Twitter Users Shame CNN For Not Covering Iran Elections, Riots | NEWS JUNKIE.

Well there you have it, CNN one of the most respected news networks has hit a visible wall with its adventure into social media. They keep adding more and more shows centered around Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace comments and using blogs as sources for stories and it's come back to bite them in the ass. While a blog - the Huffington Post - is liveblogging the Iran elections with Video, images, and reports from the ground http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html. CNN who has enourmous reach and tons of actual reporters and journalists is talking to bikers and reporting on six flags. I'm glad I threw out my tv the other day, but it's not about the medium used it's about all the news shows not just CNN pandoring to advertisers and trying to boost ratings and putting those ambitions over actually reporting news and historic events. A good example of this is MSNBC and their product placement deal with Starbucks and how it's taking over one of their morning news shows. Not just talking about the coffee constantly but also interviewing the CEO about how great the coffee is, instead of the economic shithole the world is in and the thousands of people the guy just laid off.

A brief history of our impact on this island in the universe. It's awing. Remarkable. Yet because it seems to say everything it leaves me wanting to do.

Watch the movie at the YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

Watch Yann Arthus-Bertrand announce the film at TED:

http://www.ted.com/talks/yann_arthus_bertrand_captures_fragile_earth_in_wide_angle.html

I thought I'd stop by Facebook this morning(ok it's 1:00pm and I just woke up and happened to go there now-ish, but I was totally working on something cool till early this actual morning[6:40am], so for all intents and purposes this right now is 'morning' for the rest of the post.) and saw they'd updated their Terms of Use now deemed 'Statement of Rights and Responsibilities' which alone probably set at ease at least 30% of its outraged users. For the most part it's the same as before except now they've closed a whole lot of legal loopholes that their lawyers didn't see originally, specifically the stuff that made the contract completely null and void by virtue of being contradictory and unenforcable, and the language has been revised to be 90% not shady, and in the shady spots to be convoluted enough to throw off an estimated combined further 45% of disgruntled current and former users. After that there's an estimated 20% that has to use Facebook for work or networking and does so cautiously and then the again estimated, 5% that realizes they couldn't take the social network giant in a legal battle, and that they could easily change their TOS by a few words to something like "By maintaining a membership you give us lifelong irrevokable consent to use and ownership of your content to do with it as  we please including all your intellectual works you've posted on or may post in the future on Facebook or stashed away in your basement" oh wait, they already tried to do that. I meant do something like that again.

So with that said, what are the goods and bads about the new Facebook TOS (a.k.a. [long pandoring name])?

Pros

• It's now legally enforceable and valid - a pro cause all the protection they claim to provide, they now actually mean it and are legally obligated to enforce it. With an invalid document as they had prior they could do ANYTHING with voluntarily submitted content, including identity, by virtue of it being invalid.
• They now have to give 3-7 days notification when they change the TOS, which will allow users the chance to get out at the very least for one TOS revision, more if in that revision they don't choose to change that very statement, in which case you get at least one more use out of the clause.

Cons

• It's now legally enforceable and valid - even though they had carte blanche with your identity, content, and intellectual property with their old invalid agreement, some local laws trumped such behavior. Now that you're signing a valid contract by using their service, the shady things they stipulate are now their legal right.
• Their ownership of your intellectual property, personal information, and identity(name, address, phone number, pictures of you, etc.) is total and unlimited. ANYTHING you post on Facebook belongs to Facebook until you delete it or close your account. The excerpt below may be confusing,  it doesn't give Facebook the right to use anything you post anywhere on Facebook, instead it gives Facebook the right to use anything you post on Facebook or anywhere else on the net in connection with Facebook(and increasing amount of sites including CNN and other big players, there is no stipulation how loose a connection it needs to be) anywhere in The Universe(incl. France, Mars, Texas, TV, Magazines, Patent office, Jive Records, Radio, etc.). While you have some control over their ownership of your content via privacy and application settings there is nothing in the TOS that stipulates Facebook has to give you the ability to control all aspects of their ownership rights. Furthermore there's no stipulation that you need to be notified when they remove or change the wording of privacy and application controls. In fact, there are no Intellectual Property controls mentioned.
  "For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account (except to the extent your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it)."

So what to make of this? Is Facebook less or more shady now? Here's my survival guide for the current TOS:

1. Use Facebook every day. In some cases(when it involves money, and/or you've written an application for Facebook) you only get 3 days warning of TOS changes and knowing Facebook's past stance on the permanancy of their rights you don't want to be stuck in that mess. You also need time to say goodbye to your 'friends', once you delete your account, any goodbye message will be hidden from other users; snatched from their inboxes.
2. Don't put anything on Facebook or any site that uses 'Facebook Connect' or is in any other way connected with facebook that you don't want to share equal ownership of with Facebook [and any of it's employees acting in the name of Facebook],  including but not limited to your name, likeness, image, identity, video footage of you or your family, art, poetry, music, or any other creative content. It's worth mentioning again that they can do anything with such content anywhere, for and to anyone.
3. If you have to put personal information up, you know, so people know who you are and so you can interact with them, make sure to double check your privacy settings. Keep a note that all the privacy settings that were there yesterday are still there today, because they can change whenever Facebook pleases without notice of any kind. Hope Facebook gives you controls over how THEY can use your content rather than just what type of friends and other users can view your content.

