Put some clothes on!

So, I was clearing out the inbox for my "junk" email account, and I came across a message from Knox urging people to submit their favorite memories of the college's outgoing president, who is retiring at the end of the academic year. Here is a screenshot of the message. Pretty standard, no? I just have one question: is that a woman in a bra behind Roger in the library? I mean, maybe it's some sort of sports top or something. Maybe. But still. That's the library!

The Financial Times is stupid

So, if a nonsubscriber (like myself) goes to the Financial Times' website and tries to click through to an article, it takes you to the page for the article, but the page remains blank and a box pops up instead saying, "FT.com articles are only available to registered users and subscribers. Register FREE now for increased access" and then there's a link that says "Register Here." If you click to close the box, it just takes you back to the front page.

BUT, if you search with Google and it returns an article from FT, you can just click straight through and read the article, no problem. Do a site-specific search and it's even the exact same results you get from the search on their own website, except you can actually read the articles.

Also, if you try to copy and paste so much as one sentence from one of their articles (say, to pull out a quote and comment on it in a blog post), when you try to paste it, you get the following:

Please use the link to reference this article. Do not copy & paste articles which is a breach of FT.com's Ts&Cs (www.ft.com/servicestools/help/terms) and is copyright infringement. Send a link for free or email ftsales.support@ft.com to purchase rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5bb39488-ea99-11df-b28d-00144feab49a.html#ixzz15VXwqCMB

The development of a monetary system to succeed “Bretton Woods II”, launched in 1971, will take time.

Take note: the final sentence there is the one I was trying, for the purpose of this exercise, to copy-paste. So not only can anyone easily circumnavigate their subscriber wall, but they piss and moan about not copy-pasting their articles, while still allowing you to do it. There is nothing stopping me from deleting that little please-use-the-link paragraph.

Seriously, FT, a big part of blogging is pulling quotes from news stories to comment on them. The message doesn't happen when I try to copy-paste a single character, or even a couple of words, so clearly you have the ability to specify how much is too much to copy and paste; a single sentence does not an article make, but it does make a nice teaser quote to get an interested party to come read the actual article. And if you're that worried about people copying your articles wholesale, don't allow them to do it at all. You clearly already know how to mess with the copy-paste function, so you can't be entirely computer-illiterate. The way it works now, it only ticks off people who are legitimately trying to discuss your article, and does nothing to actually prevent people from stealing it.

The way it stands, you've managed to tick off legit reader/commenters like myself, while at the same time doing nothing to stop actual thieves. And now, instead of a blog post discussing your article, I have written a blog post about how stupid your website is. Well done.

How Baloo Ruined Veteran's Day

So, I've seen a couple people quoting John 15:13 in their Facebook statuses for Veteran's Day. It's a fitting quote: "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."

But all I can think of, every time I see it, is that scene from Disney's Jungle Book. You know what I'm talking about, don't lie.



And then he jumps up and is all okay and everybody's happy and they sing. No solemnity whatsoever. Dammit, Baloo, you're ruining Veteran's Day for me!

Although, I don't really like being solemn anyway, so I guess I don't really mind all that much.

Facebook apps will eat your children

Hi, everyone. Yes, I'm still alive. I've been meaning to get back here and post for a while, but every time I thought of something I wanted to write about, it was like, really? That is what's making you break your (accidental) blog-silence after this long? So finally I figured, screw it, it's got to be something, may as well be this. So here, a post about, yes, Facebook.

So, ragging on Facebook for being a menace to people's privacy seems to have become the thing to do. To me, some of these complaints seem legit; others, not so much. But sometimes, things just aren't that big a deal. And furthermore, there comes a point when the fault is no longer Facebook's, and people need to take responsibility for their own online activity. I've seen a number of stories about this latest issue, but this Huffington Post article seems to give it a pretty good overview.

Readers Digest Condensed Version: popular apps like Farmville have been "leaking" their users' personally identifiable information to ad companies, namely their FB ID numbers.

And apparently, this is a HUGE PROBLEM. HUGE. Do you realize what potentially lethal information they get from this? They get - brace yourself - your name. Scary, right?

According to the EFF guy quoted in the article, "The problem is that ad companies can know who you are at all." But the thing is, well, they really don't. I mean, unless your name is Snotface McJingleheimer Hammerpants, your name probably isn't that memorable to most people. A lot of times, it's not even a uniquely identifying feature. Try it - search for "Andrea Johnston" on Facebook. I'm not by a long shot the only one that comes up. I know three different people named Sarah Williams. Even my mother's name, which is relatively unique, comes up with more than one hit on Facebook. Names are not as unique as people think. If you do have a fairly unique name and you're particularly worried about it, you can even change your Facebook name; I know people that go by first name + last initial, first name + middle name, or even their D&D character names. There's no reason you have to use your complete, real name.

