As a proof of concept several years back, I wrote a "postscript virus". It was specifically designed to target print devices of course since I work in the print industry and postscript it most common on print devices compared to elsewhere. The purpose of the virus was to save itself to storage if available, print a page, scan the network for print devices, and then copy itself to them. I released it in to one printer in my test lab at work and within seconds, every device in the room (about 50 printers) was spitting out pages and pages. Turning them off an on would fix the ones without storage, but those with it would just restart after booting. Quite fun to watch. Took me about 2 hours to go through and clear it from all the devices though (formatting/clearing the appropriate storage one at a time with all other devices off to avoid reinfection)
Before anyone asks, no I don't have the code anymore. I could probably rewrite it, but have no intention to. Also, I don't think it'd work on all postscript printers - the device needs a pretty full implementation whereas many "home" printers simply don't implement the full spec. Mostly it was an "office MFP" attack.
Google Maps certainly doesn't, but my little in-car navigation system does. It has a little symbol on it (of a speed limit sign) displaying the current speed for the road I'm on. It seems remarkably accurate as well - when I pass a sign that says 100, I can watch the navi system flick over to the 100 sign with about 5 metres of accuracy most of the time. The only thing it doesn't handle is the variable speed parts of the Autobahn, which it tends to treat as unlimited even when it is being limited. As another replier pointed out, this map of speed limits comes from Navteq and is proprietary... having an open one would be very nice.
I think you're right though that Google must know the limits, since it does give very nice estimates... excluding the Autobahn, which it tends to estimate at the official "recommended" speed of 130km/hr rather than anything realistic (my average cruising speed on the Autobahn tends to be around 180km/hr, although I'll go up to cruising at 220 if conditions are good and the roads are clear; or as low as 80 if it's heavily raining and/or extremely busy)
Makes sense... do you have any plans to incorporate a "best guess" system in to the database as well? It strikes me that it'd be much easier to get participation by going through and marking the "probable" speed of pretty much every road in every worldwide city (starting with the most populous geeky ones (and in countries/states/whatever where there are "expected" speeds)), getting some software out there to people in those cities, and then asking them for correction info rather than "all" the info. As it is, if there were such a "best guess" system available, I'd use it and happily contribute corrections, but really wouldn't want to spend the time doing it from scratch.
To elaborate on that, most roads here in Germany have very predictable speeds depending on the type of road it is (in city, residential, out of city, Autobahn). If the system were prepopulated with the expected values for these roads, I could simply mark off the ones that aren't right, making it a tiny effort compared to the reverse.
Gun ownership isn't about crime, its just another right like trial by jury, speech and all that.
I'm probably getting a bit off topic here, but honestly we really don't want that right... if we did, we'd probably be pushing for it, but it seems like it'd cause more trouble than it's worth.
Interestingly, trial by jury is by no means standard here either - it's also generally undesired for the kinds of things we don't use it for, since we prefer to trust in someone rigidly determining the facts rather than the "emotional swing" of a group of untrained people.
And lastly, free speech, while a very important ideal in most European countries is also not generally considered a "right" here. It makes it difficult to legally handle things like slander, "nuisance" speech (yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre and all that (which yes, I know you can't do in the US either, but it's an annoying workaround to avoid it)), and most importantly hate speech. Here in Germany, I feel very free to do as I please, but the moment I use speech to infringe on the most basic of German fundamental laws, I'll be in trouble. That "most fundamental basic law" here is "Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar" (== "Human dignity is inviolable"), so directly and immediately, this means that hate speech - which by definition undermines the dignity of one's fellow man - is disallowed.
Again, I have no qualms with the way the US does things internally and I do believe that trying to change it to be more like here would result in absolute disaster, but it'd be equally disastrous to try and make European countries closer to the US way...
From: [wikispeedia.org]: People can put these data into GPS devices to regulate or warn of excessive speed. Google, Garmin, Teleatlas, even AAA aren't doing this, so please help out.
