Is Facebook good?

“What is so bad about Facebook?” Whenever I hear this question, I usually start a – seemingly – never-ending, heated discussion about why Facebook is bad and how stupid it is to use Facebook.

The more you know about the hidden costs (e.g. giving up privacy and private conversation) of the so called “free” social network, the more the cost-benefit function gets out of proportion.

From my point of view there are millions of very good reasons to stop using Facebook immediately. However many of the reasons stated below are not only valid for Facebook, but for other closed and centralized social networks as well, espcially Twitter.

Political Reasons to quit Facebook

• Facebook is based, registered and run in the United States of America.
  This is bad because of the “Patriot Act”. Even if Facebook starts respecting your privacy, your data is still easily available to every governmental institution in the Country through open backdoors or requests, as this Facebook.pdf-file documents. Think about what this means to your freedom.
• Facebook is a deliberate experiment in global manipulation.
  Facebook and Government institutions have a history. Since the article was released in 2008 it got a lot worse. In 2010 the U.S. Government started developing and using a software which creates fake profiles on social networks to spread messages and to spy on people.
• Facebook wants to go public.
  When the time comes, everything that counts is money. They will try everything to make money out of Facebook, thus you, your friends, your communication, everything. At least, I bet on it.

Technical Reasons & Internet Politics

• Facebook is a centralized social network. It is run by Facebook alone.
  Not only does this contradict reality (you do not meet all your real-life friends only (!) in the same, single real-life place) it also makes the whole network prone to attacks and breakdowns. Think hacking attacks or software failures. The real-life complement would be destroying the one, single place where you meet all your friends making impossible to contact them anymore.
• Facebook adds an unnecessary layer to the Internet.
  Facebook hasn’t introduced anything new, apart from being able to “like” something. Facebook Mail resembles Email, Facebook Chat resembles chat software, Facebook Threads resemble forums, Facebook Pages resemble normal web sites, galleries, videos, links…they all have an equivalent in the regular Internet world. Why put all of this in the hands of a privately owned company like Facebook?
• Facebook and the Open Social Web.
  There are plenty of people working on the idea of an open social network, which would work decentralized, with whichever social network you prefer. For example Open Social. Instead of joing these people, like Hi5.com, MySpace, orkut, Netlog, Sonico.com, Friendster, Ning, and Yahoo!, Facebook decided to present something stupid, called “the Open Graph API”. Facebooks idea with this is to use it’s market power to install a Facebook-owned pseudo web standard. The name just disguises its fundamentally closed nature.
• Facebook Like-Buttons on External Web Sites – I can only warn you about the everywhere emerging Facebook Like-buttons on external (non-Facebook) web sites. When you are logged in to Facebook while browing the Internet. Due to the fact that the buttons are loaded through an embedded iframe (the non-Facebook web site embeds a Facebook web site), these buttons provide your personal browing habits to Facebook, even without you clicking on them.
• Mark Zuckerberg is an evil hacker.
  When Mark Suckerberg started Facebook he scraped student’s profiles (names, images and other personal information) from several University websites to get his network – The Facebook – started. That is only one aspect of unethical behavior in his “sketchy” past. The question you have to ask yourself is: “Do I want to entrust a hacker like Mark Zuckerberg with personal information of myself and my friends and our communication?” Let me help you out: No!
• Even if you want, you cannot protect your privacy.
  You automatically entrust all your Facebook friends with your personal information, even against third-parties (like web applications (web apps) and data-sharing partners of Facebook). You would never do this in real life, maybe not even with your closest friends. On Facebook you even let the least tech-savvy person you know (or maybe do not even know) manage your online privacy issues. How sick is that?
• Data-sharing deals.
  Anyone who connects the American Amazon web site with his or her Facebook account, gives Amazon not only his own personal data but also the data of all his / her Facebook friends. There are other, similar data-sharing deals.
• Datasharing for personal purposes.
  I do not understand why Facebook allows everyone to access and import my personal data, contacts, chats, etc. but me. Why can’t I export my Facebook address book but only parts of it? I do not like that kind of “nannyism”, at least, I do not need it. Do you?
• Constantly changing privacy and account settings are annoying.
  The Electronic Fountier Foundation has a nice chart, you might be interested in. Time tells: What’s private now, will be open in the future. You have to constantly re-read the changes Facebooks settings. Those changes used to be communicated to every memeber up until 2010 (I believe). This is when Facebook started to have you join the Facebook Fan-Page to be informed about TOC changes. Fail.
• “The default is now social…”
  Mark Zuckerberg says. Meaning, we will share all your information, there is no more private, learn to live with it. “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.” No, it just made your business model work.

