Score: +1: Tragically Plausible. *sigh*

If Slashdot is just going to be adverts disguised as articles (like the diet plan thing earlier) I'm out.

You've got the wrong metaphor.

Open up the session monitor in your browser of choice and you'll see it as a series of requests. Now the metaphor is much clearer: you're ringing them up, and asking them things. Your browser, on your behalf, is sending the data that lets the session persist and allows inferences to be drawn.

*ring ring*
ACME: This is ACME products, how can I help you?
John: Hi, I'm John, can you show me products related to 'shoes'?
ACME: Okay, here are leather shoes, casual shoes, trainers.
John: This is John again. I want casual shoes.
ACME: Mens or womens?
John: This is John again. Mens please. Brown, size 10.
ACME: Here are some styles of mens shoes in that colour. - writes down that John may be male, adult -
John: This is John again. Thank you I'd like to buy these ones.
ACME: Okay John, done. Would you like to see some women's shoes?
John: This is John again. Yes, women's, adult, formal.
ACME: Okay John, here are some formal women's shoes - writes down that John may be married to a woman, employed -
John: This is John again, bye.
*click*

I think the idea that this is 'users' data' to be misleading. It's the company's data regarding a request from a user. If I keep track of how many red or green apples I sell and in which months of the year and whether the seller is male or female or tall or short, that's sales data.

Aye, as long as it does the job.

Does it have:

- Tabs on bottom option.
- Status bar option.
- Show title bar option.

Compatibility with:

- Imagezoom
- FireFTP
- Adblock Plus

Have you had the issue where you type something in the address bar and it refuses to acknowledge the Return key for several seconds?

Do they maintain it themselves, applying patches and whatnot?

Is there enough storage, bandwidth and processor time for them all?

And they're willing to pay for the hosting?

If so, bravo.

Convenience goes a long way. Hell, convenience is the entire way.

Social media services don't do anything by themselves except make things more convenient. (Be they posting pictures of birthday cakes or shooting yourself in the foot.)

I'm posting this as another message, as it's a more constructive idea even though I think it's a bit silly:

You've hit upon something. Let's say e-mail is the solution. But folks won't like the lack of the features they've become used to on Facebook: the timeline constructed from other folks status updates, the picture gallery cascade, videos, links, discovering new groups, the real time chat, simple urls.

Then... is the solution to write a wrapper over e-mail that presents a Facebook-like interface?

Folks don't honestly give a shit about how Facebook works. They care about what it looks like and what it does. To them, Facebook is its interface. So if e-mail is better: is there a way to make e-mail more Facebook-like for them? This is just me thinking aloud.

You want them to email large images to each other?

That's a lot of bandwidth and storage, and you're not getting facilities like auto-resizing for smaller devices.

And how is that going to scale when you've got groups of people in the three digits?

What's the alternative?

Let's take three people, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Brown. They want to share pictures of cakes, share lighthearted gossip about Mrs. X's wedding, see pictures of other peoples cakes. Then you come in and make a reasoned case against Facebook, it doesn't matter what that case is: let's assume that you convinced all three, at once, to never touch Facebook again save to inform their contacts that they're leaving. They delete whatever accounts they can, and trust FB (wisely or not) to deactivate the rest and dispose of it however.

Now, Smith, Jones and Brown all turn to you and say 'Alright, no Facebook, no FB app, it's all gone. Where do I go to do all the stuff that I would have done on Facebook? Real time chat, picture hosting, messaging, silly stuff, groups. It's not the 90s so we're not using "Yahoo!" but what do we do now?'

What do you suggest to them?

Bingo. What's next? Maintenance, security.

You've got some software that works.

Now your job, Mozilla, is NOT TO BREAK IT ANY FURTHER..

Yes, like Nightmare

They're enacting punitive measures.

The statistics for the UK from the website:

Violations of User Rights 16/40
Freedom on the Net 24/100
Obstacles to Access 2/25
Limits on Content 6/35

And yet on the map graphics it's shown as a bright white 'Free', not 'Partly Free'.

Not quite, mate.