Do your navigation systems in the US really not tell you the current speed limit of the road you're on? That sounds a bit strange to me to be honest. It's the main feature that I use mine for - warning me when I'm over the speed limit. It's a very cheap off the shelf "Becker" unit as well, nothing special, and yet has speed limit info for pretty much every major and minor road in 8 countries, plus selected roads in the other 34 that it has maps for...
Or am I just totally misunderstanding what the site is for?
Isn't the Holy grail of highways, a highway that encourages people to drive as fast as possible and lets them do so safely? The purpose of a highway is to move people from A to B, safely and preferably as quickly as possible.
Yes indeed, but the article isn't about highways, it's about urban and suburban streets. Here in Germany, we have 30km/hr speed limits in residential streets (generally 50km/hr on normal city streets), but highways (the Autobahns) with no speed limit for large stretches between cities. Best of both worlds - safe, slow residential streets, sane city speeds, and highways that let you get where you're going at whatever speed you feel is "right" for you.
I'll accept the metric system here in the US if the EU accepts the right to own and bear arms.
Uh, why? We don't have significant violent crime in most of Europe (there are some countries that are exceptions, but in general...). Allowing more free access to weapons would only hurt the situation, not help it.
Note 1) I'm not actually against the US population being armed to the teeth, and fully agree that taking away the guns of the populace there now would be VERY bad (the honest people would hand them over, the criminals would keep them, and chaos would ensue).
Note 2) Note that I said "more free access" - a common misconception in the US is that it's impossible to own a gun privately in Europe. That's not true. The laws vary by country, and in most of Europe you can own a gun if you get a permit to own one. You just have no "right" to it. Also, in most countries, you're restricted from handguns except in very special circumstances. The main gun owners tend to be farmers, who would find their jobs much more difficult without a gun...
And let's take your other example. Lets say we could change sexual orientation. 99%+ of the population wouldn't be in the slightest bit interested, even if it were free and reversible. The 1% exception would be, again, motivated by self-loathing (think heavily closeted Fundies who view being gay as a curse).
Not entirely true... I'm a straight man, and would be very happy to be bisexual instead. As it is, I have NO interest in men at all, which means I reject advances from them and potentially miss out on some fun. If I were interested in men as well as women, it would increase my pool of potential partners.
So, I would happily change my sexual orientation given the chance, and it wouldn't be motivated by self-loathing at all.
When you're sending out resumes businesses expect it to be in Microsoft Office
Is that really true? I've been in the same company for the last 8 years, so don't really know in great detail what the job market is like these days, but I do recall that back then, companies never specified the file format. I always used PDF and no-one ever said anything about it.
Also, these days I am occasionally called upon to sort through a pile of electronically submitted CVs before handing them on to someone else, to "weed out" those without the appropriate technical skills (something which HR wouldn't do so well since they can only look for keywords without understanding the actual subject matter). When I do, I'd say around 75% of those that I get are PDF, 20% Microsoft Word, 3% ODT and 2% other (plain text, HTML etc). The only ones I automatically reject on file format are those that do not open on my main work computer (the VERY rare "exe" and so on). I do wonder if it may depend on the type of job and type of company though. I imagine the percentage of MS Word documents would be significantly higher for non-technical roles.
In the USA these days, the only way to avoid HFCS is to grow the vegetables yourself, collect rainwater to drink, and avoid meat.
Or move to a different country where the corn industry isn't dictating what people eat.
As someone that grew up in New Zealand and now lives in Europe, I still find this quite bizarre in the US. Sugar tastes better, is generally cheaper, and is (it seems) overall not as bad for you as HFCS. Is it just the corn industry in the US that causes this phenomenon, or is there something else to it?
Note, I don't mean to be insulting by this, I'm genuinely interested...
All true and nothing wrong with any of it. However, I believe that Dr. Spork's point was that it's not enough, not that they're not good measures. Anecdotally, I can see this here in the EU myself. We do all of these things, but yet power consumption of every individual and every company that I know continues to rise - most certainly slower than it would have without these things, but it's not stable, and definitely not decreasing. It's not a sufficient measure, and therefore further things need to be done rather than just saying "well, we're dealing with it, time to move on to something else".
