There's also apparently no algorithm for date-sorting; a friend and I were talking about this on Twitter this week. It's my view that as search engine use has become mainstream they've been increasingly optimized for consumers, not researchers. There is a real niche for a researchers' search engine.

wg

Isn't it time to update your thinking to include quotes from The Big Bang Theory?

wg
It's a Saturnalia miracle!

Well, several things wrong with it.

1) That is enough information for someone already possessed of the necessary technology to clone a copy of your passport, which could be used to do all sorts of things that would eventually be traced to you.

2) That information would be of great assistance to someone wanting to uncover more information about you, either mechanically (which researchers showed in 2009 SSNs can be reliably derived from your birth date and birth place) or as leverage to acquire other information - you don't know what other information about you it can be matched to, probably plenty even just in a Google search, let alone other public/private databases.

3) The *key* issue is that the culture in which such data is kept and is accessible to rogue employees - who will always exist - is endemic and dangerous. I'm sure it was done in the name of barring English (and other) football hooligans from attending the events. In theory, all the ticket office needs to know is that you are not one of the people on the banned list when you buy your ticket, and for that retaining the data shouldn't be necessary. I was under the impression that such "fans" were barred from traveling - surely the more effective way to stop them is at the border or when they're buying plane tickets. In any event, this sort of data breach demonstrates the problems that we will have with other, larger, more sensitive data stores should governments/companies/etc. create them.

wg

It's almost certainly not a simple matter - the BBC had plans to release its back catalogue and discovered belatedly that it didn't own the rights to it.

The dates on the shows are 1952-1958 or thereabouts. The *broadcasts* may be in the public domain. But there may be music on the shows that is not. There may be residuals owing to writers and others who worked on the shows. Etc.

That said, the tapes are theirs and in their possession. The copyright issues may be why they don't want to review the situation. But no company is going to hand over ownership of something they think they might be able to make money of sometime.

wg

The thing is, there are all sorts of reasons why someone might admit someone they don't know - even a frog - to their circle of "friends" and it's also fairly obvious why older people have more "friends".

To take the second first: older people have been alive longer. They've met more people: at work, in clubs, etc. People from various layers of their pasts find them. There are people in my Facebook friends list who probably never will be sufficiently interested to speak to me again - but who are nonetheless curious what's become of me (or I of them) in the 30 years since we last met. The cliques 'n' crap from high school eventually give way to a sort of neutral curiosity.

To the first point: admitting a frog to your friends list doesn't necessarily mean you're being trusting. It may mean you don't post stuff to Facebook that you wouldn't want to be public. It may mean that rather than vet people closely you're using Facebook more like LinkedIn - as a way to build a network of contacts. Or it may mean that the only reason you use FB is so that people won't bug you about why you're not using FB and you don't GAF because you never post anything anyway.

wg