Did you know that in Nova Scotia, farmers get 80 cents per food dollar spent when selling directly to customers, like at the farmers’ market, compared to 9 cents when selling to retailers? (The Coast, July 15 2010)
Facebook’s Friendship Page Feature Gives Everyone New Spying Capabilities!
Facebook rolled out a creepy new feature called Friendship on Oct 29, 2010. Good intent, bad results. Lay another brick in the road to Hell that is paved with good intentions! Here is a review and some counter-measure suggestions. This feature is a stalker’s dream! But it’s the same for just the casual “troll” curious about creeping on people… like maybe jealous friends, ex’es, significant others, family, etc.
What is this Friendship Page feature?
This creates a page showing all the public wall posts, comments, photos (based on tags) and events that two friends have in common. This goes for any two profiles which have common things to share, not just friends you have in common. It’s all based on what people choose to share in their privacy settings, that they have in common.
In plain language, it’s like being able to ask Facebook to show me all the interactions between person X and Y which is not protected from me, with one click of a mouse, then getting the results in an organized online report, summarized where each result has a link to the full information instead of just thumbnail, first few sentences, etc.
Whoa!!! R U kidding me???
Remember the days when you had to work to be a creep? When you had to browse through all the wall posts, photos, events and such, filtering out all the stuff by people you’re not looking for, to find what you were looking for? That’s all said and gone now. You can just click on a link now and voilà! It’s all there for you, in more details than you could have ever hoped to find in the past, like events two friends RSVP’ed together! I bet the FBI, CIA, MI5, CSIS and other secret intelligence services could only wish they had such a convenient tool to track people! Well, take CSIS out of that list. I’m not sure they’re either secret or intelligent enough to qualify.
Can you imagine your significant other doing this to someone who interacted with you a bit “friendlier” than s/he would have liked? Can you imagine Parents doing this to their kids and one of their kids’ friends? Can you imagine that person you’re dating wanting to know more about another “friend”, or an “ex” via all your Facebook interactions with him/her since you could not tell all, even if you wanted to? You couldn’t hope to have a memory like these Friendship Pages!
Worse, the stalkers, Internet trolls or 5 types of Facebook trolls are just in heaven these days! That include those behind bars who have Internet access!
Even for normal people, this Facebook Friendship page can enhance the 10 Ways Facebook can ruin your relationship (Collegecrunch.org) by making the features that are the reasons all the more accessible and organized.
How do you access this Friendship Page feature?
The easiest way is to go to someone’s profile and look on their Wall for the See Friendship link next to the Comment and Like links on various Wall posts, and click on the link. I’m not sure why some Wall posts have the See Friendship link and some don’t, but it’s there for many posts. However, you can see Frienship Pages for people who are not your Facebook friend, which is the creepiest part of this feature to allow spying beyond just your friends, and vice-versa on you by people who are not your Facebook friend.
After you get to the Friendship Page, to the top right is a more convenient feature where you can type in two friends’ names, aided by Facebook’s drop down menu to guess which friend you’re talking about as you give it more letters in typing out the names. Facebook guesses with people you know, people you have common friends, who live in the area, etc. While this feature limits the people you can input to be just of your Facebook friends, finding the See Friendship link on people’s wall does not!
What can you see on these Friendship Pages?
More than what Facebook says you can! One feature more is the common friends those two friends have in common. Of course, everything that shows up, whether a wall post, comment, photo, event RSVP’ed together, etc. there is a link you can click on for more. The page you initially get is an Overview of what the page fully contains. You can then click on links to the upper left, below a photo (if the two have a photo together) or an icon of two heads, to filter out features like Wall posts, photos, comments, etc. Talk about helping creeps to be organized!!
What can you do to prevent being super-spied on with this Friendship Page feature?
Nothing that would prevent this feature from being enabled. All you can do is minimize its impact on you with these solutions.
- Adjust all Facebook Privacy settings to “Only Friends”. If you do this, at least only your Facebook friends will be able to creep on you.
- Purge your Facebook friends list. Ask yourself this… who would I want to be able to creep on me with the Friendship Page feature? Anyone you have a strong reaction against, throw them out or take Step 3. Purging your Facebook Friends list is good to do on a regular basis, anyway, to keep people who can view your profile in full to those who know and trust to some extent. The link I provided at the start of this bullet offers some assistance with questions you can ask yourself to determine who you might want to remove, and why it’s no big deal if you’re wrong to get them back. This was before this Friendship Page feature came out.
- Customize Facebook Privacy settings to “Only Friends” and Block certain people. If you’re not cool with removing certain people from your Facebook friends list, even though you’re not comfortable with them creeping on you with the Friendship Page, block them in your Privacy setting for whatever you don’t want them to see. That could be pictures, Wall posts or comments. I don’t believe the RSVP feature works, though. It’s hard to check, but that would be the one I would be concerned the most because that person could see future events you RSVP to in common with another friend, and not just past ones. Can you say stalking assistance? I would recommend you make a list of people you keep as Facebook friends who you would not be comfortable with creeping on you, and just add them to your “block” list for each Facebook feature like photos, Wall posts, etc. I’d just sooner take them off my Facebook friends list if I were you, if I’m going through that much trouble.
If this Facebook feature changes to limit access, or you know other ways to counter it, please let me and others know by leaving a comment.
In the mean time, Facebook safely and try not to creep, even if it may be very intriguing. If you don’t like people doing it to you, don’t do it to others.
p.s. I find it interesting Facebook rolled out this creepy feature just before Hallowe’en. Unfortunately, it won’t go away just because Hallowe’en has gone away. Who the hell at Facebook let their engineer Wayne Kao add this to the site anyway???