Actually, 'average' is an ambiguous term which, according to context, may refer to a mean, a median, or even a mode.
That's what they always claimed in school, but I have never once in the real world seen "average" used to mean median or mode.
I see mode get used a lot when it also happens to coincide with a rounded mean. Such as "the average number of PCs per person in my department at work is two" (at a guess, the mean is somewhere around 1.9, and the mode is definitely 2).
But yeh, this kind of statement probably IS a rounded mean more than a mode in the speaker's head, so you're probably not wrong.
What might be interesting to see is what people call the "average" in daily speech when there's one huge outlier. So, if I got 30 PCs at work (my department has about 15 people), the mean would jump dramatically, and I really don't know if people would change their definition of the "average" to reflect the new mean, or stick with the mode.
Just tried a few proxies. From a Chinese proxy, I couldn't get to it. But from both Zimbabwe and Russia it was no problem. (of course, I am aware that a proxy may not be the best possible test, but it's easier than travelling there...)
These are the people who used French citizens to test out LSD on in the 1950's and 10 died, some jumping off buildings
Got a citation for that, 'cos that just sounds like an urban legend to me... LSD does NOT make people jump off buildings or I and many of my friends would have been dead a LONG time ago.
Yes, they should help you find a job if you don't have one. That benefits society at large. That's why many countries have government run job agencies (often tied in to the social benefits programmes, so your condition for receiving social benefits is proving that you're looking for a job).
health insurance,
Definitely, the happiest nations on earth tend to be those that have public healthcare...
provide my transportation
I would LOVE to see government provided and supported public transportation. If my taxes went up 0.05% and all the buses and trains became free, it'd be great.
and make sure I can do a few hobbies so that I do not have to pursue my happiness.
Public parks, playgrounds for children, celebratory fireworks displays on specific public holidays, public libraries, public sporting events and so on, yep.
Other than the transportation, I think most western countries already provide everything you said. And I'd be in favour of the transportation also...
if you are from Eu or from an Eu candidate status country, you can officially petition European Parliament.
Just to add to that: residents of EU member states and people who work for companies headquartered in the EU have an equal right to do so - not just citizens.
(as a resident of an EU country, but not a citizen, this is important for me, as it's one of the few political things I can do here - I'm not allowed to vote, but I can officially petition the EU parliament, and also get a say in some local affairs within the state of Germany that I live in as an employee of a company based here)
As long as you're not a douche, druggie, or moron, that would potentially damage my business, you have an equal opportunity to get employed
Define "druggie"... My facebook profile mentions quite clearly that I take LSD, and advocate others to do so (well, I use the words "psychedelic substance advocacy" in my list of interests). Would that disqualify me for a job from your point of view?
Just wondering really - I'm happily employed and well paid in my current position with plenty of room for moving up from where I am to even better things, so I'm not looking right now.
Bah, if video games had effected my generation when we were younger, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, eating pills and listening to repetitive music.
They are my children. They belong to me, not you, government, or any arbitrary third party.
Totally disagree. They do NOT belong to you at all. They belong foremost to themselves, and secondarily to the society of which they are a part. Just as I do, and just as you do. Therefore the primary educator should be (and pretty much can not fail to be) the individual themselves, and the secondary educator should be the society. By "the society" in this instance, I mean the state, since the state is the chosen representatives of the will of the society at large.
There used to be this thing called e-mail for that, back in the old days.
To quote myself on the post you clearly didn't finish reading:
A common response to this is something like: "Why not just use email?". Simply because I don't want to personally try to maintain a private database of people's email addresses, and also because if I only emailed them once every 2 to 3 years (i.e. when I'm going to come visit), there's a good chance that we wouldn't really remember each other. By having the "loose contact" that facebook provides, they may not be fresh in my memory, but they're at least on the radar.
Facebook is for attention whores who want other people to know details about their lives.... I know of 1 person with a facebook profile who isn't an attention whore, and they use it just so they can spy on others.
