Perhaps it kills the resale value, but there's more thing important than resale value, like the value of having it. Until you sell it, it's effectively worthless.
Read up on their INTERNAL human rights movements and work in solidarity. Give them credit for being able to lead their own struggles. Nobody likes an interfering nosy parker. This reminds me of an article I read about internal Iranian human rights groups. The US State Department I think, or it could have been just a US based human rights group, I don't remember, went to it and asked how they could help. The Iranian response? Stay away. If even the whiff of American help was near, the group would be accused as being an American pigdog shill.
Thresholds. In D1 I don't have to think about at what level replies get hidden. The just do. Now I have to constantly work the slider because its a number rather than a rule based approach.
Boy, you sure are certain of what I want. Except, you are 100% wrong (and helping to validate Godwin's Law. I think your actions betray your true motives. I also think that you don't understand Godwin's Law, as I drew a comparison between your actions and the similar action of anti-abortion radical -- not a Nazi as required for Godwin's Law -- that were found to be inciting threats. And seriously. Godwin's law is more of a sarcastic observation than any real rhetorical "law." So to pull it out, and an incorrectly at that, just seems juvenile.
I ask you again what do you gain from posting his personal information? You say that it speaks to credibility, but that's a facisious statement. You're trying to say that since he has a small buisness of some sort that he isn't credible. Somehow I doubt that if Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo were behind the the campaign you'd find them more credible. Even if I did cede the point that somehow it speaks to credibility -- which I don't -- how does "This appears to be just some guy compaining about his link farms such as this these sites..." differ in any substantively significant way from "d00dz the loser lives here! He works out of his home! lolz! Check out his car! Here's a map!"
And let's be honest. To call this a "campaign" is give it a lot more credit than it deserves.
Pulling back the curtain to reveal the wizard: yes.
Advocating, condoning, or tolerating harassment or threats: absolutely no You're either incredibly naive or a liar, and I think you're a childish liar.
In part it shows that this isn't coming from some known and credible source but is just the random rant of some guy. It also provides reference data that ties him to his stable of domains only a few of which are listed above but which also include phpav.com (bible info), looklistenlearn.org, elevenoclock.com, radiojesus.com and scads of others. Makes me wonder if he isn't link-farming himself. Oh like there could possibly be a "known and credible source" for "let's block firefox!" It's an opinion. Nothing more. Just like you said. An opinion I take that you don't agree with.
As to doing anything to him...I absolutely advocate nothing more that what I suggested in the OP. Ignoring him. Not that it appears that you could do anything that hasn't been done already: [URL REDACTED] And there you go again. I ask you what does a map to his house add to this conversation?
You're crossing line when you start posting real world contact information about him. You put his address up. You now put up a map to his house. This may all be freely available information, but in this context it's more than that. It's clearly attempt to incite harrasment. You're in fact encouraging it.
Your actions are speaking volumes more than your words. You say "ignore him," but then you begin the whole stalking process and disiminiate the information to others. That's far from ignoring him.
Something you need to realize is that your actions are directly analogous to what some anti-abortion websites do. Specifically I'm thinking of the Neal Horsley's"Nuremburg Files" website. On that site, he produced wanted posters of doctors that perform abortions along with personal information. He also posted a list of names of doctors that perform abortions, and then would cross out their names whenever they were killed -- by others mind you. Horsely was taken to court several times, and lost. I believe it was in Horsley v Rivera where it was found that his his site constituted an unprotected "true threat."
Now notice how Horsley never once said, "kill these guys," and in fact in court said that he did not advocate violence against these doctors. But the context of actions betrayed his true motives.
Now I'm not saying you secretly want this guy dead. But I am saying that you'd like it if people started calling him all hours of the nighht threatening him. Sending him messages. Throwing things at his house, and backing making his and his family's life a living hell.
In short, you want griefers to target him for the lulz.