To reiterate and conclude: fuck facebook, they are at par ethically with people that author malicious viruses and data harvesters. I hope Zuckerberg get's analy raped by big donkey dick and/or if the site should EVER manage to turn a profit for him to turn around and support cancer research or something good that balances out the shameless exploitation of his sheep-like mindless users.

WolframAlpha.com is kind of like Google but instead of fetching web results it fetches data. I just spent about 20 minutes playing with it and it's pretty incredible.

Here's a link to a screencast demonstrating some of the main features: http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html

They're in the process of launching, the site is live right now but they're working out the kinks in their cluster/server setup trying to officially launch by Monday. Cool that they're showing behind the scenes like that.

Watch live video from Wolfram|Alpha on Justin.tv

It's weird and cool when you listen to someone describe something and it's as if they're talking about you and it's like you finally have a concise elegant way to describe yourself. Growing up as someone outside the conventional archetypes in our society means it's hard to find role models, to find people you respect and aspire to be like and you end up having to settle for taking parts of the people around you that you can relate to for that purpose. Emily Levine says I'm a 'Trickster'... and I'm glad she did because her definition and structural analysis of a Trickster was taking too long to figure out on my own. A few errand gaps I still needed filling in after much self discovery over the past 5 years.

I just read A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael beah. It's a pretty incredible book to say the least. It's heart breaking and poetic. The author's ability to convey the utter loss and confusion of losing his family and being forced to participate in a civil war make it all the more visceral to read. There's a lot of imagery of the sights and sounds of war, but an equal amount of imagery taken from stories and folklore he  uses to vividly impart his emotional state as the story progresses.

It starts a short while after he's moved to America and quickly delves into his past. Filling in the gaps it follows a non-linear chronology but is laid out in a way that helps convey the core message of the book; Everyone is capable of truly horrific acts, and that transformation can happen in an instant.

The book shows us that while wars start for a reason, that reason can quickly become lost to a sea of violence and hate that no longer has a specific root or cause and has manifested in each participant in a different way at which point chaos can begine to sustain itself. Finally it shows us that while it's harder to create order from chaos than the other way around, people that are pulled into such chaos are still people at their core, like you and me, and with patience and love it is possible for them to find their humanity again.

Everyone should read this book, it's a valuable story. Click here to find out how you can get a copy.

Here are a few interviews with Ishmael where he talks about the book and Sierra Leone.

Myspace lost its credibility for a number of reasons. The final nail in the coffin, at least for me, was when they changed their Terms of Service so they they owned the music and all other content including blog posts and images you upload to the site. Facebook updated their Terms of Service on February 4th. They did it without notifying its users. They added a clause where by continuing to use the Facebook service after the terms were updated I, and everyone else, became binded by those terms. They removed a clause where deleting your account ceases their rights to your content.

It's not just an issue of Facebook now being able to use the content I did put up, but Facebook can now create or edit my content and claim I did it. It's about the possibility of Identity theft, deformation of character, etc. and an issue of the slick way they got their users to 'agree' to the terms. Facebook—long heralded as the anti-myspace, the good guys, now has the credibility of a second hand timeshare salesman.
The following is an excerpt from Facebook's ToS:

Licenses

You are solely responsible for the User Content that you Post on or through the Facebook Service. You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.

The following is Q&A for you who don't speak lawfirm:

What does that mean Yoav? Why is it so bad?
Facebook wants "irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license(with the right to sublicense)" to do stuff with my stuff.

What do you expect, they obviously need to have certain rights with your content otherwise they wouldn't be able to even display it on the site and it would be unusable, right?
a) Facebook's rights to my content should definitely be revokable, and they used to be.
b) Facebook should have notified its users of such a drastic change in their ToS instead of being shady.
c) Facebook does not need rights to "publically perform or display", "scan", "frame", "create derivative works and distribute(through multiple teers)" my content, that's ridiculous.

What else are these bastards trying to get away with?
They want all of these rights to apply, not just to everything you've ever put on Facebook, but to anything anywhere in the world that talks about or alludes to Facebook. This may be a typo, the word 'connection' can be interpreted multiple ways, it's still fucked up.

They want to be able to use my "name, likeness and image for any purpose", in other words they want to be able to call CNN and tell them that "Yoav Givati loves facebook", or "Yoav Givati married a giraffe and flew to Mexico for the honeymoon after stuffing his face with wedding cake" and I can't do anything legally to stop them. They can even put me in a commercial without compensating me, speak for me in public, commit crimes in my name, sell and perform any art or content I've uploaded in the past, and other unspeakable thing that I, as a not evil internet company, cannot imagine.

But Yoav, I'm sure once they see everyone's reaction to this they'll change it to something more acceptable.. right?

No, Facebook's big revenue idea(after years of not being profitable) is to use people's image to sell products to each other. like "Yoav went to so and so amusement park yesterday!, he loved it, click here to buy tickets" This used to be an opt in feature, but no one opted in, and it used to be based on fact, like say if I had actually gone to an amusement park, now it doesn't have to be.

