.
Then what argument was being made? That Facebook doesn't provide any features more sophisticated that Phone/Email/IM? That there is no benefit to the platform?
My reading is that G+P doesn't have any problem with the platform or the features, it's not too complex for G'pa. It's actually less complex than email. I think he instead doesn't appreciate being locked into relying on this one organization for reliability or privacy.
People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.
I've pretty much avoided creating a facebook profile for the sake of my job. Every few years they re-investigate my security clearance. And I'd just as soon there be pretty much nothing related to any social networking site in the google search results for my name. It's not that I think I'd ever do something stupid enough to risk my clearance but it's better safe than sorry in my case, at least so far as it concerns sites like Facebook.
Facebook is a much better way for most people to communicate than a personal E-mail because they don't have to wade through 500 spam to get the message, negotiate with six different programs to upload and rotate and label their photos then worry about who can see them or not.
Its all integrated, and it works very well for a lot of people. If you don't like using it, or you know how to use something else better, that's great, so long as every other contact you have feels the same way.
Personally, your comment about making sure to stay in touch is redundant. You're implying that Facebook is less staying in touch than say writing a letter. If it is, its only because you chose not to write the same amount to them. The platform isn't hampering you.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
"welcome to the future, mother fucker."
Any future that involves someone selling my personal data is a future I don't particularly want to be part of. While I don't really care about you trumpeting your inane views that this is the future, please stop caring about anyone trumpeting the view that your being screwed, and asking for more.
And for the record:
I dont live in my parents basement.
I dont even live in the same state as my parents.
I dont wear a tin foil hat
Im in my mid twenties and grew up with computers. I just dont like seeing my personal information being stripped away from me, for someone elses profit. If you dont mind it.. If you feel the trade off is worth it.. Have at it. Judging from facebooks past actions I dont think your private information is still yours.
Ohh and your whole
by your logic
position is fucking nuts. I keep in contact with the people I want to with what works for me.. phone calls. Frankly I think I would want to keep in contact with a lot fewer people if I had to hear about them daily.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Saw that article, problem is I fear I'm one of the worst about "picking up on social cues".
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Because it insists of spamming me with their invites?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Because every time Google auto-corrects a word, God kills one kitten. And then the Grammar Nazi kills another. It's so sad.
Since when did a poem become the doctrine of America?
I realize it's been around for a long while, but it's symbolic, much like "in god we trust" on the currency.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
The difference between ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, etc.. and Facebook is the success I had finding old friends. I would've had to do this myself with any other network. Facebook succeeded in facilitating it though.
I used all of the above and Facebook crushed all of their capabilities, even before it had the chat window function.
Then all your family will ask how they can like stuff on the page and have it show up on facebook. This is like suggesting your family should use linux. It sounds good in writing, but then you get to the delivery and no one is as enthusiastic as you about it.
From what my family members who use Facebook tell me, the only reason you need friends is to annoy them with (thankfully blockable) "updates" on what you're doing in game.
$ make available
Your comments remind me of the Microsoft Kin commercial I watched to understand the following statement: "You have to admire a marketing strategy that takes a product made for idiots, and then essentially tells those idiots that they are idiots." This was posted on this site in a thread connected to the article about Microsoft cutting Kin support after only 45 days, but I can't remember by whom, just that I felt it was worth saving.
In this case the Slashdot conventional wisdom appears to be "Nobody needs Facebook." But, as is so often pointed out here, Slashdotters are not a representative cross-section of personallity types. Reference the frequent comments about women/dating/sex. Facebook addresses social interaction that is mostly incomprehensible to this group. On the other hand, if it weren't for the kinds of people who hang out here there would be no Facebook. Let's not fall into the "what is right for us is right for everyone" hole.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
Having a LAMP server in the basement comes to mind too. One can serve ones family without having to addict ones mother to Farmville.
GP/GGP aren't talking about philosophy, they're talking about Dungeons & Dragons. And they're both wrong - humans are drawn to Lawful Neutral. The notion of "relative good" tends to be an absolute Neutral or Evil; but as social creatures, we are are easily classified as Lawful.
It pays to not look like an idiot.
According to the contract signed he would actually be correct in his demand. There is an actual contract and from my reading of it he would be correct. The problem is that the statute of limitations has expired. IANAL of course, so I may be completely off base on this but the article I read didn't question the claim.
I have family on different continents and never saw the need of using Facebook to connect with them or stay in touch. Email/phone/IM is way better.
If you know their email address, telephone number or IM id. If you don't, FB is a great way to find them (or be found).
That works so long as your friends all intersect, but if you're friends with someone who also has two other circles of friends you're not part of, and all of them are on Facebook, you're asking them to learn and deal with a totally different system specifically for you as well as removing the possibility of introducing people from your shared circle to those people in the other circles. I don't use FB (I created an account to do some testing for work but I've never used it or added anyone to it) but even I can see the benefit of a universal system for this. It just needs to be one that has more respect for the privacy of their users.
With a list of contacts, and a status update news page, you can see everything in one foul swoop.
It's one fell swoop, although since the subject is Facebook, maybe foul is equally applicable.