I have a facebook account, and am most definitely not an "attention whore". I spend a great deal of my life travelling around the world (for both work and pleasure), and find that facebook is a very good way to keep in loose contact with friends I've made around the world, but am unlikely to speak to regularly.
Next time I go to the New England area of the US for example, there's 4 or 5 people there who I'll be able to tell in advance that I'm coming and see if they want to meet up for a drink or two. Much better than knowing no-one there.
A common response to this is something like: "Why not just use email?". Simply because I don't want to personally try to maintain a private database of people's email addresses, and also because if I only emailed them once every 2 to 3 years (i.e. when I'm going to come visit), there's a good chance that we wouldn't really remember each other. By having the "loose contact" that facebook provides, they may not be fresh in my memory, but they're at least on the radar.
Its fucking retarded to talk about privacy when the whole point is giving out your information.
This however, I completely agree with. There's nothing on my facebook profile that I wouldn't be happy to announce to the world. Of course, I'm pretty open about myself in general, so my facebook profile does have pictures of me taking LSD, friends smoking pot, drunkenness at parties and so on. It doesn't bother me who sees these things. It also has things on there not related to partying or illegal mind expansion. I figure that anyone who sees it will see that I'm a complete person, not just a one dimensional character. I have characteristics that some may consider flaws (such as the occasional (but yes, rare) heavy drinking; and the also occasional (but not so rare) LSD use) and attempt to use against me; but I myself don't consider them flaws, so if others do, I think of that as their problem, not mine. If a potential employer were to find out about these things and then not hire me, then it's probably a company I wouldn't have been happy working for anyway (for reference, I've been drunk with my current boss more than once, and tripped with my last boss once - as long as it doesn't negatively affect my job, neither of them cared (and my last boss accepted that the LSD probably improves my work as long as I'm not actually on it while at work)).
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As a proof of concept several years back, I wrote a "postscript virus". It was specifically designed to target print devices of course since I work in the print industry and postscript it most common on print devices compared to elsewhere. The purpose of the virus was to save itself to storage if available, print a page, scan the network for print devices, and then copy itself to them. I released it in to one printer in my test lab at work and within seconds, every device in the room (about 50 printers) was spitting out pages and pages. Turning them off an on would fix the ones without storage, but those with it would just restart after booting. Quite fun to watch. Took me about 2 hours to go through and clear it from all the devices though (formatting/clearing the appropriate storage one at a time with all other devices off to avoid reinfection)
Before anyone asks, no I don't have the code anymore. I could probably rewrite it, but have no intention to. Also, I don't think it'd work on all postscript printers - the device needs a pretty full implementation whereas many "home" printers simply don't implement the full spec. Mostly it was an "office MFP" attack.
Google Maps certainly doesn't, but my little in-car navigation system does. It has a little symbol on it (of a speed limit sign) displaying the current speed for the road I'm on. It seems remarkably accurate as well - when I pass a sign that says 100, I can watch the navi system flick over to the 100 sign with about 5 metres of accuracy most of the time. The only thing it doesn't handle is the variable speed parts of the Autobahn, which it tends to treat as unlimited even when it is being limited.
As another replier pointed out, this map of speed limits comes from Navteq and is proprietary... having an open one would be very nice.
I think you're right though that Google must know the limits, since it does give very nice estimates... excluding the Autobahn, which it tends to estimate at the official "recommended" speed of 130km/hr rather than anything realistic (my average cruising speed on the Autobahn tends to be around 180km/hr, although I'll go up to cruising at 220 if conditions are good and the roads are clear; or as low as 80 if it's heavily raining and/or extremely busy)
Makes sense... do you have any plans to incorporate a "best guess" system in to the database as well? It strikes me that it'd be much easier to get participation by going through and marking the "probable" speed of pretty much every road in every worldwide city (starting with the most populous geeky ones (and in countries/states/whatever where there are "expected" speeds)), getting some software out there to people in those cities, and then asking them for correction info rather than "all" the info. As it is, if there were such a "best guess" system available, I'd use it and happily contribute corrections, but really wouldn't want to spend the time doing it from scratch.
