I find this attitude so ignorant. How does a company instantly delete backups on redundant servers? How do they delete redundant hard copies kept in closets separated by meatspace? Furthermore, if you upload something to Facebook, and someone ELSE downloads it and saves it to a CD, and you delete it off facebook, should THEY be forced to magically know you deleted it, and delete their copy as well? Does Google have to delete their caches of your facebook page? Or maybe you are saying that Facebook, Google, etc should never make backups?

The truth is that once you upload something to a site like Facebook, it becomes publicly viewable and accessible and ANYONE can download it. The unfortunate truth is that you can never really UNDO that action, and no matter what arbitrary laws or draconian regulations you force companies to abide by, you can never truly take it back, even if you hit the delete key.

The paradigm shift needs to be in how people view sites like Facebook, Photobucket, etc: Don't upload anything you want to keep private. If you want to keep it private, upload it to a company that guarantees your privacy... NOT Facebook.

I don't understand why this theory is "implausible" and why the article is so dismissive of it. Dark Matter was created for the sole purpose of explaining the orbital momentum of stars. There is NO other evidence for it. So an entire new classification of matter that no one has ever (or can ever) seen, felt, or observed was created to satisfy this one anomaly. And yet, this is the industry standard, that 90% of all matter must be Dark Matter just because someone screwed up when calculating orbital momentum.

What's more implausible, that 90% of matter is something that we'll never observe except, conveniently, through the orbital momentum of stars, or that galaxies have a noticeable gravitational pull on objects in nearby galaxies over billions of years?

I remain firmly convinced this is a prelude to proving the iPhone 5 can resurrect the dead.

Perhaps, but that STILL wouldn't stop this bunch of 4chaners from abusing this retarded law and requesting physical copies of all the crap they _haven't_ deleted. I mean, seriously, how much stuff have you _really_ deleted on Facebook? I know I haven't deleted very much, and sometimes I do like to go back and look at my comments from years ago. If you think Facebook should perma-delete everything that you delete, that's fine, but that's also a different issue than this one.

There is also the argument that Facebook definitely keeps multiple redundant copies of their data across many servers in different areas... in fact, they likely even keep backup drives in closets somewhere just in case ALL the servers fail and they actually need to use them... should Facebook not be allowed to keep backups of their data in closets? Every time you hit delete, should they be forced to walk through manspace and delete stuff off of their backup-backup drives?

And what if make a crawler that accesses all of my friends' pages constantly and saves their data to my hard drive? Google does this already. Should I not be allowed to do this? Should Google not be allowed to do this? If someone deletes something on Facebook, do I have to delete it on my local box? Does Google?

Personally, I think not. You post something on Facebook, you understand that Facebook now knows that information and they're going to have it forever. You can't untell a secret to a friend or unshow someone an embarrassing photo. If you have something you want to hide, don't put it up to begin with. If you make a mistake, you can "delete" it and hope for security through anonymity that Facebook will do the best they can to keep that Photo from showing up anywhere, but you can never be sure that one of your friends didn't save the image or that there isn't some backup somewhere.

That would completely undermine the capabilities and services of Facebook that everyone uses and loves. No one would use Facebook if it did not store all of your photos and status messages, because then no one could access them.

That's the coolest thing I've ever read.

Eet's WAPHER THEEN!!

Seriously, I am going to give this food combination a try.

This was a triumph!!

...only for two reasons.

1) Their statuses were annoying. They were either constantly emo, pathetic "i have to work FML", or just retarded. I de-friended an aunt who always left stupid crazy statuses in all-caps, "OMG THEY WANT TO BAN RELIGION EVERYONE SIGN THIS NOW." type of stuff. Oh, she also played farmville constantly and clogged up my homescreen with stupid app messages.

2) I completely forgot who they were. Acquaintances from high school or people I met at one party one time who I could no longer even pick you out of a lineup. If I see a status from you on my homepage and I have no idea who you are, out you go.

It's called FLASH memory and it exists now.

I'll believe it when the credits are rolling past my screen.

So The Old Republic is hoping to score hits with XXX-rated content? Just like WoW, even a little worse, but all the enemies are naked women!

Hey, I'll switch for that.

This is version 4.38.11.9, the one where Lucas replaced Boba Fett with Jar-Jar Binks.

I don't buy that freedom index at all. Not only is the US #20, it's actually BELOW the UK. A girl was recently arrested for burning a Koran in the UK, and I remember some kids getting arrested for flying a certain flag. In the US, however, NeoNazis and Hippies and Fred Phelps and Gay Pride Parades are all PROTECTED by Police Officers. The US is the only place I know of where an officer of the Law will put his life in the way of your Freedom to speak, even if he and everyone else think that what you are saying is the most hateful, disgusting drivel on the planet.