So go ahead and delete all you want, but Facebook creepily never forgets. When it comes to your friendings, defriendings, pokes, and RSVPS, it keeps it all. Plus they  also keep track of what computers you’ve used to access your facebook account as well as others who have used your device to log onto facebook with their own account.

Facebook remembers 57 data points, at least that is what they are sharing with users they keep. Here is a list of those data fields.

Now while I understand websites have to have complex databases. That gives them no right to track so many things as well as the newly discovered information that even when you log out of facebook you never really log out. This is all very ultra creepy. I like many people use facebook, but as soon as a better solution comes along I am going to switch. And by the way I am not convinced Google Plus is going to be better. The Do NO Evil company has done plenty of creepy web following. Disappointing.

Illus by Victor Juhesz

While the rest of us lost our shirts to Wall Street. Some great reporters like Matt Taibbi have been trying to track down where the money went. He discovered that two wives of Morgan Stanly Big Wigs had received $220 Million in Federal bailout money. Then they went on a shopping spree.

You can read the original story here. Here is the meat of the story. The wives with an upfront investment of $15 million,  quickly received $220 million in cash from the Fed, most of which they used to purchase student loans and commercial mortgages. The loans were set up so that Christy and Susan would keep 100 percent of any gains on the deals, while the Fed and the Treasury (read: the taxpayer) would eat 90 percent of the losses. Given out as part of a bailout program ostensibly designed to help ordinary people by kick-starting consumer lending, the deals were a classic heads-I-win, tails-you-lose investment.

They started out small, with the government throwing a few hundred billion in public money to prop up genuinely insolvent firms like Bear Stearns and AIG. Then came TARP and a few other programs that were designed to stave off bank failures and dispose of the toxic mortgage-backed securities that were a root cause of the financial crisis. But before long, the Fed began buying up every distressed investment on Wall Street, even those that were in no danger of widespread defaults: commercial real estate loans, credit- card loans, auto loans, student loans, even loans backed by the Small Business Administration. What started off as a targeted effort to stop the bleeding in a few specific trouble spots became a gigantic feeding frenzy. It was “free money for shit,” says Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation. “It turned into ‘Give us your crap that you can’t get rid of otherwise.’ ”

The impetus for this sudden manic expansion of the bailouts was a masterful bluff by Wall Street executives. Once the money started flowing from the Federal Reserve, the executives began moaning to their buddies at the Fed, claiming that they were suddenly afraid of investing in anything — student loans, car notes, you name it — unless their profits were guaranteed by the state. “You ever watch soccer, where the guy rolls six times to get a yellow card?” says William Black, a former federal bank regulator who teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri. “That’s what this is. If you have power and connections, they will give you a freebie deal — if you’re good at whining.”

Cue your Billy Mays voice, because wait, there’s more! A key aspect of TALF is that the Fed doles out the money through what are known as non-recourse loans. Essentially, this means that if you don’t pay the Fed back, it’s no big deal. The mechanism works like this: Hedge Fund Goon borrows, say, $100 million from the Fed to buy crappy loans, which are then transferred to the Fed as collateral. If Hedge Fund Goon decides not to repay that $100 million, the Fed simply keeps its pile of crappy securities and calls everything even.

Some people need to give us our money back and do some real jail time.

In mid-February, Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This after struggling for several years to compete against Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which have cornered the digital and physical book store markets, respectively. As a result, they have been in the process of closing 30% of their stores.

“It has become increasingly clear that in light of the environment of curtailed customer spending… and the company’s lack of liquidity, Borders Group does not have the capital resources it needs to be a viable competitor,” said Borders Group President Mike Edwards.

Great Commentary!

Originally posted by Tyler Durden

The world’s most (in)famous hacker group – Anonymous – known for effectively shutting down their hacking nemesis security firm (with clients such as Morgan Stanley and, unfortunately for them, Bank of America)- HBGary, advocating the cause of Wikileaks, and the threat made by one of its members that evidence of fraud by Bank of America will be released on Monday, has just launched communication #1 in its Operation “Empire State Rebellion.” The goal – engage in “a relentless campaign of non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience” until Ben Bernanke steps down and the “Primary Dealers within the Federal Reserve banking system be broken up and held accountable for rigging markets and destroying the global economy effective immediately.”

The Anonymous manifesto:

* We are a decentralized non-violent resistance movement, which seeks to restore the rule of law and fight back against the organized criminal class.
* One-tenth of one percent of the population has consolidated wealth in unprecedented fashion and launched an all-out economic war against 99.9% of the population.
* We are not affiliated with either wing of the two-party oligarchy. We seek an end to the corrupted two-party system by ending the campaign finance and lobbying racket.
* Above all, we aim to break up the global banking cartel centered at the Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, Bank of International Settlement and World Bank.
* We demand that the primary dealers within the Federal Reserve banking system be broken up and held accountable for rigging markets and destroying the global economy, effective immediately.
* As a first sign of good faith we demand Ben Bernanke step down as Federal Reserve chairman.
* Until our demands are met and a rule of law is restored, we will engage in a relentless campaign of non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience.
* In our next communication we will announce Operation Empire State Rebellion.