To elaborate on that, most roads here in Germany have very predictable speeds depending on the type of road it is (in city, residential, out of city, Autobahn). If the system were prepopulated with the expected values for these roads, I could simply mark off the ones that aren't right, making it a tiny effort compared to the reverse.
Gun ownership isn't about crime, its just another right like trial by jury, speech and all that.
I'm probably getting a bit off topic here, but honestly we really don't want that right... if we did, we'd probably be pushing for it, but it seems like it'd cause more trouble than it's worth.
Interestingly, trial by jury is by no means standard here either - it's also generally undesired for the kinds of things we don't use it for, since we prefer to trust in someone rigidly determining the facts rather than the "emotional swing" of a group of untrained people.
And lastly, free speech, while a very important ideal in most European countries is also not generally considered a "right" here. It makes it difficult to legally handle things like slander, "nuisance" speech (yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre and all that (which yes, I know you can't do in the US either, but it's an annoying workaround to avoid it)), and most importantly hate speech. Here in Germany, I feel very free to do as I please, but the moment I use speech to infringe on the most basic of German fundamental laws, I'll be in trouble. That "most fundamental basic law" here is "Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar" (== "Human dignity is inviolable"), so directly and immediately, this means that hate speech - which by definition undermines the dignity of one's fellow man - is disallowed.
Again, I have no qualms with the way the US does things internally and I do believe that trying to change it to be more like here would result in absolute disaster, but it'd be equally disastrous to try and make European countries closer to the US way...
From: [wikispeedia.org]:
People can put these data into GPS devices to regulate or warn of excessive speed. Google, Garmin, Teleatlas, even AAA aren't doing this, so please help out.
Do your navigation systems in the US really not tell you the current speed limit of the road you're on? That sounds a bit strange to me to be honest. It's the main feature that I use mine for - warning me when I'm over the speed limit. It's a very cheap off the shelf "Becker" unit as well, nothing special, and yet has speed limit info for pretty much every major and minor road in 8 countries, plus selected roads in the other 34 that it has maps for...
Or am I just totally misunderstanding what the site is for?
Isn't the Holy grail of highways, a highway that encourages people to drive as fast as possible and lets them do so safely? The purpose of a highway is to move people from A to B, safely and preferably as quickly as possible.
Yes indeed, but the article isn't about highways, it's about urban and suburban streets. Here in Germany, we have 30km/hr speed limits in residential streets (generally 50km/hr on normal city streets), but highways (the Autobahns) with no speed limit for large stretches between cities. Best of both worlds - safe, slow residential streets, sane city speeds, and highways that let you get where you're going at whatever speed you feel is "right" for you.
I'll accept the metric system here in the US if the EU accepts the right to own and bear arms.
Uh, why? We don't have significant violent crime in most of Europe (there are some countries that are exceptions, but in general...). Allowing more free access to weapons would only hurt the situation, not help it.
Note 1) I'm not actually against the US population being armed to the teeth, and fully agree that taking away the guns of the populace there now would be VERY bad (the honest people would hand them over, the criminals would keep them, and chaos would ensue).
Note 2) Note that I said "more free access" - a common misconception in the US is that it's impossible to own a gun privately in Europe. That's not true. The laws vary by country, and in most of Europe you can own a gun if you get a permit to own one. You just have no "right" to it. Also, in most countries, you're restricted from handguns except in very special circumstances. The main gun owners tend to be farmers, who would find their jobs much more difficult without a gun...
Sally sells seashells by the seashore
Works better with "she"... as in, "She sells seashells by the seashore, the shells she sells are seashore shells I'm sure".
And let's take your other example. Lets say we could change sexual orientation. 99%+ of the population wouldn't be in the slightest bit interested, even if it were free and reversible. The 1% exception would be, again, motivated by self-loathing (think heavily closeted Fundies who view being gay as a curse).
Not entirely true... I'm a straight man, and would be very happy to be bisexual instead. As it is, I have NO interest in men at all, which means I reject advances from them and potentially miss out on some fun. If I were interested in men as well as women, it would increase my pool of potential partners.
