The Dining Philosopher » The Internets

Facebook & Privacy

Nick — Fri, 28 May 2010 14:56:26 +0000

Facebook is a private company. It’s top priority is monetizing your usage of Facebook.com. So, and this doesn’t take a genius to figure out, it is tracking all that you do, collecting as much data as possible, and selling it.

If you don’t like Facebook’s privacy practices, go ahead and complain. But it shouldn’t result in front page news articles about people whining about something a private company did after they gave their rights away to that company. You all should have quit, instead. That would change their policy, real quick. That, and I wouldn’t have to wade through thousands of, “OMG FACEBOOK PRiVACY AleRT!” articles getting in the way of my real news stories.

Get off my internets, basically. I did read something interesting about Facebook a few days ago, though. It was about how Facebook addressed its lack of privacy features by provided multitudes of them. A potential aim of this (and I believe it), was to confuse users so that their settings would end up being inadequate.

What a great idea. “You want privacy settings? I’ll give you privacy settings.”

Updating WordPress

Nick — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:02:08 +0000

It wouldn’t be so tedious, if they would make things consistent. Well, maybe not consistent, but in-line with what I want.

First, when I have to update WordPress itself, I’m presented with a prompt to update on the control panel. There are two options, “Upgrade Automatically”, which I can’t use since I don’t like setting all my files to be writable by the web server. The other option is, “See vX.Y Details”. I click on that, which takes me a to a page (still on my website) which allows me to download a zip file. That doesn’t help much since I like to use the tarballs instead (Although, I have a bash script to update my installation for me). To get the tarball (without using the script), I have to go to the main WordPress website.

Upgrading the plugins is even more frustrating, since, for some reason, the plugin vendors insist on releasing a new version right after I install the last one. Multiply that by how many plugins I have, and it’s a pain. What’s frustrating about it, is that there are again two options: “Upgrade Automatically”, and “See version details”. Clicking on the details doesn’t lead to a download link. You have to go to the WordPress plugin page to get the latest zip file.

So, WordPress, here are some changes I would like to see:

Link to plugin’s latest zip file in the update notification on the plugin’s page
Link to WordPress’ latest tarball in the update notification in the control panel.

This would make it much easier for me to grab the links, switch to my ssh session and get them all at once.

WackoWiki Lives Up To It’s Name

Nick — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:22:21 +0000

I wanted a PHP/MySQL Wiki to use for my car site, and I crossed upon some crazy Russian made one called “WackoWiki”. I just installed WackoWiki try it out. I was quickly surprised to realize that after editing the main page once, every subsequent visit would log me out. It was very annoying. Then, after logging in a few times, I realized that I could also log in using arbitrary passwords.

Needless to say, I uninstalled it. MediaWiki it is. Darn.

Hosting Maintenance

Nick — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:09:27 +0000

Apparently my site host decided to schedule maintenance just over the last hour. Interesting. Now all the masses are scared off, and my profits are plummeting!

I need a bail out!

People still use AOL?

Nick — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:52:34 +0000

We dropped that shit back in the 20th century. Get with the program people, AOL sucks. It sucked when it came out, and it’s been going down hill ever since then. The only thing AOL has done good is throw around thousands of CDs whose sole function was to keep my desk free from condensation from my cold beverages.

They aren’t out of business yet? It’s 2009, guys, hurry up and fade away.