“In times of radical change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves perfectly equipped for a world that no longer exists.” - Erik Hoffer
Some people still ask why I'm not on Facebook (845 million users) or Linkedin (150 million users) or Twitter (over 300 million users). My one-word answer is usually, "Privacy." Maybe that's too simple but I do believe that our individual privacy rights are not a matter of the slightest concern of Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter or any other current social media network. And that goes double for Google who has recently merged all their various information gathering products under one privacy umbrella.
Managing a Facebook account is something of a full-time job. The
company has a history of changing its privacy policies and launching
applications that enroll you in some marketing and sharing exercise
without your permission. This means that you must hover over your
Facebook privacy settings like a hen worrying about its eggs.
It doesn't stop. This month Facebook gave its users, almost a billion
of them, around a week to digest proposed changes that include among
other things the renaming of the Privacy Policy to the Data Use Policy
It makes more sense when you remember that social networks - all of them - are in the business of gathering and selling your private information to others - small businesses, large corporations, governments or just about anyone with the right price of admission. They're not giving you anything for free. You have to agree to give them something they value very highly - your own privacy - in exchange for the so-called services they provide.
If you someday run into a "privacy problem" some day because some potential employer demands you provide your Facebook or other social network password and user name before you are interviewed or hired for a job, that breach of privacy is not Facebook's, Twitter's or Google's problem, it's entirely your problem.
Guy Kawasaki once famously said, "Advertising is when you tell people how great you are. PR is when someone else says how great you are. PR is better." What do you do when someone deliberately puts "bad PR" about you that gets connected to your Facebook page or elsewhere on the web? What if someone hacks your Twitter account? What if it's just mistaken identity like the case of a Japanese man with the same name as a man connected with a serious crime?
Sometimes you get much more than you ever wanted or originally bargained for. I still think social networks and privacy issues could get very expensive before the problems are resolved. If you eventually have a problem with Facebook, I can just about guarantee that neither Mark Zuckerberg nor 844,999,999 other people he uses won't even care. It will be entirely YOUR problem.
Sometimes I just don't have as much time to write as I wish. Maybe it would relieve a little pressure on my guilty conscience by providing a list of some of the articles that I wish I had time to write about:
...The researchers and the
advocates and the regulators have had to rely on the company itself to
describe its practices. What Jonathan's platform has enabled, in
collaboration with the (Stanford Computer) Security Lab, has been the
ability to actually see what websites are really doing.
...Mayer's research most recently
led to investigations by the FTC and state attorneys general in New
York, Maryland and Connecticut, into Google's bypessing of the default privacy settings
in Apple's Safari browser, meaning that millions of iPhone and iPad
users that Google had said were not being tracked by its advertising
network, in fact were having their Web data logged.
One of my friends recently said he hadn't heard anything about Ubuntu running on an Android phone. I already want one!
...Carry just the phone, and connect it to any monitor to get a full Ubuntu
desktop with all the native apps you want, running on the same device
at the same time as Android. Magic. Everything important is shared
across the desktop and the phone in real time," Shuttleworth wrote. "It
just works, the way Ubuntu should. Lots of work behind the scenes to
make both systems share what they need to share, but the desktop is a
no-compromise desktop.
Just for the sake of clarity in case the following news release
didn't get any coverage in several local newspapers owned by the Stephens family. From the EFFector newsletter
of 3/19/12:
The federal district court in Nevada has issued a declaratory
judgment that makes is harder for copyright holders to file
lawsuits over excerpts of material and burden online forums and
their users with nuisance lawsuits. The judgment -- part of the
lawsuit avalanche started by copyright troll Righthaven -- found
that Democratic Underground did not infringe the copyright in a
Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper article when a user of the
online political forum posted a five-sentence excerpt with a
link back to the newspaper's website.
Please click the underlined headline link (above) if you'd like to read the entire article.
What I really hate about this is the overall climate and those
portions of existing laws that almost encourages publishers of all
forms of media and attorneys to work together in similar efforts to
threaten ordinary consumers in blatant attempts to recover
outrageous fees for minor violations or in some cases, no violation
at all. I guess the prospect of "money for nothin'" lured the Stephen Media folks into this mess, but such cases of deliberate fraud can only increase the
disrespect for the law and give consumers a false sense of
justification to disregard copyright law entirely.
This is another case where the press and other media companies have
failed their readers or viewers and the public at large. Such
copyright (and patent) trolls are another reason I renew my EFF
membership each and every year!
Several days ago, I was checking out a few technical websites when I found Russel Barnes' post on LinuxUser's site, "HUD to replace menus in Ubuntu 12.04 – a further kick to the hornet’s nest?" Having more or less successfully worked through two versions of Ubuntu's Unity interface and reached a working accommodation with the new features added in both Ubuntu 11.04 and 11.10, the title caught my attention. Without much other explanation, I played the YouTube video below. (You can also click through to the YouTube page for the larger HD version of both videos on this page.)