Unlike you, I'll be open about my true feelings. I think you're a childish son of a bitch that's encouraging harrassment and perhaps violence through your actions, against someone you've never met because you disagree with some blog post of theirs, all the while lying about it.
You do realize that the attempt to repair may actually cause more damage than do nothing right? That's been the knock against the repair kit from the very beginning. Anyway, the shuttle has had damage to its titles before and nothing happened, so its not like this ammount of damage in this location is unpreceidented.
Though the payload bay doors were opened without incident, their successful operation provided a clear view of the craft's Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) pods, which showed signs of heat-shield tile damage. Mission Control counted 15 tiles missing from the OMS pods, which contained the vehicles in-orbit thrusters. Houston determined that the missing tiles would not present any problem, but mission controllers did not know if there was extensive tile damage on the orbiter's underside, an area more sensitive to reentry heating.
Major systems tested successfully on first flight of Space Transportation System. Orbiter sustained tile damage on launch and from overpressure wave created by the solid rocket boosters. Subsequent modifications to the water sound suppression system eliminated the problem. A total of sixteen tiles were lost and 148 tiles were damaged.
And of course the photographic evidence. It's a famous photo. Which led to speculation of a "zipper effect," where if a hole developed in the tile protection system, that all the other tiles would be ripped off.
Tile loss was incredibly common on the shuttle through out the early missions. We're talking through at least 86. It wasn't whether tiles were going to comeoff, but how many and where? They never came off in sufficenent numbers to cause extensive damage, nor in any places that endagered the orbiter, but they came off all the time.
You make a good point about the shared cultural assumptions in contemporary popular music, but you've based this assumption on understanding lyrics and references to samples. I would argue that you can appreciate a good song without understanding any lyrics or recognizing any samples; just by listening to the notes and the rhythms. Now I'm not saying that you necessarily appreciate it the same way, but you can appreciate it. Especially, if you consider that in all too many popular songs, the lyrics are all too often a bit sophmoric.
I'll take me as an example. I have a bizzare fascination with non-English language punk. I find it surreal. I always associate it as an Anglo-American genre, yet whererever there are disaffected youth and guitars, there's punk. I don't speak Japanese, Chinese, Dutch, or German, yet I can recognize a good song when I hear it. Perhaps this is a because there is a common base because I'm versed in the conventions of punk music, and that can't be discounted. That's big common ground, and given that it isn't uncommon to not understand the lyrics when they're in a language you're fluent in, perhaps even bigger than language.
So let's examine a music genre that we're not versed in at all. We're not familure with either the spoken or musical language. Say Indian folk music, or at least what hippies call Indian folk music. As a friend of mine once described it, "It's a guy wanking on a single string of a sitar for 10 minutes, then he wanks on a different string for another 10 minutes, then goes back to wanking on the first string again, all the while a some guy bangs a simple rhythm on a drum, and some dude occasionally hits some finger cymbals." If you couldn't tell from the description, he thought it sucked, yet to those versed in it it was apparently one of the best songs and artists of the genre.
I bring this anecdote up to question the assumption the assumption that classical music is "pleasing," in whatever form that takes. How much of this comes from that we've been conditioned to believe that it is pleasing because that's what everyone has told us? I'm not saying that it's not, but I wonder how much of this is a "high art effect." i.e. "Everyone says this is good, so it must be good, so I must learn to like it, since everytime I say I don't, others say that I'm not appreciating it the right way."
We see this effect in the art world all the time. For example, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollack. They're shit. Pollack just threw paint at very large canvases in drunken fits, and Warhol outsourced the entire production of the art to his "factory." Warhol's talent and art, was in marketing himself. Yet, if you look at any modern art book, they'll be touted as "brilliant." Bullshit. It's people that were snowed and have too much invested in the lie to say the truth, that they were hacks.
