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Comment I blame the sites (Score 2) 277

Every website has different rules for their passwords. Some sites require at least 6 characters. Some require at MOST 10 characters. Some require special characters; some forbid special characters. Because each site has completely different rules, this leads people to develop lowest-common-denominator passwords that work across sites. If there were standard rules for passwords - at least 8 characters, must contain 1 letter, 1 number, one "special" character, max length 100 characters - then people would be able to create very strong passwords that are easy to remember, and use them across sites if they wanted. Imagine attempting to bruteforce this password:

I wuz bron on the 21st Day of January, 1966

A simple phrase with personal meaning and some misspellings. Create 3 tiers of passwords - one for throwaway sites, one for semi-important stuff (maybe Facebook/Twitter), one for critical stuff (email account, banking). Since no two sites seem to have compatible password rules this can't currently be done. I remember GoDaddy as being unbelievably strict to the point that I need to reset my password every single time I want to log in because I have to create such an impossible password for them that I can never remember it.

Comment Expectation of privacy. (Score 2, Insightful) 219

You put your data on its server for the purpose of sharing it with others. Any expectation of "privacy" on a system designed to share information seems misinformed, especially when all that information is further shared with third parties (apps) over whom Facebook has no control. You might reasonably expect your FB inbox to be private but that's about the only type of information on the entire site that isn't "shareable."

Plus, if you're not accessing a service exclusively over SSL, do you really care how private the data is that you're transmitting?

Comment Re:Greed (Score 1) 434

While that's true about paying a subscription, if you assume your basic subscription is $30/month, and HBO is $15/month, then what you're "paying" for with a $30/month subscription is just two channels worth of content. I get probably 200+ channels with my FiOS subscription. While I don't want all of those channels, there's no a la carte option that lets me select what I actually want, so $30/month for 200 channels is pretty reasonable. If every channel was commercial-free, like HBO, you'd probably expect to be paying $15/month per channel, but maybe you'd be able to select the channels you want. Still, I'm pissed enough at paying $30/month for 200 channels, I'd rather pay $10/month for 50 channels. But I can't anyone being okay with paying $50-60/month for 4 or 5 channels, which is what would happen if they did away with commercials.

Comment If there's one thing I've learned in business... (Score 1) 132

... anything free will be abused. If, within a company, department A does work at department B's behest, with no notion of "cost" associated with it, then department B will abuse department A, and just naturally dump more and more work onto them, because there's no reason not to. Even a simple "credit" system (i.e. each task costs 5 or 10 credits, and you get 200 credits per month) can help with this.

This is why I always thought micropayments for SMTP traffic would be a wonderful solution for spam. "For each message you want to send to my SMTP server, you must pay $0.02." For most businesses, the ratio of "messages sent":"messages received" is around 1:1, so it would amount to a net zero. But If it's free it will be abused.

Same with this. Apple charges $99 to be able to submit an app to the iTunes App store, I'm sure this is one reason why.

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Girl Seeks Help On Facebook During Assault Screenshot-sm 417

A 12-year-old girl who was being assaulted by her mother's ex-boyfriend used some quick thinking by sending a message on her iPod to a friend's Facebook account for help. The friend was able to contact the girl's mother who then contacted the police. 42-year-old Raymond Ernest Cesmat was arrested and charged with two counts of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree. He is being held at the Dakota County Jail on $175,000 bail.

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