Other Facebook issue posts on my site:
Remove 5 Facebook Friends Challenge
Which Facebook Friends Should I Remove?
“Study” on Facebook Narcissism and Insecurity not REAL Research
A Few Thoughts on Facebook Friends (and some polls)
How to Cancel or Retract Friend Requests on Facebook… and Why?
The Prejudices and Privacy Perils of Facebook Quizzes
How to Get Rid of Your Facebook Past
25 Things For Facebook You Can’t Steal My ID With
25 Things You Gave on Facebook to Help Get Your ID Stolen
Watch Kings Ransom on the Gretzky Trade to LA (entire documentary)
If you were Canadian and alive on August 9, 1988, your life stopped at least for a little while, if not got changed entirely. I know my life got changed entirely. That was the day the Edmonton Oilers traded the greatest NHL player ever, to an American team, in the same division. It was the trade of the century, without a doubt.
Over 20 years later, ESPN produced a phenomenal documentary on that trade called Kings Ransom, as part of their fabulous 30 for 30 series of documentaries. It puts a lot of new perspective and filled in a lot of gaps to the story. Also, with time, we could follow all the story lines to their conclusions, some of which were quite surprising, from the destinies of Peter Pocklington and Bruce McNall, to Wayne himself, his marriage, and what he has done for hockey in the US, especially California area, as well as hockey in Canada and hockey as a business.
It was too bad this documentary hasn’t gotten more buzz in Canada.
Below is the documentary in 4 video clips posted by a YouTube user called HockeyWebCaster. Thanks for posting.
I hope you enjoy and recommend to others who may be interested.
I cried a lot that day when Wayne was traded. Watching this documentary, I did it again. I wonder what the guy next to me on the Air Canada flight to San Francisco thought. 🙂
A Dirty Song Called All That Meat and No Potatoes? (and Lyrics)
There once was a time when you could take a dirty phrase to make a classy hit song out of it. I don’t know when it ended, but it was certainly alive in the 1940s when this song came about! This is the Louis Armstrong version, with Velma Middleton and the Louis Armstrong Orchestra, not the original Fats Waller version (at the end) that wasn’t nearly as good.
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Hey Pops! What’s wrong Daddy?
You look like somethin’ botherin’ you
Ain’t nothin’ botherin’ me honey
That a piece of roast beef can’t fix up
A man works hard then comes on home
Expects to find stew with that fine ham bone
He opens the door, then start to lookin’
Say, Woman, what’s this stuff you cookin’?
Now all that meat and no potatoes
I just ain’t right, dey like da green tomatoes
Here I’m waitin’
Palpitatin’
With all that meat and no potatoes
All that meat and no potatoes
All that food to the alligators
Now hold me steady
I’m really ready
Now all that meat and no potatoes
I don’t think that peas are bad
With meat most anything goes
Yes, I look into the pot
I’m fit to fight
‘Cause, woman, you know that mess just ain’t right
Oh, Pops!
All that meat and no potatoes
Just ain’t right, like green tomatoes
Woman, I’m steamin’, yeah!
I’m really screamin’
All that meat and no potatoes
Say, I don’t think that beans are bad
With meat most anything goes
I look into the pot
And what a sight!
Oh, woman, you know that without rice
Beans just ain’t right
Oh, Pops!
All that meat and no potatoes
Just ain’t right, like green tomatoes
Now woman, I’m steamin’
And I’m really screamin’
All that meat and no potatoes
.
Louis Armstrong & Velma Middleton
When I first heard this song, I found it really groovy, and I still do, but I thought to myself, why would someone write such a great song about meat and potatoes?
Well, after some researching, I found out.
The title of this song, All That Meat and No Potatoes, was a slur from the early 1940s that was used to described a big figured attractive woman with small breasts. Gee, don’t you wish English was still that classy these days?
Hey, some people will never be classy, but you could help them by giving them language like this rather than, well, you use your own choice words.
Anyhoo, the story regarding how this song came about was that Fats Waller liked some female vocalist he was working with, except that she was all that meat and no potatoes. So he wrote a song about it.
Awww. Wasn’t that romantic? 🙂
But you’ve got to give credits to Fats, and his manager Ed Kirkeby. They wrote a good song on the literal end of things, expressing discontent with cooking that had a lot of meat and no potatoes, as a metaphor for Fats’ feelings towards this woman.
Then Louis came along and just took it to another level. Compare the version above to the version below.
It might be jazz, but I’ll tell ya, can Louis rock it or what???
The Louis Armstrong version of this song goes on my list for Best Songs I Heard for the First Time in 2010. I make a list every year. Please click here for links to other songs I have put on this list so far.
What’s the Stupidest Yahoo! Answer Question You’ve Ever Seen?
Warning: This post is intended for immature audiences. Viewer indiscretion is not advised!
Yahoo! Answers has been around since July 5, 2005. It’s a community-driven question-and-answer (Q&A) site that allows users to both submit questions to be answered and answer questions asked by other users. Being open and on the Internet, with some degree of anonymity, there are some pretty stupid questions that get asked. See the video below, for example.
Oh, my, God! That was hilarious! I don’t know which was funnier, the song or video, but I died laughing!!!
Oh hey, Jesus! How U doin?
Anyway, what is what is the stupidest Yahoo! Answers question you have ever seen?
It’d be nice if you could provide a link with it, sort of as proof, but not necessary. Please answer by clicking the comments link below.
In the meanwhile, here are some more videos with stupid Yahoo! Answers questions… the term sounds stupid on its own (Answers questions).
Kudos for music selection in some of these videos, too!
Digital Citizen 