So, I would happily change my sexual orientation given the chance, and it wouldn't be motivated by self-loathing at all.
When you're sending out resumes businesses expect it to be in Microsoft Office
Is that really true? I've been in the same company for the last 8 years, so don't really know in great detail what the job market is like these days, but I do recall that back then, companies never specified the file format. I always used PDF and no-one ever said anything about it.
Also, these days I am occasionally called upon to sort through a pile of electronically submitted CVs before handing them on to someone else, to "weed out" those without the appropriate technical skills (something which HR wouldn't do so well since they can only look for keywords without understanding the actual subject matter). When I do, I'd say around 75% of those that I get are PDF, 20% Microsoft Word, 3% ODT and 2% other (plain text, HTML etc). The only ones I automatically reject on file format are those that do not open on my main work computer (the VERY rare "exe" and so on).
I do wonder if it may depend on the type of job and type of company though. I imagine the percentage of MS Word documents would be significantly higher for non-technical roles.
In the USA these days, the only way to avoid HFCS is to grow the vegetables yourself, collect rainwater to drink, and avoid meat.
Or move to a different country where the corn industry isn't dictating what people eat.
As someone that grew up in New Zealand and now lives in Europe, I still find this quite bizarre in the US. Sugar tastes better, is generally cheaper, and is (it seems) overall not as bad for you as HFCS. Is it just the corn industry in the US that causes this phenomenon, or is there something else to it?
Note, I don't mean to be insulting by this, I'm genuinely interested...
www.twoneutronsonecup.com?
Here... The neutrons are doing nasty things, but unfortunately you'll need to run a magical TV style "enhancer" program on it to see anything.
All true and nothing wrong with any of it. However, I believe that Dr. Spork's point was that it's not enough, not that they're not good measures. Anecdotally, I can see this here in the EU myself. We do all of these things, but yet power consumption of every individual and every company that I know continues to rise - most certainly slower than it would have without these things, but it's not stable, and definitely not decreasing. It's not a sufficient measure, and therefore further things need to be done rather than just saying "well, we're dealing with it, time to move on to something else".
Actually, 'average' is an ambiguous term which, according to context, may refer to a mean, a median, or even a mode.
That's what they always claimed in school, but I have never once in the real world seen "average" used to mean median or mode.
I see mode get used a lot when it also happens to coincide with a rounded mean. Such as "the average number of PCs per person in my department at work is two" (at a guess, the mean is somewhere around 1.9, and the mode is definitely 2).
But yeh, this kind of statement probably IS a rounded mean more than a mode in the speaker's head, so you're probably not wrong.
What might be interesting to see is what people call the "average" in daily speech when there's one huge outlier. So, if I got 30 PCs at work (my department has about 15 people), the mean would jump dramatically, and I really don't know if people would change their definition of the "average" to reflect the new mean, or stick with the mode.
Just tried a few proxies. From a Chinese proxy, I couldn't get to it. But from both Zimbabwe and Russia it was no problem. (of course, I am aware that a proxy may not be the best possible test, but it's easier than travelling there...)
These are the people who used French citizens to test out LSD on in the 1950's and 10 died, some jumping off buildings
Got a citation for that, 'cos that just sounds like an urban legend to me... LSD does NOT make people jump off buildings or I and many of my friends would have been dead a LONG time ago.
The State should also get me a job,
Yes, they should help you find a job if you don't have one. That benefits society at large. That's why many countries have government run job agencies (often tied in to the social benefits programmes, so your condition for receiving social benefits is proving that you're looking for a job).
health insurance,
Definitely, the happiest nations on earth tend to be those that have public healthcare...
provide my transportation
I would LOVE to see government provided and supported public transportation. If my taxes went up 0.05% and all the buses and trains became free, it'd be great.
and make sure I can do a few hobbies so that I do not have to pursue my happiness.
Public parks, playgrounds for children, celebratory fireworks displays on specific public holidays, public libraries, public sporting events and so on, yep.
