Facebook is still shady
I mentioned a couple days ago about Facebook changing their Terms of Service stating that they can keep your information forever regardless if you cancel your account or not and sublicence your information to third parties if they wish to do so.
14 days later, after Facebook made those changes to their Terms of Service, people finally catch on about these changes and now alot of people are unhappy. Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg further clarified the changes.
On Facebook, people post their information and control who they share it with. When you choose to share your photos, messages, or status with your friends, you’re granting Facebook a license so that the site can pass that information along to authorized friends. Without that license, we wouldn’t be help people share that information.
He continues on saying that the terms were changed this way because if a user chooses to close their profile, their friends still have that information about that user.
Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message… We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with out other services like e-mail work. This is one of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.”
I’m personally calling bullshit on this. I think it is the right of the individual to have the option to erase ALL information/history associated with their profile including any information about them that may be on their friends account. This type of feature shouldn’t be hard for them to implement at all, as any information your friends may get from you is pulled from your profile. Rather then come up with his lame excuse, Zuckerburg should give the Facebook community that option if/when they shut down their account.
I’m going to be keeping my eye on this story as this event unfolds. In all honesty, I’d be surprised if Facebook doesn’t proactively change their minds, or add in
YouTube will be adding in the ability for users to download videos
If you’re a frequenter visitor to YouTube, I’m sure you’ve asked yourself: “Is there a way I can download this video?” Well there have always been work-arounds and/or tools to let you extract embedded videos on websites, but now YouTube is planning allowing you to download the videos directly from their website.
President-elect Barack Obama’s ChangeDotGov YouTube Channel now has a “click to download” link right below the play button. Apparently this is a feature YouTube has been testing out, and considering that Obama’s channel has over 32k subscribers, it makes sense for YouTube to test something like this on one of the biggest subscribed channels they have.
Whether or not a user will be able to set download permissions for the content they upload to YouTube is unknown, most likely when it’s rolled out, you’ll have an option to enable/disable the download whenever you upload it.
It’s uncertain when YouTube will be rolling this feature to all videos, but one things for sure, it’s definately something that alot of people have requested.
Basically New York giving Amazon the finger. "Pay Up Bitch!"
A new New York state tax law (being called the “Amazon Tax”) has been given the thumbs up. New York Governor David Paterson signed a new state budget early 2008 making any online retailer accountable for collecting state sales tax for any resident of New York, as well of any New York based website that earns referrals from that retailer… In other words what this means is that since Amazon offers affiliate linking which allows any business (including New York) to advertise Amazon’s products on their own site, they (Amazon) have to pay the sales tax.
After discovering such law was signed, Amazon filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming that the company doesn’t have any offices or property in New York, or any physical representation soliciting their business there. Anybody can join Amazon’s referral program. the company does not track the origin of each referral.
In any case, Judge Eileen Bransten dismissed their lawsuit yesterday, including one brought from Overstock.com saying that their law doesn’t specifically target their companies and that the state is only trying to get them to do their fair share in tax collection.
Basically, what it means is Amazon and any other large online retailer will have to start collecting sales tax on all purchased made by New York residents through their sites, regardless of whether they got there through a New York-based affiliate link or not. I can imagine the outrage any New York resident is enduring escaping having to pay sales tax.
Amazon and Overstock are most likely planning to appeal the decisions. In any event, considering the recession and tighter budget every state is going through, most likely other states will follow New York in getting their fair share.
If that is the case, then there will be no other way to obtain merchandise tax free.
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The real AT&T as I see it.
I had posted about Comcrap imposing a monthly 250GB cap for internet usage. Now AT&T (American Telecommunications & Tapping) is following Comcast by doing the same.
I think we’ve reached a point where in today’s age, where there’s alot of content on the internet to explore, and with today’s society embracing high definition, this poses a big problem for users. For starters, high definition content uses significantly more bandwidth then standard definition. The higher the quality, the more bandwidth it takes to deliver that content to you.
When you have ISPs imposing broadband caps, essentially what they’re doing is kicking everybody in the balls. This especially can impact several online services like iTunes, Amazon’s Video on Demand, and Netflix as it prevents them from being able to do business by placing obstacles in their paths.
The cost of bandwidth should be very cheap now compared to what it was 5 years ago. Nearly every hosting company today offers packages that have unlimited bandwidth for your website(s), at a very reasonable price.
AT&T believes the caps are more than sufficient for average users, pointing out that a small subset of its customers — about 5 percent — uses a full 50 percent of the network’s bandwidth, slowing things down for the remaining majority.” ¹
If 5% of AT&T’s customer base is using 50% of their network, that number is only going to increase over time. If ISPs cannot handle the current flow of data going in and out their networks, they should be investing in upgrading their infrastructure instead of slapping their customers in the face. As technology evolves, you don’t see it slowing down, if anything it’s doing the exact opposite. Those ISP’s need to do the same.
Source:
- PC World: Broadband caps coming to AT&T
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Internet Explorer 8 might end up having 'private browsing'
Rumors are floating around that the next version of Internet Explorer [version 8] might incorporate “Private Browsing”. Apple’s Safari already has this feature. If implemented, IE would be the second browser to have this built in.
Microsoft filed two trademarks on July 30th:
CLEARTRACKS
IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: computer programs for accessing and using the Internet and the world wide web; and computer programs for deleting search history after accessing websites
INPRIVATE
IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: computer programs for accessing and using the Internet and the world wide web; computer programs for disabling the history and file caching features of a web browser; and computer software for notifying a user of a web browser when others are tracking web use and for controlling the information others can access about such use
The final build of Firefox 3.0 didn’t incorporate this feature, although it’s very possible that a future version of Firefox could build it in. There’s always been an option to clear ALL cached & private data upon exiting Firefox. While this option wouldn’t be exactly like what Internet Explorer and Safari have in mind, it’s a safer method all together. You can find plugins for Firefox that already do this.
Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 should be released any day now. It’ll be interesting to see whether or not this feature is incorporated. It wouldn’t surprise me if a plugin is available for IE7 that has this same feature.
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