What does that mean, anyway?
Contact: me -at- wrathofblog -dot- com
Contact: me -at- wrathofblog -dot- com
This is for my brother.
pbh3:
Wrath of Blog
Facebook IPO filing has a downside, too
Look. I can’t resist. Let us consider:
But when you get down to it, as a colleague of mine said, “[facebook is] a thin coat of paint over a massive data-mining operation.”
Probably even an unprecedented one. Never before have we collectively turned over so much for so little.
We are a generation of suckers. It’s not just Facebook. We turn over our private lives willy-nilly to the internet. One of these days, we’re going to regret that. I don’t know how, but data and access to it creates power. And somebody or some people are going to find some extremely disturbing ways to cash out on that.
Time and again, the company has made private information public without notice or consent, or otherwise broken its pacts with users.
And yet people don’t care. It’s quite amazing.The article goes on to talk about people who are concerned about privacy and aggressive ads and stuff, saying “I don’t know why I’m still on Facebook” and yet. And yet.
There’s no other place where you can simultaneously broadcast to your mom, nephew, best friend and high school chum.
And somehow people think that’s a good thing? Do we really all have so much info that needs broadcasting to everyone? I’d like someone to explain the psychology and sociology of that to me. That seems like a totally stupid idea to me.
Maybe everybody secretly wants to be a Kardashian.
“ If you’re in a net, something has already gone terribly wrong. ”
Jon Stewart isn’t cutting Romney any slack over poor wording | an SFGate.com blog
Well, at least Romney didn’t say that poverty is the fault of the very poor and if they weren’t so lazy they’d pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. One must be grateful for the very, very small items.
The total lack of compassion in the GOP is quite overwhelming.
If the Republican primaries end up choosing Newt, I will lose all respect for that party. They will have collapsed into an ironic joke about themselves.
“ If you are pro-religion, you would support the separation of church and state. Fundamentalists are only pro-THEIR religion. ”
That’s a pretty succinct way to put it.
“ I find it ironic that so many Americans would so quickly come to trust for-profit companies - companies that must under the law hold the interests of its shareholders above all else - over their democratically-elected government to regulate the Internet. ”
The SOPA-PIPA Saga - Freedom of Speech vs. Net Neutrality | Stanford Center for Internet and Society
I find it more disturbing than ironic that people implicitly and explicitly trust these companies, especially given evidence to the contrary, but fair point.
People who care about the democratic process should worry about the effectiveness by which companies like Google and Wikipedia appear to have leveraged their reputation as unbiased authorities of information to shape and mold public opinions. If they have the will and means to mobilize opinion, what is not to prevent them from discriminating their content in line with their corporate interests?
As we’ve seen with Google’s actions in social search lately, there’s nothing to prevent them from discriminating their content, and in fact, that seems to be an acceptable corporate goal to maximize profit.
Continuing:
While I cheer on the defeat of SOPA-PIPA, … I also have no false hopes that my interests on the Net can be best guaranteed by the likes of Google or Wikipedia or Facebook.
Well, at least there’s one guy out there who has thought all this through.
Tennessee Anti-Bullying Law Change Could Allow Students To Speak Out Against Gays For Religious Reasons
Oh dear god. These people are actually serious about doing this. How can people think that hiding hate speech behind religion is a good idea?
(via The Huffington Post)
There’s absolutely no way that this ends well. What a shameful thing.
Wat — Destroy All Software Talks
A video of programming humor to begin the morning. I really should have seen the end of this coming :D
How does Ravelry make money?
OK, OK - also. Not ALL Internet companies are dicks in need of morality lessons. The very smart, nice folks at Ravelry are some of my favorite entrepreneurs/coder/people. I’m not the only person who loves them, their fan base is ginormous. I wish more internet companies were customer-oriented, ethical and innovative.
