mos1's comments

The door is opening for some form of competition and a possible segmentation of the market.

At least that's what happened when somebody tried to use my identity to buy a Hyundai in Florida.

Unfortunately instead of then admitting that it does exacerbate the issue, he then pretends that there is no issue, asserts that all FB users fully understand FB's privacy model and insults anybody who doesn't agree.

Something to think about: can you imagine a Zappo's employee arguing with concerned customers the way kmavm has?

He mocked a legitimate user concern (FB privacy confusion) with his "How do you sleep at night???" comments, in which he portrayed anybody with this concern as hysterical and irrational.

Search doesn't cause the problem (it merely exposes and exacerbates it), but it's a legitimate problem. And it's ridiculous for a FB employee to go around mocking those of us who had to talk our parents through a more than 100 click privacy-restoration process over the phone. (Especially when our parents are over 70, and not the fastest clickers in the West.)

If he wants to mock people for holding that concern, he's a troll, plain and simple.

And if you think that mocking people by putting imagined hyperbolic rhetoric in their mouth is civil and cogent, well... I suppose we have different definitions of civil and cogent.

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edit: p.s. calling somebody a name is not an ad hominem, it's an insult. Here's a helpful example:

ad hominem: mos1 is wrong because he's an asshole.

insult: mos1 is both wrong and an asshole.

I can't even fathom how anybody could look at such a system and claim that the users all understand the ramifications with a straight face.

It's really insulting that you're trying to sell such an utterly asinine claim by pointing out that people sometimes overshare on twitter, in blog comments, and in line at Starbucks. The FB privacy system is broken by design.

Search just happens to offer an amusing window into content that is, in all likelihood, x% people who would overshare anyway, and 100-x% people who thought they were just talking to their friends, or friends + FoF, where x is nearly guaranteed not to be 0 or 100.

Clearly not.

That said, HN isn't a place for trolling. I don't think anybody appreciates the way you're distorting people's concerns so that you can mock them.

You're smart enough to understand that the problem is not that 'public information is public', but rather that FB's habit of changing and hiding settings makes it hard to tell what is public. As such, your entire rant was not just off-topic, it was an insult to everyone with a valid concern, and every single member of the HN community who would be interested in a legitimate conversation.

So please... troll elsewhere. We don't need your kind here. This is supposed to be a place of discussion, not a place where angry FaceBook engineers insult FaceBook users with a barrage of irrelevant bullshit.

As it stands, I can only presume your defensiveness and your obviously nonsensical comparisons to twitter (a system where everyone knows that everything is truly public) make me think you know, deep down, that your employer has made some bad decisions.

I'm curious: does facebook train their employees to identify themselves as employees then to rail angrily and arrogantly at people who have privacy concerns, or is that your own initiative? Either way I'm unsurprised by it. Facebook seems like the sort of place where such utterly unprofessional behavior would be the norm.

Facebook: unilaterally changing your privacy settings then berating you and making disingenuous comparisons when you get upset about it since 2004.

I don't really care whether you want one or not. But it's really sad that you can't recognize that the set of things that are worth $x to you is not the same as the set of things that are worth $x to others, and have to instead make better-than-thou proclamations about a reality distortion field.

My car is better than yours, my editor is better than yours, my favorite trilogy is better than yours, and your favorite band sucks.

Get a fucking life.

I swam competitively in college. I didn't try for the olympics. Does that mean the swim team failed?

There are a lot of valuable lessons one can pull from a business plan competition even if you don't become a founder, or even if you never intend to become a founder.

That said, I'd appreciate if there was some copy, somewhere in a FAQ, explaining what they mean by that.

He wants to be a founder deeper in the future, but wants to work under a serial entrepreneur first, for the experience.

I don't want to say "I'd buy this if you made this change" because I live on a farm, but I would be a LOT less price sensitive if the seeds were described in a manner that made them sound more special. (even if I didn't know the variety off-hand.) Kentucky Blue Pole Beans, not 'Beans' and Organic Red Velvet Okra, not 'Okra'.

I wasn't sure I understood how large of a garden each seed pack is supposed to service. When you say '3 10 foot beds' does that mean 30 linear feet, or 300 square feet?

I'd also make sure you get real-world feedback about the plans and the pricing. If I was you, I'd go talk to people at local garden centers, and I'd bring my iPad and I'd ask them for help. If you're young, claim you're a student and it's a school project. If you're older, claim you're writing an article about this service and want to know what they honestly think.

I was surprised that the seeds weren't all organic / heritage (or that if they were, that wasn't marked.) I could be wrong, but I'd expect the sort of person who goes through this trouble would likely prefer those varieties, and would be willing to pay accordingly. After all, somebody who is looking for the cheapest seeds isn't your dream customer anyway.

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All in all, I really like the idea. It's a bit like joining a CSA, except that it's located in your backyard, with the 'assortment of foods, for a fixed price.'

Your original statement was not set in a possible future, or in an theoretically different copyright regime.

Today, in the world we live in, books and e-books each continue to have their own strengths and weaknesses, with substantial portions of the market being better served with paper books, and a growing portion being better served by e-books, as reader technology improves.

Your comment was wrong. It was very, very wrong. And it still is.

And now I'm going to go curl up with a paper book, and fall asleep. I'm not using one of my readers, because that's a recipe for a broken reader.

I'm a voracious reader, and have an iPad, a Kindle, and shelves of (mostly read) books.

Out-of-print -- with e-books, that means it's really out of print. With a traditional book, it means you need to talk to a used book store.

Used -- you can't save money by buying your e-books used. Nor can you sell them if you decide they have no further value to you.

Unanticipated Reading -- e-books are great for unanticipated delays where you brought an e-book device, but didn't bring a book.

Outdoor use -- you can take a paperback up a mountain, onto a lake, or into the jungle knowing that if it gets wet your losses are capped at $25, and if you fall down, it won't be damaged. With the e-book, a fall or weather could result in expensive damage.

Travel -- the paperback book doesn't need to be charged, doesn't need a power plug converter, works during takeoff and landing, and doesn't immediately mark you as a person who is worth robbing.

Portability -- you can carry a lot more e-books than books.

Search -- e-books are great for reference texts, where you intend to do a lot of searching for content, rather than linear reading. paper indexes are good, but not as powerful.

Markup -- e-books have a 'highlight' capability, and some note capabilities that seem like they'd work nicely in an academic context, but I generally prefer my system of post-it notes, scribbles in the margin, and underlines, which doesn't cleanly translate to e-books.

Disaster Recovery -- e-books are replaced from backups, or not at all. books are replaced by homeowners insurance payout.

Public Image -- my iPad and Kindle both mark me as an early adopter tech guy. a book likely says nothing about me, unless the person looking has an opinion about the title in question.

Permanence -- I'm relatively confident that my paper library will endure for as long as there's somebody who values the content of the books. I'm not confident my e-book library will be usable in 10 years. (between DRM, format incompatibility, and accidental data loss.)

Images -- books currently beat e-books pretty solidly when it comes to imagery. I can't really imagine getting a Photography book as an e-book at this point in time.

Visual ease -- e-books let you adjust the font, but paper books are often (though not always) easier to read.

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Or maybe e-books are superior in every single way, and I only buy books to fetishize the smell of wood pulp, whilst filling shelves to signal to my wife, kids, pets and good friends that I'm intelligent.

sigh

That strikes me as a wholly adequate explanation.