Or, equally, let's all miss the point and throw up some strawman suggesting that GP hates technology when he's said nothing of the kind. All he's suggesting is that Facebook, while it might be good at what it does, isn't the be-all-end-all of communication. Honestly, the best way ultimately to communicate with another person is face to face. You miss so many nuances of communication just by removing the ability to read body language, take away voice inflection and you miss even more. Of course, face to face communication has been around since the dawn of time but that doesn't mean that my suggestion that it's the best way to communicate also means I hate technology and wish we could go back to stone-age times. What Facebook is good at is letting people dip in and out of your life when they have time, essentially a bulletin board, but if you want a meaningful conversation with someone it's still almost always better to do it in person of, failing that, by telephone.
I think he was suggesting the "evil" was not being totally transparent about the motives of the service and how you plan to treat people's "privacy", rather than the service itself. Of course, that's just marketing - arguably evil but something we all live with every day. Is Facebook selling user data really any different to Lynx suggesting their deodorant will have armies of women chasing you down the street?
Statute of Limitations is (if I remember right) seven years. The contract was from 2003, it's now 2010. It's hitting it right on the edge, but it should still be able to get in.
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all. -- Thomas J. Kopp
Unfortunately it isn't as simply as just not using Facebook.
If your friends use it to organise and exchange news/gossip then you are being cut out of that social interaction which might previously been face to face or via IM or email. I've seen mailing lists die as everyone moves on to Facebook, leaving us old timers to enjoy the silence.
Actually I'm only 30 but all my of peers are on Facebook so I maintain an account. It has almost no info on it and I never update it, but it lets me keep track of what is going on. People just seem to assume everyone is on FB now and have stopped bothering to tell people who are not about social events.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Having your own site doesn't help you control what people post on Facebook either. Unless you have an account it is impossible to see what other people are posting about you (photos, tagging etc.) or remove it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It used to be that having more friends in the game unlocked larger farms (and other stuff) without having to spend real money. That may have changed, but the tactic has always been 'friends or dollars'. Either you fund them directly, or you coerce your friends to join, and maybe one of them gives you money.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
I think the rub is that, while it would seem weird for me to track down girls I barely knew in Jr. High and probe them for information on if, when and who they married, about their kids, their jobs, and who their friends are, there apparently seems to be nothing strange at all about "friending" them on facebook and exploring those same topics. It's like voluntarily allowing yourself to be stalked... within limits (maybe, depending on today's version of Facebook's rapidly changing privacy policy).
This gives you the opportunity to keep in touch with people you otherwise wouldn't have kept in touch with anyway, and your life is probably no better for it, but now, at least, it's easy.
I personally have rejected almost all of the friend requests that have come from people I used to know but was never friends with. My opinion is, if I wasn't friends with you then, why would I want to be friends with you now, when the only thing we USED to have in common was that we currently attended the same school. We don't even have THAT anymore, so why do you suddenly want to be my friend NOW? Why do you even CARE? There's a reason that high school reunions aren't held on a daily/monthly or even yearly basis. Agreed, there IS a certain novelty to discovering the fate of people you haven't spoken to or heard about in years, but it's a very short-lived experience and doesn't accomplish a great deal. Afterwards, you just go right back to ignoring each other like you always did.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
But people can't be bothered going to a different website for every different friend, especially if separate logins are needed. That's the bad old days of Geocities in the '90s!
At least support things like RSS feeds so it can be read more easily. Dumping everything onto a single site like Facebook or Livejournal has its problems, but they have a huge advantage over people using a standalone website. Until someone figures out a solution to this, sites like Facebook are going to be popular.
What are the better ways?
one of your friends
One of your friends maybe. I guess I'm lucky that, after I've filtered out Farmville, my friends post about generally interesting things, or things about what they're up to.
I don't know about you, but I have better things to spend my time on than updating ignore lists.
Better things, like talking about Facebook on Slashdot?
I think is talking about Roy Moore's monument of the 10 commandments.
Statue of limitations indeed!
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I guess if you define the entire world in terms of your social disorders, then you're right.
Unfortunately for you, you're wrong.
Then just un-brother him. (You can do that on Facebook, right? I've never actually used the thing)
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
You sir make Slashdot proud. Rock on yo.
I wish I could mod u up, but you at 5
>> as you open your 50 year old scotch that you bought at 30
Scotch doesn't age in the bottle. ;)
Better things, like talking about Facebook on Slashdot?
At least the comments here are by actual human beings, not 90% automated postings.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Social networks won't go away. Because, well, they are social!
The actual app we use to navigate that network will most certainly change, but the ones out today won't be the ones we use in the future. Not if I have anything to say about it.
I like the idea of a constant profile. How would this be stored? The problem w/ decentralized networks is that "someone" has to host that data, or everyone has to host that data. Some sort of P2P model for distributing Social netoworking "profiles" would be an interesting concept indeed!
I'll tell you what my wife thinks of myspace & facebook. Myspace was too customizable. Facebook is "easy."
I think myspace failed because it's too egocentric. it's all about me, and not about my friends. Facebook is too app centric.
Steam, though having some cool features, is just myspace for gamers as far as social networking goes, but w/o the customizabillity.
I'd indulge the idea of a personal XML based DB/ dataset that can be easily moved / tx'd. Something that you could customize based on the site you are in, but were not required to. A way to display at / search all social networking sites may comeout of that, or maybe it exists now? a facebook / myspace / myfaceass/ metacrawler?
There are a few metaposting apps out there already.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
I can tell you right now that all of the Scotch I bought when I was thirty didn't even last until I turned 31.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage