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Commented on Faking it on Foursquare: Beware of bogus beauties bearing spam

fair enough. always better to be cautious on the web than not. dt

2 weeks 2 days ago

Commented on Faking it on Foursquare: Beware of bogus beauties bearing spam

a few responses. first, using foursquare is not the same as "advertising to the world." only my 4sq friends can see my checkins. that's why the spammers had to friend me first. second, just because I'm not at home doesn't mean no one's at home. our house was never empty during that trip. third: someone would also need to know where i live and that I have stuff worth stealing. those are a lot of hurdles to leap. if you're a thief, it's much easier to just case a joint locally and do a smash and grab.  cheers dt

2 weeks 2 days ago

Commented on Tech groups question new do-not-track bill

Hey Grant, did you talk to any folks who support the bill, or just the industry lobbying groups that oppose it? Because this report is extremely one sided. Self regulation is definitely NOT working. 

8 weeks 1 day ago

Commented on Giving biometric scanners the (fake) finger

thanx. I am always mixing those two up. which is probably why when I try to go anywhere in silicon valley the cabbie always takes me to a strip club. for some reason I have been channeling rodney dangerfield lately. sorry. 

9 weeks 12 hours ago

Commented on Tesla knows where you drove last winter -- and a lot more

well I have a few responses to that. 1. if you read my story all the way thru, you'd know that I have one of these tracking devices on the car my son drives. so I am not opposed to using this technology for safety purposes, in a limited way. 2. the police forensics teams are already pretty good at determining cause of accident and speed of the vehicles, so this tech isn't really necessary, even if that question were relevant. 3. would people drive differently if they knew their speed was constantly being monitored? perhaps, but I'm not convinced. england has spent the last 20 years installing a vast network of cctv cameras in public to reduce crime, but it's had little effect -- even on solving crimes, let alone preventing them.  see http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1 it is the old 'do you have to give up privacy to gain security' question all over aagain. I think we need to tread very carefully around the answer to that one.  thanks for engaging, dt

12 weeks 3 days ago

Commented on Tesla knows where you drove last winter -- and a lot more

I don't like this data collection because it could be used in all kinds of unintended ways besides auto ticketing. that's the problem with data collection -- people find uses for it you may or may not like, and by then it's too late to do anything about it.  Tesla is just an example of the depth of data new computer-driven cars can collect, but the issue is bigger than them. dt

12 weeks 4 days ago

Commented on Tesla knows where you drove last winter -- and a lot more

you may choose to live your life in the open, and more power to ya. but it should be a choice. if black boxes are mandated by law, that choice might disappear.

12 weeks 4 days ago

Commented on Tesla knows where you drove last winter -- and a lot more

most modern cars don't collect the amount and depth of data that Tesla appears to collect, and they certainly don't do it remotely. GM's Onstar tracks location and speed and diagnostic info remotely, as do some third party add-ons, but I don't think they collect as much as Musk outlined in his blog post.  bruce schneier calls it "a dizzying amount of data."  http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/02/automobile_data.html?nc=41#comment-1159076 question still remains how and when Tesla can turn this logging on, and for whom. still waiting for responses to my emails. dt

12 weeks 4 days ago

Commented on Security is dead. Now what do we do?

yes, that is a major problem for a lot of people. again though, if you have a public persona, the thing to do is split off a more private one, and use that for the stuff you need to keep most secure. starting with your email address, which is a pretty good unique identifier. 

14 weeks 1 day ago

Commented on If you shop til you drop, will they track when you come back?

stephani: I'd like to hear more about this. ping me on twitter (@tynanwrites:disqus) and I'll send you my contact info dt

16 weeks 1 day ago

Commented on What’s the freakin’ deal with all these LinkedIn endorsements?

guess we'll have to arrange for a demonstration then.

18 weeks 3 days ago

Commented on What’s the freakin’ deal with all these LinkedIn endorsements?

I notice you have yet to endorse my pole dancing skills....