And even if you do, that's still all they are guaranteed to get. If they get anything else, it's your fault.

Now, I realize there have been complaints about how complicated Facebook's privacy controls are, but the current configuration, if you actually look at the page and read through your options, is really not that difficult. I stand by what I said. As things currently stand, if you fuck up your Facebook privacy settings, it is not Facebook's fault. It is yours, because you didn't read the options, and therefore you didn't set up your privacy controls properly. If you can't read, you shouldn't be on the internet. If you can't take the time to understand what you're doing with your personal information, you shouldn't be on Facebook. It's as simple as that.

Everything on your profile, including information you put up, things you "like," and things you post, has the option to be visible to "Everyone," "Friends of Friends," "Friends Only," or some combination of people and/or friend lists that you can choose yourself.

Now, if you have some portion of your profile set so that "Everyone" can see it, then yes, that information will be available to anyone who navigates to your page, which would be possible with your FB ID number. Or by searching for you and clicking on your name. It's not hard.*

So what's a concerned citizen to do? Is there some arcane magic spell one must know to protect their information? Well, no, actually, it's much more simple than that. Just don't set anything to be visible to "Everyone." Then, voila, even if an ad company tries to get info from your page, or if some creeper manages to arrive there, all they can see is your name, gender, and profile pic. For even more caution, you can refuse to list your gender on your profile (I did), and you can make your profile pic be something that's not your identifiable face. (Closeup of your left eye, picture of your cat, snapshot of the Eiffel Tower from your trip to Paris - there are any number of options.) And as I said before, you can go by something that is not your real, complete name. Now, no one who is not friends with you, be it an ad company or an internet creeper, has access to any identifying information whatsoever about you. And all this can be completed in less than five minutes with a few clicks of your mouse.**

As far as applications go, there is also a page in your privacy settings specifically dedicated to them. Some apps require you to let them access certain parts of your profile; they tell you this when you add them, and you can choose to allow them access and use them, or just not use them. I can assure you, no Facebook app is that necessary. Others have optional settings that you can control, also from this page. This is also the page where the one legitimately creepy factor shows up: apps your friends use can see some of your information, whether you have added them or not. BUT, never fear, you also have control over this: in the "Info accessible through your friends" section, just uncheck every box, and then they can no longer see that info. I'll agree that the default setting should not be to share this info automatically, but if you actually read the updates, they do tell you when they add things like this. And as I said, it is very simple to just uncheck every box. Issue solved.

As to the larger issue, I'm not saying that Facebook is always blameless, and I'm not saying that it's not a greedy, money-hungry company looking to make dough off advertising to its users. But that is what the internet (and indeed, a lot of modern media) is all about. They (and their advertisers) aren't out to steal your identity, and it is in their best interest to make sure that people who are don't have access to your info. And if you properly set up your privacy settings, they won't have the required info to do so anyway. As the guy said at the end of the article, "the worst harm is that someone delivers to you a more targeted ad." And if you don't want that to happen, you can just do like I did and install adblock, and you'll never see ads on Facebook anyway.

tl;dr: Stop whining and take responsibility for your own information.


<sub>*Unless you've set your profile not to come up in searches, which you can also do without too much difficulty, from the "Privacy Settings" page.

**It will take longer if you go to the trouble of making friend lists and customizing each setting, but if you're in a hurry, it is very easy to just set everything to "Friends Only," and that will have you covered for a start. You can go back and change it later, if you so desire, when you've got more time to tweak things.</sub>

nothing of interest, I'm afraid

I was going to write a blog post yesterday, about something which I'm sure was very interesting, but then I had to do homework and I forgot what it was.

My life is boring lately, so I have nothing to write about.

Well, not boring. Just not interesting in ways that translate to blog-posts.

Classes are going well. There's a party this weekend. That's pretty much it. More to come if I ever come up with something interesting again.

I'm sure I will. I just have to start paying attention to the news again.

I'm rambling. I should be in bed. Good night, all!

um...

