Reposted due to a server change.  I’m having to use university servers right now because I can’t use Archive.org when using copyrighted music and sound effects.  Please me know if you’d be willing to host a couple of mp3’s for me. Originally posted on September 8th, 2006.

We’re making more fun of Facebook on the podcast today.  Yes, I am a Law and Order fan.

How to listen:

Play episode | RSS 2.0 Feed (podcasts) | Subscribe with iTunes or other podcatcher

Reposted due to a server change.  I’m having to use university servers right now because I can’t use Archive.org when using copyrighted music and sound effects.  Please me know if you’d be willing to host a couple of mp3’s for me.  Originally posted on September 6th, 2006.

Facebook!  It’s where everybody knows your name!  And you know everybody else’s name, et cetera!

How to listen:

Play episode | RSS 2.0 Feed (podcasts) | Subscribe with iTunes or other podcatcher

Update: I just figured out how to isolate the feed to the podcasts only.  You may want to update the feed address to make sure iTunes can see both current episodes.

Update II: I’m submitting this to various blog carnivals including but not limited to Showcase Carnival.

Perhaps this will satisfy the critics?

Update: Make that a $65 fee, not $50.  Not only that, it might increase to $100.

I have yet to test out UAWifi,  the bigger and supposedly better campus wireless network funded by the new $50-and-increasing technology fee.  Every time I try to connect, it merely rejects me.

For those who have figured it out (kind of), they don’t like it.  The network apparently mandates the user to run a "policy key" program.  This program supposedly ensures certain things on the computer according to the manufacturer’s website including:

• Authentication and Registration
• Anti-Virus
• Anti-Spyware
• Microsoft Patches
• P2P File Sharing
• Access Point
• Custom Policy Builder

And because I use Comodo instead of the supported programs, my system would theoretically be unsupported.

This isn’t just UAWifi; users in residence halls are also affected.  As for now, the wireless network "UAWireless," while unsecured, is still working and is where I’m posting this from right now.

More than ninety students have joined the Facebook group "Screw Policy Key" and are working to find a workaround, calling it spyware, which is ironically one of the things the policy key is supposed to protect against.  The people responsible for the change maintain that it isn’t.

Meanwhile, I think I might know a way around it, but I also don’t feel like getting sued.  We’ll see whether it works once it, well, works.  People ought to realize that CCIT closely monitors its network traffic in the first place, but requiring people to run intrusive software like this is quite scary.

A portion of the news feed on my Facebook account (friends’ names removed for privacy reasons, as if most of my readers can’t find out anyway)

The new (out)rage in the online college world is Facebook’s new "news feed".  Compiling information from "friends" on Facebook, the feed gives the user on-the-double information about people’s latest activities on Facebook, including posting on people’s "walls", friendships, "group" memberships, etc.

Let’s see: 

• eight of my friends posted on [name]’s wall.  It was his birthday yesterday.
• [name] and [name] are now friends.
• [name] hates the news feed.
• [name] and [name] are dating.
• [name] is weirded out by Facebook.
• and more…

A friend once joked to me in a private message on Facebook that it was "a stalker’s dream come true."  Perhaps this is becoming more true.  Not only is there a news feed for your overall circle of friends, you can zero it down to individual friends’ "feeds". 

The protest group mentioned in the image to the right currently has 26,853 members worldwide (mostly in the U.S., of course), but I think the protest is quite shortsighted.  First, the feed doesn’t show any information to which I didn’t have access in the first place other than times of instance.  For the most part, it only the information easier to find.  These friends’ profiles, as well as profiles of just about everybody at the University of Arizona who happens to use Facebook, are available for my viewing.  Even before "news feed", I could basically sit in a coffee shop, search for the coffee shop’s name on Facebook, find who admits to frequenting it, find pictures of people I recognize, and find out that the girl 20 feet from my port beam has a boyfriend named Mark Burton.

Fellow students, if you don’t want your entire circle of friends (let alone your entire school or the entire Internet) finding out, DON’T POST IT ON THE INTERNET!!!!

I support the news feed.  Overall it might encourage people to use a little more caution, which some of Facebook’s users really need to consider trying.

Oh, and that number I mentioned earlier?  Now it’s 29,080.  And I had just refreshed it ten minutes ago.  Actually, I’ve been refreshing it as I’ve been writing this, and the number was steadily increasing.  Let’s just say it’s going to be at least 80,000 by the time I wake up.