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Comment: What other CEOs? (Score 1) 444

by Futurepower(R) (#40008715) Attached to: Forbes Names Microsoft's Steve Ballmer Worst CEO
Name other CEOs you think aren't doing well.

The Adobe Systems CEO, for example.

We investigated Framemaker for putting together books. Framemaker is so badly documented it is amazing.

We also found many flaws in Adobe InDesign.

Anyone know what is the best software for generating Tables of Contents and Indexes for book formatting?

Comment: Maybe not only Saverin, but all of Facebook (Score 4, Insightful) 911

It seems to me that it is not only Saverin who is not mindful of and not caring about the health of the nation and the people around him. Judging from the articles linked below, it seems that the entire of Facebook is not healthy:

Facebook's reputation in the mainstream media is rapidly getting worse. Facebook is getting a bad reputation partly because of articles like these:

Worst company: Facebook was a semi-finalist in the April 2012 competition to be voted the worst company in the United States .

Facebook follows its business rules? Not always. The April 7, 2012 Wall Street Journal story, Selling You on Facebook, says:

"Facebook requires apps [mobile phone software applications] to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app. An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy."

There's more like that in the article.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Companies pay people to click on Facebook "Like" buttons. The number of Facebook "Likes" doesn't give any indication of popularity.

On December 9, 2011 it was necessary to click on a Facebook "Like" button to be allowed to see Fry's Electronics ads.

Do 86,688 people (on April 9, 2012) really like Firestone Complete Auto Care, or did the company offer something to be "liked"?

A few problems with Facebook: Richard Stallman wrote a short list of things wrong with Facebook.

How much information does Facebook keep? Read the December 13, 2011 article, Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages.

What do people in other countries think? The May 14, 2010 article, Facebook is not your friend gives one idea.

The June 15, 2011 article, The End of Facebook, and the June 14, 2011 article, Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? give others.

Most people don't understand the problems that may occur. For example, consider the March 28, 2012 article, Teacher's aide says 'no access' to her Facebook; now legal battle with school.

This April 4, 2012 article would be funny if it weren't so sad: Woman arrested for assault based on Facebook photo. Quotes:

"Aston ... was charged ... based solely on a Facebook photo and a generic description offered to police by the victim's boyfriend."

Defending herself required a "... court appearance and several thousand dollars in legal bills."


Open source will eventually prevail. Eventually open-source social networks will replace advertising-driven closed-source social networks, in my opinion. We've seen a rapid rise and fall of advertising-driven social networks; they are fads driven by people with no technical understanding.

Open source social network software would provide huge advantages:

1) Social networks could have whatever privacy they need. Ad-supported networks have privacy limited by the advertiser's desires to make money.

2) Each social network could have only the features they want.

3) The cost of having your own social network would be trivial. Each social network group could support perhaps 30 people for $1 per month. That's not $1 per person, that's 3.3 cents per person, per month, because an open source social network would not use many resources. Ad-supported social networks must support the delivery of ads.

4) All the information on an open source social network could be available to anyone who was part of that network.

5) Open source software could provide methods of joining one private group to another in a way limited by the desires of the group.

Closed-source, advertising-supported social networks are bad for society in general:

1) Ad-supported social networks sell the visitor's personal information for as much money as they can get. That causes numerous problems, some of which were discussed in the links above.

2) An ad-supported, closed source social network may choose to test the limits of the laws in each country. It's difficult and expensive for each country to defend itself. When laws are broken in the U.S., often the CEO gives a lame excuse, and a penalty may be trivial compared to the amount of money made. The challenges are apparently far greater for smaller countries.

3) The ads on ad-supported social networks are distracting. To some they are offensive; the implication is that the reader is always looking to buy things, and would be influenced by an ad, rather than by research into the best product to buy.

4) Ad-supported networks have the features advertisers want, not necessarily what the customers want.

Comment: The protection needs to be on the power line. (Score 1) 341

"... you are only really worried about a lighting strike on the power grid in close vicinity and on your circuit. "

True. A direct strike would burn everything in its path, including surge protectors.

"So dependent upon your circuit board, ..."

Not correct. It is VERY useful to have surge protection that can handle a huge amount of energy, that is, a high number of joules. The protection needs to be on the power line, not inside equipment. If possible, you want the surge protector to burn, not your equipment.

Comment: No one in HD top management has control? (Score 1) 341

Are you saying that at Home Depot no one in top management has control over dishonest descriptions of products?

That description of the surge protector was, in effect, an advertisement for Lowe's, a competitor. I don't want to waste time with companies I can't trust.

If at first you don't succeed, you're doing about average. -- Leonard Levinson

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