Just my $.0196 (adjusted for inflation) Umm... That would be deflation.;)
The same WILL happen with mars as with many places on earth - there is water on mars, not on the surface, but on some places it will be found frozen below the surface. I wish you'd make up your mind. Is water already found or "will be" be found.
There is all necessary elements to grow crops, manufacture things and live a good life - given the sufficient technology. Umm... Breathable air? Atmospheric pressure? Low radiation? Sorry. You're wrong.
On mars we will also probably find valuable metals, minerals and other resources. Not necessarily, and not necessarily in accessable locations or in large amounts. This is pure speculation. You might as well be saying we can mine the asteroid for "valuable materials," because asteroid mining is a standard in scifi. Of course asteroid mining makes no economic sense since they're made of base metals, like iron, have always been, and will always be, infinitaly more accessable on Earth than out beyond Mars. Think about it. Even in the worst case scenario, which is cheaper? Going to out past Mars, drilling, then coming back all the way to Earth; or simply digging through the landfill at the edge of town?
We do not have the sufficient technology level today, but we will - and when we do we will go there. No, we could go there with the technology today. We don't because there people will only go there if there's an economic reason to go. There isn't. There's nothing there. You can go explore. That's cool, but to colonize? Why? You have to spend all these resources to just to ship things to Mars, and then what do you have to ship? Pretty much everything you have here. And what are you going to ship back to make it pay? Nothing! That's what!
This isn't New World colonization. There was resources in the New World. Timber. Sugar. Coffee. Slaves. And of course, gold. There's nothing of value on Mars on anywhere else off "this rock."
When you find your solid gold asteroid, let me know.
You're right that there's little evidence to believe that something will evolve to replace it. More likely, we'll go extinct and then some other intelligent species might evolve, but given the billions of years evolution that previously took place, not very likely.
But there's two trite assumptions you've made that always annoy the hell out of me, because there's absolutely nothing to support them but a kind of quasi-prejudice. While at first glance, these two assumptions might seem seperate, they have the same root.
First you implied that somehow classical music is somehow superior to all other forms of music. Bullshit. Classical music was simply the popular music of the day. There's nothing magical about it. You described classical music as "very pleasing in its forms and the interplays of wavelengths." (Typically one describes audio as frequencies, but whatever.) Well geez, since every musical form has forms and interplay of frequencies. That's what distinguishes music from a steady tone. But your choice of aliens enjoying classical music is very telling. Over the years it has become perceived to be superior to all other forms of music because of the perception that "smart" and "successful" people listen to it. As the antithesis to classical music, rap is typically given. I suspect that the thought of many alien species finding rap music pleasing never entered your mind, because classical music is for winners and rap music is for losers. This is a very persistent view, even though there's no evidence, let alone anectodal evidence, to support it.
This leads me to the second assumption, which I already touched on. The assumption that aliens are somehow super intelligent/powerful. Basically, Klaatu from Day The Earth Stood Still. Why? What's the basis for this very common assumption? Simple. Some want to believe that someone will come down from the sky and solve our problems. That's absurd. Given that we have absolutely no evidence for any intelligent and technologically lifeform existing anywhere in the universe besides us, I would argue, that this leads to an obvious conclusion: that humanity is the most intelligent and technologically advanced lifeform in the universe. It has to be someone, so why not us? Oh. Right. That would be too depressing.
Evolution rewards fitness for the environment. Not intelligence. Not culture. Nothing but who can fuck the most. It's good to remember that in discussions like this.
Sadly, I can't find my post when last time space colonization came up, but basically it came down to this: There is no chance in hell of interplanetary, and especially interstelllar colonization. Why? It is so completely impractical. Charlie Stross wrote a huge write-up about it, but the money quote actually comes from Bruce Sterling:
I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people setting the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach.
It is not legal to require payment in pounds sterling, gold bars, or years of indentured servitude Well actually, indentured servitude is illegal under the 13th amendment.
No, I criticised the generic statement that interoperability was always a good thing. I have made no comment on the extent to which that applies in this particular case. I still fail to see why interoperability would be bad in any case. If you don't want to take advantage of the interoperability, then you're always free not to use it. To argue that everything should be locked down in it's own little feifdom is to pine for the bad ol' days.
That's lovely. And how, exactly, is someone who isn't yet a member of a social net and can't see what features it offers supposed to find this out before joining? Presumably, you're joining a net that already has your friends on it. Here's a wild idea, and I'm just throwing it out there, but perhaps you can ask your friends? Afterall, if they want you to join the network, they'll be more than happy to show it off to you.
And if you're the first person on the network, you could always... you know... look around.
Ignorance is a non issue in this case. It's easily remedied.
Easy on the soundbites, there, partner. All security ultimately comes through some form of obscurity, unless it's backed up by physical force. It comes through a password that only I know, or having my fingerprint, or knowing which two large primes multiply to give the number in front of you. All such security can therefore be broken if you're prepared to work hard enough, and the only question is whether it's worth the effort. I think perhaps you misunderstand what people are criticising when they talk about security through obscurity. You're right that there's always some sort of obscurity, but you argued for pure obscurity. You said that you didn't want all the social networks to work together because it would make it easy for Bad Guys to do Bad Things. The information is already available to the Bad Guys, and they can already merge the nets if they want. You seem to think that if say Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, Friendster, and Whatevr [sic], don't work together then they're are somehow more secure.
No. Absolutely not. The security is ready breached when the information was posted to any of them. The idea that someone how you can use one social net for one thing and another social net for another and never the two shall meet is pure fantasy. All it takes is for one person in on one network to search for you on the other, and the whole "security" comes crashing down.
Actually, I didn't know how the site worked at all. I knew that it was a place where my friends were putting their photos on-line, and that to see those photos you had to join by giving an e-mail address based at my university. I had no idea that in addition to the photo sharing, the site encouraged sharing numerous other forms of information, or that the system encouraged others to provide this information about you. I certainly had no idea just how fast that mechanism could work. It's scary, it really is. That's why I got out.
It's very dangerous to judge this sort of issue based on your personal experiences, perceptions and prejudices. What may be obvious to you, or morally acceptable to you, may not be so to someone else.
Perhaps, but it's no one's fault that you were the only one who didn't know how it worked. You should have found out. Caveat Emptor. This isn't about personal morality, it's about the norms on a particular social net. If you don't like them, don't join that net.
Oh here's something for you think about: Your facebook profile? It still exists. Sign in again, and it all comes back just how you left it. Think about it.
We're talking about interoperability. Interoperability is always good. No, it isn't. In fact, in the context of the dangers of having too much information on-line and having it data mined for purposes you wouldn't like, interoperability and the One True Database are just about the most dangerous things there are. Let's be honest here. You're arguing for security through obscurity. "Security" through poor interoperability is an illusion. Any Bad Guy(tm) dedicated to doing ill can mine multiple social nets today. We're talking about allowing people to manage multiple social nets easily. It's stupid that someone has to monitor multiple sites. They should work together. I would argue that having multiple incompatable sites can actually lead to more insecurity since you can never be sure of what's going on all the assorted nets.
If you're afraid of personal information getting out, don't post it. Well, I guess that's one step better than "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear." It's a hell of a lot better than "one step." It's the antithesis to "if you've got nothing to hide." It's "If you want keep something hidden, then why the hell are you doing blabbing about it?" My home address is not posted anywhere online. My phone number is not anywhere online. That's personal information and you can't get it. It's not a secret, but it's not something I want to share publicly. If I think you need it, I'll give to you. It's the same for any other personal info.
The problem of your friends adding information to your profile is a problem of Facebook, not of social networking sites in general. You should have control over your own profile. Of course, you can't prevent someone from posting a picture and saying, "This is me with my good friend Anonymous Brave Guy! (He's on the left)." That happens all the time regardless of whether it occurs on a social networking site or not. Arguably it's easier to trace down connections among people because the links are explicit and contained in a relatively easy to use interface, but really, the photo scenario could have just as easily happened with any site.
