You just nailed my biggest question around the whole project:
"With a system like diaspora, paranoid people could have a websocial-life without worrying about Zuckerberg bigbrothering them."
I know privacy is the whole raison d'être of Diaspora in the first place, but as long as seeds are on the public internet and can share data between them, I'm not convinced this really cracks that nut. What am I missing? Just the ability to configure which seeds can access your data? But if one of the seeds that you share with allows has a more open policy, wouldn't your data still be vulnerable? Just seems like at the end of the day, social networking is one big pool of herpes. Whatever you expose/share is going to get dirty somehow.
"My assumption is that they ask/force people to take down images and videos that show extremely reckless illegal activity..."
Agreed, for the most part. IANA lawyer, but I did just read the T&C's here:
http://tickets2.burningman.com/info.php?i=2386
They make it pretty clear that pics/video you take (and even post) for PERSONAL use is all well and good. They don't seem interested at all. It's the NON-personal ($$$) stuff they're getting uptight about. In other words, "don't make money using our name without letting us know so we can wet our beak too." And the third party stuff reads like this:
"If you put your stuff on YouTube, and someone grabs it and puts it in a documentary, we're going to sue those people." I dunno...maybe I'm oversimplifying here, but I don't have much of a problem with any of it...?
Well...technically Gmail is still Beta too. Maybe if Google is just going to leave all of their products in Beta, they need to define categories of Beta. Like, "This one is REALLY Beta" vs. "We're going to call this Beta just so you don't sue us, but really it's pretty much done."
I once implemented "Homie don't play dat" quite by mistake. One of those, "the users haven't defined this error but I have to put some string here in the mean time" things. Never did go back and clean it up either.
My job forces us to use Lenova-made StinkPads - erm, ThinkPads. Honestly, I don't care WHAT operating system they do or don't sell with, these things are garbage anyway. I'm on hard drive #3, motherboard #2 in just a couple of years. I'd drop-kick the damn thing out my 5th floor window, but the prize would be another p.o.s. Lenova anyway so there's no point. Seriously, there's no reason to spend your own money on a ThinkPad anyway.
I remember this project as well, but to be fair it wasn't run by Marriott. It was a joint project with several hotel chains (including Hilton) and, as you point out, car rental agencies. It was run by a subsidiary of Sabre (then part of American Airlines), and those guys botched the project every way conceivable. Every client was fooled, and they all lost a fortune. The project was eventually scrapped.
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You just nailed my biggest question around the whole project: "With a system like diaspora, paranoid people could have a websocial-life without worrying about Zuckerberg bigbrothering them." I know privacy is the whole raison d'être of Diaspora in the first place, but as long as seeds are on the public internet and can share data between them, I'm not convinced this really cracks that nut. What am I missing? Just the ability to configure which seeds can access your data? But if one of the seeds that you share with allows has a more open policy, wouldn't your data still be vulnerable? Just seems like at the end of the day, social networking is one big pool of herpes. Whatever you expose/share is going to get dirty somehow.
"My assumption is that they ask/force people to take down images and videos that show extremely reckless illegal activity..." Agreed, for the most part. IANA lawyer, but I did just read the T&C's here: http://tickets2.burningman.com/info.php?i=2386 They make it pretty clear that pics/video you take (and even post) for PERSONAL use is all well and good. They don't seem interested at all. It's the NON-personal ($$$) stuff they're getting uptight about. In other words, "don't make money using our name without letting us know so we can wet our beak too." And the third party stuff reads like this: "If you put your stuff on YouTube, and someone grabs it and puts it in a documentary, we're going to sue those people." I dunno...maybe I'm oversimplifying here, but I don't have much of a problem with any of it...?
Well...technically Gmail is still Beta too. Maybe if Google is just going to leave all of their products in Beta, they need to define categories of Beta. Like, "This one is REALLY Beta" vs. "We're going to call this Beta just so you don't sue us, but really it's pretty much done."
I once implemented "Homie don't play dat" quite by mistake. One of those, "the users haven't defined this error but I have to put some string here in the mean time" things. Never did go back and clean it up either.
My job forces us to use Lenova-made StinkPads - erm, ThinkPads. Honestly, I don't care WHAT operating system they do or don't sell with, these things are garbage anyway. I'm on hard drive #3, motherboard #2 in just a couple of years. I'd drop-kick the damn thing out my 5th floor window, but the prize would be another p.o.s. Lenova anyway so there's no point. Seriously, there's no reason to spend your own money on a ThinkPad anyway.
I remember this project as well, but to be fair it wasn't run by Marriott. It was a joint project with several hotel chains (including Hilton) and, as you point out, car rental agencies. It was run by a subsidiary of Sabre (then part of American Airlines), and those guys botched the project every way conceivable. Every client was fooled, and they all lost a fortune. The project was eventually scrapped.