Glorious Chairman Ben – our free advice to you: change your e-mail password stat…

Asange Zuckerberg

Facebook has announced that developers of Facebook application can now gather the personal contact information from their users. The Security firm Sophos describes it as, a move that could herald a new level of danger for Facebook users, and advises users to remove their home address and phone numbers from the network immediately.

I know I am going to remove any information I have now. Here is a funny quip on data security. It really is ironic how Asange is a villain for giving away private information and then Zuckerberg is Man of the year for selling our private information. I am surprised how many people still are on Facebook.

Also Beware of bogus Facebook apps
You may have seen Facebook posts about subliminal Disney messages, showing celebrities caught in the act, or let you see who deleted you or viewed your Facebook profile. All of thees were attempts to trick you into surrendering your personal information.

Anna Pulley interviewed Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos. Cluley explained that the Facebook scammers can make money by convincing you to complete an online survey, or they may try to get your telephone number so they can sign you up for an unwanted subscription you won’t discover until you receive your next bill.

Even if you do not directly provide a scam Facebook app with any information, the app may still have access to your profile and get your private information. It can then propagate to your friends accounts.

I am thinking of starting an anti-social network. A place where you have to add your friends the old fashion way. You have to track them down and add them manually. No more scraping everyone’s email address books and trying to match them up and no more friend suggestions so you feel pressured to add people who you really don’t really know.

Facebook is going downhill. It started when he opened the service to high school students and, now, to any sleazy person worldwide. This was the downfall of MySpace.

Esquire put Mark 3rd on the hall of shame list? Due to his appearance at a black tie event where he wore jeans and a t-shirt. According to Esquire:

No matter how much money you have or how many people’s secrets you hold in your digital palm, you cannot show up to a black-tie event in a t-shirt and jeans and expect to be taken seriously.

I hope people quit taking him seriously he is more of a villain than Asange and he needs to stop being rewarded for it. If you want to read a great article on Zuckergerg then check out dikipedia.

“The actions by the Federal Communications Commission fall far short of what they could have been,’’ said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge. “Instead of strong, firm rules providing clear protections, the commission, created a vague and shifting landscape open to interpretation.’’ This means that if Amazon will pay extra then their service will have preference over their competitors.

What this means is that you will have access to your businesses website throttled back to allow greater bandwidth speed for others who pay for the privilege. Many small businesses online depend on high speed connection to their payment service provider and a slow internet will certainly hamper this for them. Having a hierarchical structure applied to the internet will undermine its free and open principles, leaving those without the means to compete with the large companies large bank accounts, left languishing stuck at a lower level of service.

On the other side you will have to pay more for your mobile internet service. It is a big money business decision for a company like Comcast to find those customers most interested in upgrades, whom would have the most to gain by receiving premier service, and then charge for it. Plus then you know they will raise the lower tier service price to help pay for the upgrades to their network. They will be making money left and right.

When Internet activists discovered what was going on inside the Internet business community, many were appalled because the once open borders of the Internet frontier is becoming smaller before their very eyes. The idea that the Internet would be used to discriminate between users, based upon an money, as opposed to first-come, first-serve fairness principles is infuriating to all, except for the firms lobbying for this bill.

A study by Stephen Pociask concluded net neutrality rules would raise the cost of Internet services for consumers and make millions of Americans cancel broadband subscriptions, which would obviously hit lower income households hardest. Mr. Pociask added, ”Given the national commitment to universal broadband service, Internet regulations would drive millions of lower-income Americans offline, which is last thing we should do.”

A man referred to affectionately as the Father of the Internet, Robert Kahn, has delivered a strident argument against “Net Neutrality” legislation. First, Kahn dismissed the phrase “Net Neutrality”, as “a slogan”, and he warns against dogmatic views of the development of the still-young Internet. Virtually all of the early pioneering senior engineers responsible for creating the Internet of today oppose “Neutrality” legislation, it turns out. The so-called “Grandfather of the Internet,” Dave Farber, is a scathing idea of the legislation.

Internet Giant Google, who positioned them as the defenders of net neutrality, has now done a complete 180 on the topic. Instead of promoting net neutrality, they are now saying that it should only apply to wired broadband connections, not wireless. Then Adam Green said “Google, a company that I’ve long admired and currently hold thousands of dollars of stock in, just ‘went evil.”

The bottom line is: When I buy a wireless broadband connection from an ISP, I expect them to deliver whatever speed I pay for. They have no right to say: “Well, we know you have paid for a 6mbit connection, but you are only going to get the full speed when you are visiting Google’s sites. If you want to use Flickr, then we only give you 2mbit.”

The very idea of not having true net neutrality is simply a violation of our internet freedom. I should decide what I want to use my internet connection for. Not big business.

I don’t want my potential success as a new or small company to be limited because some rich company has made a special arrangement with my internet provider. I say let the best service come out on top. That’s what a free market is all about. That’s what net neutrality is all about.

Thanks again Obama for selling the American people out!