Personal & Social Reasons to quit Facebook

• Facebook doesn’t let you delete all your data.
  When I tried to edit or delete my checkins to the newly introduced Facebook Places in Q1 2011, I realized, there is no way functionality for this. The Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities reads: For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it. As sharing data you and your friends upload to Facebook is what all the fun is about, this actually translates into “We will never delete anything”. Think about this.
• Facial Recognition
  Facebook’s facial-recognition feature – or “tag suggestions” – which allow users to identify people across multiple photos at once using facial-recognition software invades my privacy. The more photos of me are tagged with my name, the better the software works, the lesser privacy I get.
• Facebook takes too much of my time.
  I have better things to do than wasting my time on Facebook.
• Broken Social Circle.
  I have a huge friend list full of people who are not actual friends. I don’t know how that happened but my real-life social circle looks kind of different.
• Friend or Foe?
  People whom you would rather not like to be connected with, find and contact you. It is hard not to accept friendship requests.
• You are being stalked.
  Generally speaking, Facebook is not really helpful when it comes to relationships. It usually just causes ridiculous jealousy.
• It just feels bad.
  I live my life in a free world with plenty of freedoms. They range from free thinking, free software, freedom of speech, …simply freedom in all my decisions. Why would I want to be stuck in a walled garden like Facebook?
• Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to really delete an account.
  It is easy to find the “deactivate” option, but deactivation is not the same as deletion.

Personally,I don’t Use Facebook.

What is Evolution?

Do you know what is evolution? If NO! than this is for you.

Human evolution is the lengthy process of change by which people originated from apelike ancestors. Scientific evidence shows that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people originated from apelike ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years.

One of the earliest defining human traits, bipedalism — the ability to walk on two legs — evolved over 4 million years ago. Other important human characteristics — such as a large and complex brain, the ability to make and use tools, and the capacity for language — developed more recently. Many advanced traits — including complex symbolic expression, art, and elaborate cultural diversity — emerged mainly during the past 100,000 years.

Humans are primates. Physical and genetic similarities show that the modern human species, Homo sapiens, has a very close relationship to another group of primate species, the apes. Humans and the great apes (large apes) of Africa — chimpanzees (including bonobos, or so-called “pygmy chimpanzees”) and gorillas — share a common ancestor that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago. Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent. The fossils of early humans who lived between 6 and 2 million years ago come entirely from Africa.

Most scientists currently recognize some 15 to 20 different species of early humans. Scientists do not all agree, however, about how these species are related or which ones simply died out. Many early human species — certainly the majority of them – left no living descendants. Scientists also debate over how to identify and classify particular species of early humans, and about what factors influenced the evolution and extinction of each species.

Early humans first migrated out of Africa into Asia probably between 2 million and 1.8 million years ago. They entered Europe somewhat later, between 1.5 million and 1 million years. Species of modern humans populated many parts of the world much later. For instance, people first came to Australia probably within the past 60,000 years and to the Americas within the past 30,000 years or so. The beginnings of agriculture and the rise of the first civilizations occurred within the past 12,000 years.

Paleoanthropology

Paleoanthropology is the scientific study of human evolution. Paleoanthropology is a subfield of anthropology, the study of human culture, society, and biology. The field involves an understanding of the similarities and differences between humans and other species in their genes, body form, physiology, and behavior. Paleoanthropologists search for the roots of human physical traits and behavior. They seek to discover how evolution has shaped the potentials, tendencies, and limitations of all people. For many people, paleoanthropology is an exciting scientific field because it investigates the origin, over millions of years, of the universal and defining traits of our species. However, some people find the concept of human evolution troubling because it can seem not to fit with religious and other traditional beliefs about how people, other living things, and the world came to be. Nevertheless, many people have come to reconcile their beliefs with the scientific evidence.

