Lounge Lizards / Misfits / Free Thinkers / Bohemians & the Forgotten :: Young at Heart Only

ShowMeTwice

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While I'm sure Facebook has it's place, it's just not the place for me .. the Human Race got along fine before Mr. Zuckerberg turned on a College Hook Up local site and wheeled home a boatload of dinero soon after .. (although, I have so say, I wish I had invented it .. who couldn't use those Benjamins .. ??)

I am also quite sure there are nice and friendly people that Populate FB .. along with the hatemongers, scammers, ........'s and those that generally have been provided what they feel is a voice for whatever "agenda" they want to push .. Facebook and others provide that platform with the only entrance fee being an ISP .. and, we have entered an age where these so called "Social Media" sites have generated a sub-population of data mining, out and out Privacy Invasion, sales of your info in order to tempt you into buying junk, and more ..

The Web in general, and I've said this since the days of USENET and BBS's .. men are women, women are men, gays are straight, straights are gay, kids are adults, adults are kids, and so on and so on and Scooby Dooby Doo .. :eek:

And while I'm at it, have you ever seen these "Mapping Vehicles" tooling around town .. ?? Where they have a high tech camera rig mounted on top of a vehicle as they drive around the various 'Hoods, capturing every detail and GPS coordinate .. ?? I mean, it's bad enough I can zoom in on my own Home from Google Maps .. or take a virtual drive up my street .. or, have my ISP address tracked to exactly where I am typing this, as we speak .. Brave New World, indeed ..

Lastly, it's probably my touch of dyslexia, but when I did try FB, I just found it very hard to coherently follow .. o_O ..
In the funny but true ... when I first started working on systems and networks in 1979 I quickly developed the belief that the day of total immersion into Big Brother was coming. And ... here we are a bona fide surveillance state. Big Brother has come home to roost, like it or not, and it ain't leaving.

We have citizens who are strongly encouraged to participate with their smart phones and home surveillance systems. There is good and bad in that. The good is it can help to solve real crimes. The bad is we are being taught to trust no one along the way. Smart phones, yep they are smart but you are being tracked the moment you turn it on and your personal data is being mined and sold at light-speed. I don't own one. I have an old small Nokia cell phone that I pay for minutes and will only use in an emergency. I haven't used it once in the last year. I've repaired it three times to keep her going and have one as a backup.

All the technology is great but as with anything it comes down to "use" with the nefarious types. Those nefarious types can be, and are, the so-called "good guys" too. I sincerely doubt Steve Jobs envisioned iPhone's being used to track people. Apple is one of a very small number of corporations who takes the protection and privacy of peoples data very seriously (much to the dismay of our gov't).

There will always be "those" who work towards defeating the privacy of the people. Like say the Patriot Act which "represents one of the most significant threats to civil liberties, privacy, and democratic traditions in US history." Yet many citizens just don't care and have allowed it under the guise that we are better protected. I don't buy that at all, no way, no how. Our government believes it is easier to cast a wide net and grab all versus tried and true intelligence.

I used to use what is called a "sniffer" to decode data traversing our vast communications networks. They're in great use today all over the world. Some say "you need a judges order" ... ummm, I chuckle, no you do not. And in part, that comes back to our good "friend" the Patriot Act.

Look at crime fighting today. What is one of the first things law enforcement goes for? Yep, social media presence. Good or bad what people freely put out there can and will be used against them. Will we ever see the day of the moral police? How about the day when citizens or new born kids are, by federal law, implanted with a chip which has your complete life history and is fully trackable? Don't think that's coming? The nefarious types in government would certainly love that.

Yes, for the cost of a connection all these social media sites are "free" use for people but are they "really" free? I know many folks who jumped into social media head first without actually thinking first. They've put a great deal of themselves and their personal information "out there" freely for miners, and the nefarious, to collect and make billions. And the social media user makes zero from what they freely gave away. Data mining and analytics is a multi billion dollar industry. $167 billion in 2018 and projected to grow to $274 billion by 2022. The day is already here where they know a great deal about each one of us and that influences the costs of say health insurance and much more.

The information we search the web with with gets categorized into nice neat little packets to be sold, and used, around the world to make billions more. Many use Google to search the internet, me too. There are alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo, which I also use, and their big claim is that they will not track, collect or sell your data. Your data.

DuckDuckGo business model.

Google business model.

There are other options like using a VPN or TOR. While those can hide you from prying eyes and allow you to retain privacy they are not 100% safe as there are holes in all software, and tech, but they are 100% more private than using Google for example. Some may take the stance of "who cares I'm doing nothing wrong" and to that I simply say with respect "whatever".

Brave New World, yep ... hang on the ride will get wilder - but please think first.

Am I paranoid? Absolutely not, with my experience I am merely cautious.

Oh jeez, that got longer than I though it would and I could go on ... but I need to stop here. ;)
 

ShowMeTwice

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That scam has been on FB for years. A lot of people fell for it, sadly.
Yep, that's why I would never respond to something that looks fishy or questionable. Once you feed them with a response they now know you as a potential target.
 