What to do now?

It would be stupid to just delete my account now when there's a chance they'll reconstitute their ToS to include a clause that severs their complete and unlimited ownership and carte blanche of my content and identity upon account deletion. If I just delete my account now I'd be doing so with the current terms, which I do not accept.

I've taken down all my content except my email address, and I've deleted all my posts and groups(except yoav's pinky finger which I'm not an administrator of since I landed on that island with my coconut radio I made.) Facebook does still claim to have copies of everything archived and still has the right to use those copies as described above. I removed my content merely to show my distaste for the road Facebook as gone down and to make it clear to my friends that I don't use Facebook anymore, and won't.

It seems the last week or so I've fallen behind in blog posting, laundry, twittering, working out, and a whole host of other things. I did manage to get a few things done work wise though. Typically when I start a new project I experience this hyper-focused state of being where I don't sleep, eat, or anything else beyond the bare minimum needed to survive-- during a typical bout 54 hour days separated by 4 hours sleep is normal; no alarm clocks or caffeine necessary. For some reason I've slipped into this without any particular thing being in focus, and the chance of actually focusing on anything significant over-ridden by reeally wanting to watch the inauguration, and being constantly glued to CNN for a couple days before, during, and after. The fact that I wasn't experiencing from or taking advantage of my state of mind to immerse myself in solving usability problems and establishing functionality paradigms, left me a wastefull lazy being. A couple months ago I'd wake up at 3am 6 times a week, run 8km in the freezing cold, do 200 pushups, 200 situps, and 30 pullups, and then start my day. Today(which started on Wednesday night) I've showered, done a quarter of my laundry, had breakfast, lunch, and got about an hours work done. Those few tasks have taken me about 12 hours to accomplish. It's gotten so bad that I am,  at this moment drinking directly from the Brita spout. Oh we have cups, a whole cupboard full, it's about 32feet from me to that cupboard and that vast trek involves steps; descending and the ascending on the way back, so I guess that's too far now. I'm actually starting to get flabby(a bit lets not get carried away) from living like this. It's time to make a change. I feel like saying it's gone too far, but it's not about how far it's gotten, it's about key lifestyle choices that over time precipitate into the unholy and indolent catastrophe that defines my current rut. All I have to do is change those behavior patterns and wait for liberal evaporation to do it's thing. Unfortunately I can't compress into the standard 24 hour day/night thing and so I never find myself in a position where I can say "Well, it's 6pm and I'm done all my tasks for today, now I can relax until tomorrow." Instead I have an infinite pile of tasks to get done before I retire and so for me just sitting around relaxing waiting for the date on my calendar to change is like a cigarrete smoker trying to quit and having 'one last drag'. It's a whirlwind, a downward spiral from there pulling me with intense gravity to where I am now in all this, and it gets worse, much worse. If I let it. Sure there are times when relaxation is needed and warrented but it's never with the goal of passing time. It has a purpose and a deeply analyzed function which has to result in a net increase in productivity in the long run to even merit the thought of it. So in order for me to be functional I have to be strictly disciplined. The one problem with doing that is that occasionally I'll be working on something and lose track of myself, I won't realize I've been focused on some task or error for 4 hours straight and then everything gets derailed and needs special adjustments and sacrifices to catch up to a speeding train. I have yet to find a way to grab my own attention say every 45 minutes, and I have yet to find a way to wake myself up after only a few hours sleep(when I'm not fully in the zone) that I can't deactivate before I'm fully awake resulting in me often getting back into bed and sleeping for 14 hours when I only wanted 4 or 6. But those two things would be luxuries if I every figured them out-- depending on external intervention to maintain discipline is a major pitfall and at its most basic level a cop-out. It means I have something else to blame for faltering which leads me to believe it wasn't in my control. So maybe I shouldn't be thinking of it at all.

Watching CNN's coverage of the crowds gathering in Washington this morning I'm vicariously filled with this sense of hope and unity with the rest of the world. Once when I was younger I had a similar experience while listening to Mandela's inaugural speech sitting on the floor in my parents bedroom while they watched it on tv. I can't remember if I was actually listening to the words or if I could grasp at that stage the full gravity of what he was saying but the sound and cadence of his voice coupled with the crowds response conveyed at it's most basic level a sense of just peace, forgiveness,  and movement to work together to make it a better place for everyone. The overwhelming sensation that washes over you when everyone in a room wants to do their part and the surety that a group of people can achieve their goals because they work together and support eachother.

With that said, I found it amusing when CNN informed me that the Vice President is sworn in before the President. He seems like a nice enough guy but if something where to happen to Bush just after Biden is sworn in, Biden would technically be president for a few minutes until Obama could be sworn in. Got me thinking about a few things, like would Biden in that short time exercise his power? Would he jump up and down exclaiming something along the lines of, "I'm president Yippee!", I don't see how he could resist knowing that he gets to be President without having to deal with any of the issues. Would they try to swear Obama in any faster? Whom would the majority of the secret service(not like they're in short supply today) be assigned to protect.