Early human fossils and archeological remains offer the most important clues about this ancient past. These remains include bones, tools and any other evidence (such as footprints, evidence of hearths, or butchery marks on animal bones) left by earlier people. Usually, the remains were buried and preserved naturally. They are then found either on the surface (exposed by rain, rivers, and wind erosion) or by digging in the ground. By studying fossilized bones, scientists learn about the physical appearance of earlier humans and how it changed. Bone size, shape, and markings left by muscles tell us how those predecessors moved around, held tools, and how the size of their brains changed over a long time. Archeological evidence refers to the things earlier people made and the places where scientists find them. By studying this type of evidence, archeologists can understand how early humans made and used tools and lived in their environments.

The process of evolution

The process of evolution involves a series of natural changes that cause species (populations of different organisms) to arise, adapt to the environment, and become extinct. All species or organisms have originated through the process of biological evolution. In animals that reproduce sexually, including humans, the term species refers to a group whose adult members regularly interbreed, resulting in fertile offspring — that is, offspring themselves capable of reproducing. Scientists classify each species with a unique, two-part scientific name. In this system, modern humans are classified as Homo sapiens.

Evolution occurs when there is change in the genetic material — the chemical molecule, DNA — which is inherited from the parents, and especially in the proportions of different genes in a population. Genes represent the segments of DNA that provide the chemical code for producing proteins. Information contained in the DNA can change by a process known as mutation. The way particular genes are expressed – that is, how they influence the body or behavior of an organism — can also change. Genes affect how the body and behavior of an organism develop during its life, and this is why genetically inherited characteristics can influence the likelihood of an organism’s survival and reproduction.

Evolution does not change any single individual. Instead, it changes the inherited means of growth and development that typify a population (a group of individuals of the same species living in a particular habitat). Parents pass adaptive genetic changes to their offspring, and ultimately these changes become common throughout a population. As a result, the offspring inherit those genetic characteristics that enhance their chances of survival and ability to give birth, which may work well until the environment changes. Over time, genetic change can alter a species’ overall way of life, such as what it eats, how it grows, and where it can live. Human evolution took place as new genetic variations in early ancestor populations favored new abilities to adapt to environmental change and so altered the human way of life.

Unrequited love is bad for your heart

During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat a maximum of 2.5 billion times, says UW-Madison cardiovascular physiologist Richard Moss. Does that mean that falling in love — an activity that increases the rate at which the heart beats — could shorten your life?

Only if it’s unrequited, jokes Moss during his annual Valentine’s Day lecture to first-year medical students.

“When people fall in love,” he explains, “their heart rate increases. Sometimes their hearts even skip a beat.” Even then the math suggests that the heart in love would tick faster, using up its lifetime of beats more quickly.

But, as Moss points out, the symptoms of falling in love are different than those of actually being in love.

“Being in love has a calming effect. After people fall in love and are in love, their resting heart rates tend to be much lower,” he says. Plus, studies show that couples involved in lasting, loving relationships live longer than those who aren’t.

As for heart health, Moss says, “it’s much better to fall in love and stay in love than to never fall in love at all.” But, he does mention that the most dangerous type of love is unrequited: “These people keep falling in love but don’t experience the long-term benefits of being in love.”

For evidence about love’s benefits, Moss turns to animals that seem especially well designed for amour (for the purpose of procreation). The oyster toadfish, for example, has a sonic muscle that vibrates nearly 200 times per second. This rapid vibration, Moss says, produces an alluring song that attracts mates.

Unlike the oyster toadfish, which spends its life on the ocean floor and has the time to attract a mate, many people are too busy for heart-racing romance. For these people, Moss recommends chocolate — a treat, he says, that can produce some of the same symptoms as falling for someone. Every year during the lecture, he offers chocolate hearts to his students, many of whom admit they have time only to study.

Although Moss says the annual lecture is primarily meant to be fun and alleviate his students’ stress at mid-term, he does say that it conveys important physiological lessons about “the salubrious effects of falling in love and the many animals that make love part of their lives.”

Moss, being the “hearty” guy he is, says, “Valentine’s Day is a high holiday. It’s the best day of my year!”