You knew when you joined Facebook, that friends were going to show up in your social network, either through explcity invites or by posting things to your wall. That's the whole point of joining any social net. To say that you were shocked to find that your connections to your friends would be accessible is the strain credulity to the breaking point.
We have a fundamental disagreement about the purpose of social networking sites. To me, social networking sites are not mechanisms too distribute information securely. Instead social networking sites are mechanisms to find people with similar interests to you, and to expand your connections into/within subcultures.
I say, that if you want to control access to information, then don't put it up on the web and instead dole it out on an individual basis or through known secure channels. For instance, only a relatively few people know what my "professional" email address is. While it may be easily discoverable, it's not something I share with people outside of my research interests. Similarly, I don't share my personal email address with these people either. Social networking sites typically don't have fine grained access control, and so it's not something I would share via one of those.
'Open social networks' is greed-speak for 'easier SPAM access' AFAIAC. Or worse. I'm far more concerned with things like identity theft or profiling of child targets for other crimes than I am with spam. That threat already exists today with the closed networks. We're talking about interoperability. Interoperability is always good. If you're afraid of personal information getting out, don't post it.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps it kills the resale value, but there's more thing important than resale value, like the value of having it. Until you sell it, it's effectively worthless.
Funny, but let's be honest. It's a replica. It's not the real prop. It's a genuine fake!
I guess just setting abbreviated to none emulates D1 behavior, so I guess that solves the root of my complaint.
Thresholds. In D1 I don't have to think about at what level replies get hidden. The just do. Now I have to constantly work the slider because its a number rather than a rule based approach.
D2 is teh suck.
I ask you again what do you gain from posting his personal information? You say that it speaks to credibility, but that's a facisious statement. You're trying to say that since he has a small buisness of some sort that he isn't credible. Somehow I doubt that if Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo were behind the the campaign you'd find them more credible. Even if I did cede the point that somehow it speaks to credibility -- which I don't -- how does "This appears to be just some guy compaining about his link farms such as this these sites..." differ in any substantively significant way from "d00dz the loser lives here! He works out of his home! lolz! Check out his car! Here's a map!"
And let's be honest. To call this a "campaign" is give it a lot more credit than it deserves. Pulling back the curtain to reveal the wizard: yes.
Advocating, condoning, or tolerating harassment or threats: absolutely no You're either incredibly naive or a liar, and I think you're a childish liar.
You're crossing line when you start posting real world contact information about him. You put his address up. You now put up a map to his house. This may all be freely available information, but in this context it's more than that. It's clearly attempt to incite harrasment. You're in fact encouraging it.
Your actions are speaking volumes more than your words. You say "ignore him," but then you begin the whole stalking process and disiminiate the information to others. That's far from ignoring him.
Something you need to realize is that your actions are directly analogous to what some anti-abortion websites do.
Specifically I'm thinking of the Neal Horsley's "Nuremburg Files" website. On that site, he produced wanted posters of doctors that perform abortions along with personal information. He also posted a list of names of doctors that perform abortions, and then would cross out their names whenever they were killed -- by others mind you. Horsely was taken to court several times, and lost. I believe it was in Horsley v Rivera where it was found that his his site constituted an unprotected "true threat."
Now notice how Horsley never once said, "kill these guys," and in fact in court said that he did not advocate violence against these doctors. But the context of actions betrayed his true motives.
Now I'm not saying you secretly want this guy dead. But I am saying that you'd like it if people started calling him all hours of the nighht threatening him. Sending him messages. Throwing things at his house, and backing making his and his family's life a living hell.
In short, you want griefers to target him for the lulz.
Unlike you, I'll be open about my true feelings. I think you're a childish son of a bitch that's encouraging harrassment and perhaps violence through your actions, against someone you've never met because you disagree with some blog post of theirs, all the while lying about it.