Uncle Willie

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Look at crime fighting today. What is one of the first things law enforcement goes for? Yep, social media presence. Good or bad what people freely put out there can and will be used against them. Will we ever see the day of the moral police? How about the day when citizens or new born kids are, by federal law, implanted with a chip which has your complete life history and is fully trackable? Don't think that's coming? The nefarious types in government would certainly love that.

I don't have any problem with the 5 / 0 using Social Media to track down the Bad Folks .. it's a tool .. it's no different than when finger printing came on the scene ..

The thing regular folks need to keep a lid on these days, young people anyway, is what they throw out there for the World at Large .. because if you have any aspirations of Climbing the Corporate Ladder, some honcho is going to "Ask an Expert" to dig thru your Social Media feed(s) looking for the dirt .. so that photo or you doing a .... hit in your underwear while a topless dancer spun a hoola hoop around her waist and your buddies were making freaky faces in the background could come back to haunt you come Promotion Time .. and / or some off color comment that you and your "Followers" thought was so funny, at the time ..

Fact is, the Data don't Die .. no matter how good a scrub you think you can do, it's still out there .. forever ..

And, yeah, I am a Paranoid .. :eek: .. (I think most here know that already) ..
 

Uncle Willie

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From the "Scamming Attempts" File ..

The other day, I got a call on my cell phone .. in a nutshell, the computer on the other end said "Your Social Security Number has been Cancelled and a Warrant has been Issued for your Arrest, please press 1 to speak with an Officer .. "

It's an auto-dialing computer that runs thru numbers until somebody answers on the other end .. then, they try and scare the snot out of you in an attempt to get you to "press 1" and be connected with a Human that will then say "We can correct this horrendous mistake, but we need some money .. blah, blah, blah .. " ..

Salesmen, good ones anyway, know that you have to grind it out .. if it takes 30 pitches to make one sale, well, that's what you gotta do .. it's no different with a Scammer .. somebody will eventually be convinced and hand over their hard earned money, then you'll hear about it on the Six O'clock News .. maybe ..
 

Nermal

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In the funny but true ... when I first started working on systems and networks in 1979 I quickly developed the belief that the day of total immersion into Big Brother was coming. And ... here we are a bona fide surveillance state. Big Brother has come home to roost, like it or not, and it ain't leaving.
;)

Yeah, but it turns out Big Brother isn't just the government. In fact, government may be less intrusive than all the business and scammers.

I worry. That's one thing I'm good about.
 

clnire

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I heard a funny "story" the other day;;

Give a kid now days a car with a manual transmission, a rotary phone and instructions written in cursive and they will be lost forever.

Sad, but I fear it's true. I have watched several videos of kids trying to use rotary phones, hilarious but sad.

I leave the definition of "kid" open, fill in your own definition...
 

Nermal

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I heard a funny "story" the other day;;

Give a kid now days a car with a manual transmission, a rotary phone and instructions written in cursive and they will be lost forever.

Sad, but I fear it's true. I have watched several videos of kids trying to use rotary phones, hilarious but sad.

I leave the definition of "kid" open, fill in your own definition...
I know. I was at Staples last week, looking for filler pages for my address book. The kid kept trying to pass off fillers for various planners. It finally dawned on me - he didn't know what an address book was. Quite reasonable, really. Why on earth would someone want to write something into a book when all you had to do was look into your phone.
 

Uncle

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Pleased to meet your acquaintance. I'm Roger, but that name was already taken when I joined. Nermal is a cat.

Actually missed this post . . . "My" BAD . . . :facepalm:

However, even given this, I did think your handle was more appropriately a revelation to "Your" mental/emotional state of mind . . . AND - The reason for most of your post too . . . Just Sayin' . . . :rolleyes:



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Katya

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Give a kid now days a car with a manual transmission, a rotary phone and instructions written in cursive and they will be lost forever.

Give them a map and see what they'll do with it. My kids wouldn't get very far using maps even though we tried to teach them. But they know cursive writing--their school taught them. It was one of those alternative, creative elementary schools in our neighborhood and there was a lottery every year to get our kid in. Wonderful school. I'm so grateful that we found it.
 

DavidOck

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Happy Friday, all.

Huh, some real rain, not the heavy dew we've been getting :)

9781722853129_p0_v1_s550x406.jpg
 

Uncle Willie

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I heard a funny "story" the other day;;

Give a kid now days a car with a manual transmission, a rotary phone and instructions written in cursive and they will be lost forever.

Hola .. :)

It was a sad turn of events when Cursive Handwriting began to go by the wayside, IMO .. I'm sure one tiny snowball at a couple Schools started the trend and it just kept rolling down the hill, getting bigger ..

It was a beautiful, expressive and artistic art, that I'm sure at least professional Calligraphers are keeping alive ..

us-constitution-175495818-584222b55f9b5851e5878357.jpg
 

Uncle

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I heard a funny "story" the other day;;

Give a kid now days a car with a manual transmission, a rotary phone and instructions written in cursive and they will be lost forever.

Sad, but I fear it's true. I have watched several videos of kids trying to use rotary phones, hilarious but sad.

I leave the definition of "kid" open, fill in your own definition...


After reading your post - thought this appropriate to post:
321de4df-dd8c-430e-9f17-31f8c209ff49.jpg





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Bea-FL

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