So, I'm sitting here on the couch, watching PBS Create, halfheartedly surfing teh interwebz and trying to decide if I should get some more Goldfish crackers or just go to bed. My brother, lying on the other end of the couch, is gently snoring, having long ago fallen asleep. Just as I finally decide against the Goldfish, Michael sits up, eyes still closed, and says (perfectly clearly), "Das ist gut, ja?"* then lies back down and resumes snoring.

O_o

_{*Forgive me if that is horribly misspelled; my scant German study was brief and long ago.}

mess

I haven't been able to sleep at night recently. I stay up all night doing nothing of interest or importance on the computer, and then when I hear the alarm clocks start going off in the morning, I quickly turn off the lights and try to fall asleep before everyone gets up and sees that I stayed up all night again. (I'm trying to set a good example — or at least not set a bad one — for Michael and Dakota, you see.) When I finally do fall asleep, I sleep all morning and wake up around eleven if I'm lucky and then I feel like a slug for the rest of the day, and it's so hard to get anything done. It's pretty much the opposite of the first part of last week.

This creates two problems: 1) I have things I really need to be doing that aren't getting done, and 2) staying up all night on the computer makes me feel angsty. I'm revisiting trains of thought I thought I'd thoroughly worn out in high school, and they don't satisfy me anymore, but nothing else does either, and that makes me angstier still. It's meta-angst.

I think the problem here is my protracted transition from summer back to school, partially caused and then compounded by the unexpected developments and general chaos of the past week or so, the biggest chunk of which is the loss of my room. Okay, to explain:

Through a long series of events which is not mine to relate here, my cousin Dakota, who is fifteen, has moved in with us for the time being, and is living in my room. Which is perfectly fine by me, since I hardly use it at all, even when I am home, and I'm leaving for school very shortly anyway. However, this is what really began all the upheaval for me, because it's one thing to clean out Michael's room (which we did for the new school year), put away what he wants to keep and throw away what he doesn't. It's quite another to clean out three years' worth of stuff from my room that's never really gotten put away, since I'm only home during the summers and mostly just use it as storage. Turning it back into a usable living space for someone who's not me (meaning I have to put all my little knickknacks and things somewhere out of the way so she'll have room to live in there and not feel crowded out by somebody else's junk) was pretty much a task of biblical proportions.

And of course, the great difficulty is, I now have all this stuff that I've taken out of my room so she'll have a place for her stuff to go in, and now what do I do with it? Most of it I'm keeping and taking to school, so it's not like I can just put it all in garbage bags and be rid of it, but a lot of it (namely clothes, shoes, etc.) I'm still using, and will be until at most a day or two before I leave, which isn't for another week yet. So I'm sleeping on the couch in the living room, my clean clothes are stacked up in an open suitcase downstairs, my shoes are in three different corners of the upstairs, and I've just basically spread myself all over the house. Which is exactly what we're trying to get the other two, especially Michael, not to do, so now I feel like a giant hypocrite, telling him he can't leave his backpack in the living room while I sit digging through my pile of laundry next to the couch.

It also means things are just incredibly cluttered. Much as I try to keep all my stuff organized and together, without a place to actually put it away, it just doesn't work. This is compounded by the fact that I did so much cleaning, organizing, and putting away last week in Michael's room and mine/Dakota's, that now I'm thoroughly sick of it, and this is further not helped by the sheer size of this mess. Sure, it's just one person's junk, but now instead of cleaning one small 10x12 room at a time, I have to clean basically every other room in the house. And that means the big rooms: the living room, family room, and the kitchen. And I have to clean them up without having any real place to put my stuff. I'm going in circles here. But you see my dilemma, yes?

It's the kind of mess that stresses me out, and if you know me, you'll know that those are few and far between; I'm usually quite alright with a certain level of controlled chaos in my life. But that is chaos in my room, my own personal space, not the house's public spaces. This chaos, being out where everybody sees it, is not controlled to my satisfaction, and so it's making me lash out and obsessively organize everything else I can get my hands on. I've been compulsively picking up after the kids, barking at them to put their things away, making sure their homework is done and put in its proper folder, things like that. I've been planning and cooking evening meals each day just for the calming effect of having a sit down dinner where we all sit and talk about how our day went. I've been doing dishes with far more relish than normal, because it is a task I can finish, and the sight of the clean, empty countertop is just so goddamned soothing. I've been doing the laundry voluntarily and asking to do the grocery shopping, because, again, these are small tasks that I can finish, and that makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something. I've turned into a perfect little housewife, and it doesn't even bother me, except the house is still a mess and I can't really fix it until I leave. How irksome.