That's exactly what I think.
I think it's trying to incite something too.
You say "be nice," but that's not what you're actions are implying. Why are you doing this?
I'm sorry, but what's the point of posting his home address? It certainly seems like you're implying that something should happen. What is it?
You do realize that the attempt to repair may actually cause more damage than do nothing right? That's been the knock against the repair kit from the very beginning. Anyway, the shuttle has had damage to its titles before and nothing happened, so its not like this ammount of damage in this location is unpreceidented.
http://history.nasa.gov/sts25th/history.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttle
And of course the photographic evidence. It's a famous photo. Which led to speculation of a "zipper effect," where if a hole developed in the tile protection system, that all the other tiles would be ripped off.
Tile loss was incredibly common on the shuttle through out the early missions. We're talking through at least 86. It wasn't whether tiles were going to comeoff, but how many and where? They never came off in sufficenent numbers to cause extensive damage, nor in any places that endagered the orbiter, but they came off all the time.
I'll take me as an example. I have a bizzare fascination with non-English language punk. I find it surreal. I always associate it as an Anglo-American genre, yet whererever there are disaffected youth and guitars, there's punk. I don't speak Japanese, Chinese, Dutch, or German, yet I can recognize a good song when I hear it. Perhaps this is a because there is a common base because I'm versed in the conventions of punk music, and that can't be discounted. That's big common ground, and given that it isn't uncommon to not understand the lyrics when they're in a language you're fluent in, perhaps even bigger than language.
So let's examine a music genre that we're not versed in at all. We're not familure with either the spoken or musical language. Say Indian folk music, or at least what hippies call Indian folk music. As a friend of mine once described it, "It's a guy wanking on a single string of a sitar for 10 minutes, then he wanks on a different string for another 10 minutes, then goes back to wanking on the first string again, all the while a some guy bangs a simple rhythm on a drum, and some dude occasionally hits some finger cymbals." If you couldn't tell from the description, he thought it sucked, yet to those versed in it it was apparently one of the best songs and artists of the genre.
I bring this anecdote up to question the assumption the assumption that classical music is "pleasing," in whatever form that takes. How much of this comes from that we've been conditioned to believe that it is pleasing because that's what everyone has told us? I'm not saying that it's not, but I wonder how much of this is a "high art effect." i.e. "Everyone says this is good, so it must be good, so I must learn to like it, since everytime I say I don't, others say that I'm not appreciating it the right way."
We see this effect in the art world all the time. For example, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollack. They're shit. Pollack just threw paint at very large canvases in drunken fits, and Warhol outsourced the entire production of the art to his "factory." Warhol's talent and art, was in marketing himself. Yet, if you look at any modern art book, they'll be touted as "brilliant." Bullshit. It's people that were snowed and have too much invested in the lie to say the truth, that they were hacks. Just my $.0196 (adjusted for inflation) Umm... That would be deflation.
This isn't New World colonization. There was resources in the New World. Timber. Sugar. Coffee. Slaves. And of course, gold. There's nothing of value on Mars on anywhere else off "this rock."
When you find your solid gold asteroid, let me know.
You're right that there's little evidence to believe that something will evolve to replace it. More likely, we'll go extinct and then some other intelligent species might evolve, but given the billions of years evolution that previously took place, not very likely.
But there's two trite assumptions you've made that always annoy the hell out of me, because there's absolutely nothing to support them but a kind of quasi-prejudice. While at first glance, these two assumptions might seem seperate, they have the same root.