Other than the transportation, I think most western countries already provide everything you said. And I'd be in favour of the transportation also...
if you are from Eu or from an Eu candidate status country, you can officially petition European Parliament.
Just to add to that: residents of EU member states and people who work for companies headquartered in the EU have an equal right to do so - not just citizens.
(as a resident of an EU country, but not a citizen, this is important for me, as it's one of the few political things I can do here - I'm not allowed to vote, but I can officially petition the EU parliament, and also get a say in some local affairs within the state of Germany that I live in as an employee of a company based here)
As long as you're not a douche, druggie, or moron, that would potentially damage my business, you have an equal opportunity to get employed
Define "druggie"... My facebook profile mentions quite clearly that I take LSD, and advocate others to do so (well, I use the words "psychedelic substance advocacy" in my list of interests). Would that disqualify me for a job from your point of view?
Just wondering really - I'm happily employed and well paid in my current position with plenty of room for moving up from where I am to even better things, so I'm not looking right now.
Bah, if video games had effected my generation when we were younger, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, eating pills and listening to repetitive music.
Oh....
They are my children. They belong to me, not you, government, or any arbitrary third party.
Totally disagree. They do NOT belong to you at all. They belong foremost to themselves, and secondarily to the society of which they are a part. Just as I do, and just as you do. Therefore the primary educator should be (and pretty much can not fail to be) the individual themselves, and the secondary educator should be the society. By "the society" in this instance, I mean the state, since the state is the chosen representatives of the will of the society at large.
Trust me, we are.
There used to be this thing called e-mail for that, back in the old days.
To quote myself on the post you clearly didn't finish reading:
A common response to this is something like: "Why not just use email?". Simply because I don't want to personally try to maintain a private database of people's email addresses, and also because if I only emailed them once every 2 to 3 years (i.e. when I'm going to come visit), there's a good chance that we wouldn't really remember each other. By having the "loose contact" that facebook provides, they may not be fresh in my memory, but they're at least on the radar.
Mazda had "rotary engines" back in the '70s; they were actually gasoline motors.
Had? Wouldn't "have had ... since" be more accurate? (oh, and it's since 1963, so the '60s...)
Facebook is for attention whores who want other people to know details about their lives....
I know of 1 person with a facebook profile who isn't an attention whore, and they use it just so they can spy on others.
I have a facebook account, and am most definitely not an "attention whore". I spend a great deal of my life travelling around the world (for both work and pleasure), and find that facebook is a very good way to keep in loose contact with friends I've made around the world, but am unlikely to speak to regularly.
Next time I go to the New England area of the US for example, there's 4 or 5 people there who I'll be able to tell in advance that I'm coming and see if they want to meet up for a drink or two. Much better than knowing no-one there.
A common response to this is something like: "Why not just use email?". Simply because I don't want to personally try to maintain a private database of people's email addresses, and also because if I only emailed them once every 2 to 3 years (i.e. when I'm going to come visit), there's a good chance that we wouldn't really remember each other. By having the "loose contact" that facebook provides, they may not be fresh in my memory, but they're at least on the radar.
Its fucking retarded to talk about privacy when the whole point is giving out your information.
This however, I completely agree with. There's nothing on my facebook profile that I wouldn't be happy to announce to the world. Of course, I'm pretty open about myself in general, so my facebook profile does have pictures of me taking LSD, friends smoking pot, drunkenness at parties and so on. It doesn't bother me who sees these things. It also has things on there not related to partying or illegal mind expansion. I figure that anyone who sees it will see that I'm a complete person, not just a one dimensional character. I have characteristics that some may consider flaws (such as the occasional (but yes, rare) heavy drinking; and the also occasional (but not so rare) LSD use) and attempt to use against me; but I myself don't consider them flaws, so if others do, I think of that as their problem, not mine. If a potential employer were to find out about these things and then not hire me, then it's probably a company I wouldn't have been happy working for anyway (for reference, I've been drunk with my current boss more than once, and tripped with my last boss once - as long as it doesn't negatively affect my job, neither of them cared (and my last boss accepted that the LSD probably improves my work as long as I'm not actually on it while at work)).