I remember reading that advertisers and brands were getting a paltry 5% return on Facebook campaigns. I cannot take that any further without more data, but it would appear to me that "facebook for business" is no better than groupon (and should be avoided unless you like getting bulldozed by a short-lived stampede of cheapskates).

That said, YMMV obviously based on your revenue model, which is what should be driving your decision making process when it comes to business development.

Missed the question submission thanks to work travel, but would have brought up something that is an ever-growing fear of mine: That the biggest threat to our rights cannot be defeated with clever code and honest marketing, but constant, unrelenting political maneuvering.

If you look around, what shuts out individual rights is achieved through Capitol Hill. Not just in an election year either ;-)

When forming Open Source Matters (and thereafter Joomla) I was grateful to Eben Moglen and crew at the SFLC and think they have other great ideas in the making that will benefit us all. This is a very project-centric view however, and is all about the software for the most part.

That's all well and good, but what is out there to help change policy, and protect (and unfortunately reclaim) our rights to code and hack? Do you know of any efforts that use politics instead of emacs/vim to further this goal?

Been using them for a couple web applications now, and quite happy with the results. If I've been attacked, I didn't know about it ;-)

Only downside to CloudFlare is that they have to host your DNS, and my biggest app already is under contract with another company. So for cost reasons I'm stuck either living with dual-invoices for another ten months, or living with a website that doesn't have the caching and IDS/DDoS gizmos offered by CloudFlare.

Gonna try a simple list for you to consider. Can you tell the difference?

1. You tell your friends. This is temporary, the second you say it the event is over and only reaches a very limited audience, all of which know you to some point
2. You tell the online world. This is permanent, even searchable, and reaches millions (billions?) of complete strangers who have never heard of you, or interacted with you - so there's a near-zero chance of them getting a hint that you were being sarcastic

Not sure why this is failing to be considered by so many people.

Dark Tempes said thusly, with great panache: A lot of shit gets said on the internet and in real life.

I think you're failing to notice the difference between the two though. If you called me a <CENSORED> on the internet, there's a 0.00000000000001% chance of me ever holding you accountable for it. If you walked up and said that to my face however, it would jump to to an absolute 100%.

People turn into turds when they are not accountable for their actions, that's an unfortunate part of human nature. Don't assume that just because you're online that makes it okay to abuse or threaten people, because frankly, that's lame.

Muttering something to a friend under your breath is one thing, posting it online for millions (billions?) to see is another.

You forgot armchair pharmaceutical specialist. :-)

Seriously though, the only thing about vaccinations that stinks to me is that it is entirely run as part of a for profit system. I'm not saying all vaccines are some sort of capitalist sham, but I also cannot believe that every single one that is being sold to us is genuinely needed. If you truly think these nice little companies just want to save the world with their produc^D^D^D^D^Dvaccinations, then I got some beachfront property in Kansas to sell you.

My distrust of physicians and medical companies - which is a generalisation as I don't distrust ALL of them - stems from western medicine's decline into doctors becoming little more than drug pushers. Got a pain? Take a pill. Have a bump? Take a pill. Want to keep eating cheeseburgers without bothering to watch your weight or exercise? Take a pill!

There's nothing wrong with the science behind vaccines, my beef is with the business.

What's the new saying? Something like "Democracy triumphed over communism. Corporations triumphed over democracy."

"The public" are sheep. They have been programmed, propagandized and beaten into being sheep. If "the public" were not sheep, then a vast majority of modern problems wouldn't exist.

That's the main problem - or maybe a better way to phrase the question is, "why did it get so bad that a mayor had to step in to take matters into his own hands?" One word answer, and here's the hint: (makes baaa baaa sound)

Go ahead and make social networks off-limits to teaching staff. The few teachers that are willing to have inappropriate relationships with their students are going to stop, because hey, everyone follows the rules, right?

On a separate note, I coach football with athletes at the high school level. If I couldn't talk to them over Facebook, then we'd be unable to reschedule a practice, give directions to the next game, etc. I'd be happy to set up a mailing list but the kids refuse to use anything other than Facebook. It is an essential medium, even if some of us consider it a necessary evil.

The unpleasant alternative is to expect 58 text messages the next time it rains, and have to respond to each and every one separately. Not looking forward to it; and texting students directly via a private channel would be more problematic than discussing as part of a public group...

What problem are we trying to solve, again?

Here is where I have been watching Google morph into the 90s era Microsoft by behavior. Google plus, anyone?

Google got where they are today based on one and only one thing: Advertising revenue. Because everyone used their search (monopoly) they could build the most profitable advertising network the human race has ever seen. They don't make a dime on anything else, at least from a total revenues perspective. I'll bet they still don't make more than 10% of their total revenue outside advertising, but I have no facts to back that up.

You could say that they did with search what Microsoft did with Windows - leverage their monopolistic dominance to dominate another product/service segment for massive profit. They then use that dominance to reciprocate to their initial offering, making a self-propelled machine.

Microsoft had Windows, and used that to dominate the desktop with Office. Unsurprisingly, later on they leveraged their dominance with Office to reinforce their Windows operating system. Internet Explorer was just another tool to force dominance in their chosen market segments.

Google has done the exact same with search, sometimes for profit (ads) and sometimes just to own a market (gmail) and use that to continue to reinforce their dominance over search. I mean, yeah you can use other search engines, but what ads are you buying for your new product launch or website? In the end it all rolls back to Google.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Google's Google+ are the same in this regard: They were both created and given away for free to kill off competition and take over a market segment, with the sole intent of using that dominance to channel more profits on their original offering (Windows and advertising, respectively).

Back to Microsoft, and why they are still being bashed... They spent more than FIFTEEN YEARS blatantly disregarding public opinion, ethical standards, you name it. They are the corporate reference for the term collateral damage as they destroyed hundreds of companies yearly without even knowing it most likely. You can't cause that kind of anger and pain to such a large percentage of people without expecting to pay for it for years to come. Fer cryin' out loud, even IBM is given a pass more nowadays - that's got to mean something now don't it?