First you implied that somehow classical music is somehow superior to all other forms of music. Bullshit. Classical music was simply the popular music of the day. There's nothing magical about it. You described classical music as "very pleasing in its forms and the interplays of wavelengths." (Typically one describes audio as frequencies, but whatever.) Well geez, since every musical form has forms and interplay of frequencies. That's what distinguishes music from a steady tone. But your choice of aliens enjoying classical music is very telling. Over the years it has become perceived to be superior to all other forms of music because of the perception that "smart" and "successful" people listen to it. As the antithesis to classical music, rap is typically given. I suspect that the thought of many alien species finding rap music pleasing never entered your mind, because classical music is for winners and rap music is for losers. This is a very persistent view, even though there's no evidence, let alone anectodal evidence, to support it.
This leads me to the second assumption, which I already touched on. The assumption that aliens are somehow super intelligent/powerful. Basically, Klaatu from Day The Earth Stood Still. Why? What's the basis for this very common assumption? Simple. Some want to believe that someone will come down from the sky and solve our problems. That's absurd. Given that we have absolutely no evidence for any intelligent and technologically lifeform existing anywhere in the universe besides us, I would argue, that this leads to an obvious conclusion: that humanity is the most intelligent and technologically advanced lifeform in the universe. It has to be someone, so why not us? Oh. Right. That would be too depressing.
Evolution rewards fitness for the environment. Not intelligence. Not culture. Nothing but who can fuck the most. It's good to remember that in discussions like this.
Yeah, but they ants don't and they out number you untold billions to one.
Now mod me down for goring the sacred calf.
Let us apply our scarcity model for pricing for our post-scarcity commodity! And we can do this, because people expect it, for they are dumb.
And if you're the first person on the network, you could always... you know... look around.
Ignorance is a non issue in this case. It's easily remedied.
No. Absolutely not. The security is ready breached when the information was posted to any of them. The idea that someone how you can use one social net for one thing and another social net for another and never the two shall meet is pure fantasy. All it takes is for one person in on one network to search for you on the other, and the whole "security" comes crashing down. Actually, I didn't know how the site worked at all. I knew that it was a place where my friends were putting their photos on-line, and that to see those photos you had to join by giving an e-mail address based at my university. I had no idea that in addition to the photo sharing, the site encouraged sharing numerous other forms of information, or that the system encouraged others to provide this information about you. I certainly had no idea just how fast that mechanism could work. It's scary, it really is. That's why I got out.
It's very dangerous to judge this sort of issue based on your personal experiences, perceptions and prejudices. What may be obvious to you, or morally acceptable to you, may not be so to someone else.
Perhaps, but it's no one's fault that you were the only one who didn't know how it worked. You should have found out. Caveat Emptor.This isn't about personal morality, it's about the norms on a particular social net. If you don't like them, don't join that net.
Oh here's something for you think about: Your facebook profile? It still exists. Sign in again, and it all comes back just how you left it. Think about it.
The problem of your friends adding information to your profile is a problem of Facebook, not of social networking sites in general. You should have control over your own profile. Of course, you can't prevent someone from posting a picture and saying, "This is me with my good friend Anonymous Brave Guy! (He's on the left)." That happens all the time regardless of whether it occurs on a social networking site or not. Arguably it's easier to trace down connections among people because the links are explicit and contained in a relatively easy to use interface, but really, the photo scenario could have just as easily happened with any site.
You knew when you joined Facebook, that friends were going to show up in your social network, either through explcity invites or by posting things to your wall. That's the whole point of joining any social net. To say that you were shocked to find that your connections to your friends would be accessible is the strain credulity to the breaking point.
We have a fundamental disagreement about the purpose of social networking sites. To me, social networking sites are not mechanisms too distribute information securely. Instead social networking sites are mechanisms to find people with similar interests to you, and to expand your connections into/within subcultures.
I say, that if you want to control access to information, then don't put it up on the web and instead dole it out on an individual basis or through known secure channels. For instance, only a relatively few people know what my "professional" email address is. While it may be easily discoverable, it's not something I share with people outside of my research interests. Similarly, I don't share my personal email address with these people either. Social networking sites typically don't have fine grained access control, and so it's not something I would share via one of those.