Facebook is an utter waste of time. It is not original or well designed. Its nice at first to stay in touch with some distant friends but after a while you have so many people on there that you don’t really want to keep in touch with and then you stop using it. The idea that it is worth billions of dollars is one of the moronic thoughts that lead to the internet stock bubble that has already burst. Yahoo do not waste your money. The AOL and Myspace buyers lost all of their investments.

Facebook changed the world how exactly? By ripping off other social networking sites? This is a poor attempt by Time magazine to appear relevant – as if Time magazine means anything to anyone anymore. I don’t read it. Facebook is an online fad and so Time thought that they might  get some attention by trying to ride the coattails of Zuckerbergs undeserved fame. Its all about sales.

Zuckerberg is an idiot for not taking the billion dollars offered by a bigger idiot willing to pay for it. He is going to end up the way of MySpace and have a worthless pile of computers when he could have retired at the age of 25.

This award is supposed to go to the person who most influenced the world (for good or bad) Shame on you Time Magazine for writing an advertorial.

I was reading an article posted on reuters about how 17 U.S. billionaires, including Facebook co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, have pledged to give away at least half their fortunes in a philanthropic campaign led by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

Most of the comments were very good. You can tell who knows whats going on and the young idealistic people who have no clue. Saying things like; “In turn, we as consumers have an obligation to support companies that give back.” and “I don’t understand this new trend to vilify people who are successful.” and “The “rich” do not have any more or less obligation to our nation than you or me.”

My response on reuters…

Really?!? If you think these people earned their money with hard work and honesty then you are way too naive’ The facebook guy got lucky that was all. Actually Gates did also with the IBM blunder on his software rights. Bill gates should pay damages to the thousands of companies he bought up for no other reason than to shut down and reduce competition.

They are not really giving away 1/2 of their money. It goes into the foundations that they set up. Yes it does have some trickle down benefit but they provide mostly tax savings than anything else. So in the end yes its better than them stuffing it in their mattresses.

If they really wanted to help America and the rest of the world they would use their money to help stop corporate corruption in Washington. It never ceases to amaze me how people think new politicians are going to solve the economic problems when the same old big money lobbyists are still there waiting to pay them off each new re-election.

90% of the wealth in America is owned by 10% of the population. Read that again! Yeah the rich are getting richer because they buy politicians. If you think the country is hurting now wait until the Chinese quit buying our massive debt. Then watch unemployment triple what it is today.

The only solution is to make lobbying illegal and let the government run the country and not the rich elite.

Steve Jobs Figurine

The Hong Kong based MIC (Made in China) gadgets. Was selling a Steve Jobs figurine made with incredible detail and likeness. SJ’s outfit is his classic trademark. The black turtleneck and Levi’s 502 jeans. You could even tell his pair of New Balance sneakers while standing on an Apple Logo platform. MIC Gadgets was contacted with a cease and desist letter from apple of California. Some web sites have stated that Apple is suing MIC Gadgets, but from what I can tell its only a letter asking them to stop.

From Apple: “Unauthorized use of a person’s name and/or likeness constitutes a violation of California Civil Code Section 3344, which prohibits the use of any person’s name, photograph or likeness in a product without that person’s prior consent…”

I am not even sure if a California law can be upheld in China. Maybe the Hong Kong legal rules are a bit different than mainland China. But Apple can not seem to stop all the iphone and ipad knockoffs that are in mainland China nor Hong Kong.

However the letter has scared them enough to stop selling the figurines at 300 units. They were selling for $79.90 USD with free shipping. The toy had gained much attention on the Internet, with many noting how the figure was holding the iPhone incorrectly, in the supposed (death grip) that causes signal loss on the iPhone 4. This issue did not hold back customers from purchasing the figure, which sold out completely.

M.I.C gadget apologized to Steve Jobs, and Apple.Inc for any inconvenience. For the full story and more pictures you can view them at the MIC gadget Site For now the Steve Jobs Action Figure has been taken off the market.

Google Creeping you out?!?

Is Google creeping you out? Are all the ads you see the same type? This is their new retargeting campaign. It will work for a small percentage of people who need that extra reminder. For everybody else it will just seem really creepy. If this does creep you out, you can go to this page to see what Google thinks your interests are based on a cookie, and you can also download a browser plugin if you’re spooked about Google’s latest ‘interest-based advertising’ initiative.

What is ad “retargeting.” If you visit a page on an advertiser’s own site or YouTube channel, Google can now show a related follow-up ad to just that person when they visit another site which shows Google ads. Since there are millions of these sites in the Google Content Network, chances are Google will see you again.

The term “remarketing” has multiple definitions, but Google uses it describe a way for AdWords advertisers to run campaigns throughout the whole Google Content Network. The idea is that while visitors of a certain advertiser’s website may have shown interest for a product or service, leads don’t always convert to sales and Google aims to make it easier for AdWords clients to try and win over the potential customer at a later stage. Retargeting can be applied to either text or display ads, and during the trial period was used for everything from boosting brand awareness to driving clicks and sales.

If you’re spooked about Google’s latest follow you around until you buy something strategy then let them know it. Personally I feel like not using Google. Like they need more money?!?