Based only on the video and brief description in Barnes' above post, the very first impression that could be printed on a family blog was, "We are NOT amused!"
Luckily, there was a link to the official announcement on Mark Shuttleworth's blog in the Barnes' article. For everyone's sanity at this point, Ubuntu users should first read Shuttleworth's original explanation of what may or may not appear in next version of Ubuntu, version 12.04. Read the full explanation of the Heads Up Display or "HUD" before the weak faint and strong men's heads explode. Yes, we're talking about a new twist on how to interact with a computer, but the new HUD builds on years of effort. See: Mark Shuttleworth, "Introducing the HUD. Say hello to the future of the menu." markshuttleworth.com, January 24, 2012. Available online: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/939
Now, after reading Mark Shuttleworth's more detailed and measured introduction of the Heads Up Display, he also says,
We’ll resurrect the (boring) old ways of displaying the menu in 12.04, in the app and in the panel. ...But hiding the menu before we had the replacement was overly aggressive. [Amen to that.-Ed.] If the HUD lands in 12.04 LTS, we hope you’ll find yourself using the menu less and less, and be glad to have it hidden when you are not using it. You’ll definitely have that option, alongside more traditional menu styles.
So if I'm reading this correctly, current menu-driven users will have their menus, and those who want to explore the new HUD system can enable that method for an unlimited "test drive." If people like menus they can still use them, but Shuttleworth and his developers are betting that some currently unknown fraction of Ubuntu's current and future users will adopt the new HUD. It sounds as if Ubuntu is seriously trying to build a bridge to the future.
While in the infantry, I've waded across shallow creeks, swam or floated across deeper rivers, even crossed one or two upside down hand over hand on a single rope. Believe me. Bridges are better, and more troops, or in this case Ubuntu users, can reach the other shore. In their haste to get ready for Gnome 3's clean slate approach, both Gnome and Ubuntu created changes that were deeper than the developers first thought. Some users were lost in their attempts to get the new interfaces to work for them - they didn't make it to the other side and were lost. More likely, some users had too much work to do to make more than one or two attempts and even switched to other flavors of Linux like Linux Mint, Xfce, or a host of others. That's why real change agents have to think about building a bridge.
In my own case, I found a way to get across without waiting for the bridge. I've used a program found in Ubuntu's Launchpad called Cardapio in both 11.04 and 11.10. Cardapio can be installed and updated from its own PPA. In 11.10, I changed the icon to one of my choice for the Cardapio launcher, placed it right under the big Ubuntu icon (BFB?) and fine-tuned the "Main Menu" (it's still there) to make all the various menus categories work the way I like to work. Check out Ubuntu Vibes' very detailed article on the set up and uses of Cardapio. Ubuntu Vibes also posted the video. Click on the small video below to view a larger version on YouTube:
In addition to menus, I like multiple windows open on the same workspace and switch back and forth between windows frequently. I also don't like icons, menus or scroll bars to appear or disappear. I want them to be in the same darn place I left them and don't want to wait even a second while they reappear. I'm not sold on the dash where some icons show up now and maybe totally different icons show up later. I like consistency on my big dumb screen but so far I still have the option of making those changes that help me work "my way."
After those minor adjustments with Cardapio and other tweaks, HUD's promised voice commands and learning how we work certainly have the potential to become a useful addition and that could help a transition to HUD. I may even be able to teach my big hulking HP quad core desktop to understand Anglo-Saxon voice commands. Ubuntu users need a little time to adapt to new ways of working but it looks like all of us at least now have the promise of the bridge that has been missing in the last two Ubuntu editions. So in the meantime, I suggest we hold our ire, save Shuttleworth's original HUD post for further reference and try to keep an open mind as 12.04 moves toward beta versions.
For the record, I've used menus since my first 9" black and white Macintosh replaced my earlier Kaypro and Apple IIe's. I actually tried one of Jef Raskin's early interface ideas that Shuttleworth mentioned in his article on a plug-in card added to an Apple IIe. Back then and in today's environment, testing new interface ideas is a normal part working with technology as long as we can take back a step if things don't work out as the developers originally planned.
Thankfully Ubuntu remains a high quality free distribution and I'm actually encouraged Ubuntu developers are extending the interface with new ideas. I also believe users will try to spend some time with HUD IF the Ubuntu developers give all of us the option of making the software work "our way" or if we can easily back up a step or two while HUD is further refined. Otherwise, we can also reload and relearn KDE's desktop after an early "April Fools Day" on March 26, if HUD and Ubuntu's 12.04 release doesn't work as advertised.
Ubuntu's developers and its larger community have always provided options and choices. As to Shuttleworth's article, no harm, no foul, play on!