18 weeks 3 days ago

Commented on Online degrees with the greatest of sleaze

first, umm, wow. thanx for the highly detailed clarification. I think you exceeded my word count for all three of the blog posts I wrote about this topic.  second, yes, I was using 'diploma mill' more loosely than I should have. apologies for that. I really meant 'academically substandard' in ref to most of these schools, a point that you succeeded in making far better than I. as I noted near the end, but not strongly enough, online education is a real boon, and really the future of education. I'm all in on that. my daughter is attending an online school now, and we'd have our son attend too, if we could convince him.  finally, just to be ultra clear, UOP usually refers to the University of the Pacific, an accredited, brick and mortar private school in Stockton, California -- NOT University of Phoenix, which you thoroughly dissect above. UOP in Stockton is a fine school whose graduates I count among my friends. the other one? don't know anyone who went there, and that's fine by me. cheers, dt

20 weeks 2 days ago

Commented on Online degrees with the greatest of sleaze

I'll take what's behind door number three: Prosecute the schools that are engaged in outright fraud. Remove the accreditation from schools that engage in these practices. Force schools and all the other players in this drama to disclose exactly who and what they are, and how they profit from all of this. Withhold eligibility for federal money to any schools that don't comply.  Do that, and this problem will dry up virtually overnight. But, of course, the for-profit education lobby would never allow it. Higher education should be affordable and available to anyone who wants it, imho. It should not be yet another boondoggle for major US corporations to siphon off US tax dollars.  cheers dt

21 weeks 1 day ago

Commented on Online degrees with the greatest of sleaze

"To be clear, not all online schools are bad, and not all for-profit educational institutions are sleazy."  that's on page four of this beast. maybe you didn't read that far. in any case, congrats on obtaining a degree from U of P. glad it worked out for you. it doesn't work out for others, as you noted, just as regular non profit schools often don't work for some students.  the difference is that the regular non profit schools are not being sold like timeshares, used cars and ginsu knives, like the for-profits are. for the most part they aren't engaging in the sleazy tactics I've now spent 4000 words describing. (though some non-profits are starting to.) and the university of phoenix is a particularly ripe example. in 2009 it paid out $79 million to settle a case with the federal govt, which accused it of defrauding the dept of education by falsely claiming it did not pay commissions to recruiters for signing people up (when of course it did). that case dates back to 2003. read about it here:http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20091214006155/en/78.5-Million-Settlement-Whistleblower-Lawsuit-University-Phoenix meant to include that in my post, but it was already too long. thanks for giving me the opportunity to do so here. cheers dt

21 weeks 1 day ago

Commented on Sex, spies & videotape: Seven things we can learn from the Pentagon sex scandal

thanks. and I bet that's your real name, too.

26 weeks 6 hours ago

Commented on Meet the company behind those nasty anti-Obama text messages

there are a lot of stories about these guys (google "freeeats" and robocalls). they've been at this a long time. the 'news,' such as it is, is who was behind the latest spate of texts. that's all. 

28 weeks 1 day ago

Commented on Meet the company behind those nasty anti-Obama text messages

one. I never said it was limited to one side, and neither did KRS.  deux: you have evidence that the dems are doing the same things? please share. happy to look into it for you. tres: political privacy is also one of the things I cover here, and if you read what I wrote, you'd see I was equally critical of the obamanistas. when it comes to privacy they all suck. look for more of that shortly. 

28 weeks 1 day ago

Commented on Meet the company behind those nasty anti-Obama text messages

thanks for the career advice. however, sms spam and robocalls are some of the topics covered here at TY4NS. I'm not going to make an exception just because the purveyor of these things has a particular political agenda. 

28 weeks 1 day ago

Commented on Almost Famous: Inside social media's fake fan industry

huh? you mean the reference to Obama's fake/inactive fans? that was widely covered by mainstream media a few weeks ago. look at the link. or go to http://fakers.statuspeople.com/ and look for yourself.  dt

29 weeks 13 hours ago

Commented on Why Klout is doomed

are you sure? I was here this morning, I'm almost certain of it. 

32 weeks 2 days ago

Commented on Why Klout is doomed

just did. and I'm number one in my field.... of one. This site just looks like Klout for LinkedIn but with lots more pretty charts. I'm still not buying into this.

32 weeks 2 days ago

Commented on Take your stinkin’ paws off my Facebook search history, you damn dirty API

sigh. it seems that facebook has NOT rolled this out to all users. I just looked at two of my test accounts, which do not have the Search feature included as part of the Activity log (yet). [insert long string of obscenities here] looking at my ipad app, it shows the searches as part of the activity log, but doesn't filter them out by category -- they're just mixed in with everything else. (in that case, the same rules apply -- you can hide or delete them using the instructions above.) this is one of the most maddening things about Facebook -- it is different to different people, at different times, depending entirely on the whims of Facebook. makes it hard to write about new features. sorry about that.

33 weeks 3 days ago

Commented on Is Facebook dying?

how was that a red herring?

34 weeks 19 hours ago

Commented on Is Facebook dying?

I wrote that moments before the upgrade. and then did the upgrade and added a note to this post later saying how much I disliked it. am trying tweetbot now, based on several recommendations. it's better than the new twitter app, but not better than the old one, methinks. dt

34 weeks 19 hours ago