The 4 Wives

There was a rich merchant who had 4 wives. He loved the 4th wife the most and adorned her with rich robes and treated her to delicacies. He took great care of her and gave her nothing but the best. He also loved the 3rd wife very much. He’s very proud of her and always wanted to show off her to his friends. However, the merchant is always in great fear that she might run away with some other men. He too, loved his 2nd wife. She is a very considerate person, always patient and in fact is the merchant’s confidante. Whenever the merchant faced some problems, he always turned to his 2nd wife and she would always help him out and tide him through difficult times. Now, the merchant’s 1st wife is a very loyal partner and has made great contributions in maintaining his wealth and business as well as taking care of the household. However, the merchant did not love the first wife and although she loved him deeply, he hardly took notice of her. One day, the merchant fell ill. Before long, he knew that he was going to die soon. He thought of his luxurious life and told himself, “Now I have 4 wives with me. But when I die, I’ll be alone. How lonely I’ll be!” Thus, he asked the 4th wife, “I loved you most, endowed you with the finest clothing and showered great care over you. Now that I’m dying, will you follow me and keep me company?” “No way!” replied the 4th wife and she walked away without another word. The answer cut like a sharp knife right into the merchant’s heart. The sad merchant then asked the 3rd wife, “I have loved you so much for all my life. Now that I’m dying, will you follow me and keep me company?” “No!” replied the 3rd wife. “Life is so good over here! I’m going to remarry when you die!” The merchant’s heart sank and turned cold. He then asked the 2nd wife, “I always turned to you for help and you’ve always helped me out. Now I need your help again. When I die, will you follow me and keep me company?” “I’m sorry, I can’t help you out this time!” replied the 2nd wife. “At the very most, I can only send you to your grave.” The answer came like a bolt of thunder and the merchant was devastated. Then a voice called out : “I’ll leave with you. I’ll follow you no matter where you go.” The merchant looked up and there was his first wife. She was so skinny, almost like she suffered from malnutrition. Greatly grieved, the merchant said, “I should have taken much better care of you while I could have !” Actually, we all have 4 wives in our lives a. The 4th wife is our body. No matter how much time and effort we lavish in making it look good, it’ll leave us when we die. b. Our 3rd wife ? Our possessions, status and wealth. When we die, they all go to others. c. The 2nd wife is our family and friends. No matter how close they had been there for us when we’re alive, the furthest they can stay by us is up to the grave. d. The 1st wife is in fact our soul, often neglected in our pursuit of material, wealth and sensual pleasure. Guess what? It is actually the only thing that follows us wherever we go. Perhaps it’s a good idea to cultivate and strengthen it now rather than to wait until we’re on our deathbed to lament

Life Is Echo

A man and his son were walking in the forest.
Suddenly the boy trips and feeling a sharp pain he screams,  “Ahhhhh.”
Surprised, he hears a voice coming from the mountain,  “Ahhhhh!”
Filled with curiosity, he screams:
“Who are you?”,
but the only answer he receives is:
“Who are you?”

This makes him angry, so he screams:
“You are a coward!”,
and the voice answers:
“You are a coward!”

He looks at his father, asking,
“Dad, what is going on?”
“Son,” the man replies, “pay attention!”
Then he screams, “I admire you!”
The voice answers: “I admire you!”

The father shouts, “You are wonderful!”,
and the voice answers:
“You are wonderful!”

The boy is surprised, but still can’t understand what is going on.
Then the father explains,
“People call this ‘ECHO’,
but truly it is ‘LIFE!’ Life always gives you back what you give out!
Life is a mirror of your actions.
If you want more love, give more love!
If you want more kindness, give more kindness!
If you want understanding and respect, give understanding and respect!
If you want people to be patient and respectful to you, give patience and respect!
This rule of nature applies to every aspect of our lives.”

Life always gives you back what you give out.
Your life is not a coincidence, but a mirror of your own doings.

(Author Unknown)

Helpless love

Once upon a time all feelings and emotions went to a coastal island for a vacation. According to their nature, each was having a good time. Suddenly, a warning of an impending storm was announced and everyone was advised to evacuate the island.

The announcement caused sudden panic. All rushed to their boats. Even damaged boats were quickly repaired and commissioned for duty.

Yet, Love did not wish to flee quickly. There was so much to do. But as the clouds darkened, Love realised it was time to leave. Alas, there were no boats to spare. Love looked around with hope.

Just then Prosperity passed by in a luxurious boat. Love shouted, “Prosperity, could you please take me in your boat?”

“No,” replied Prosperity, “my boat is full of precious possessions, gold and silver. There is no place for you.”

A little later Vanity came by in a beautiful boat. Again Love shouted, “Could you help me, Vanity? I am stranded and need a lift. Please take me with you.”

Vanity responded haughtily, “No, I cannot take you with me. My boat will get soiled with your muddy feet.”

Sorrow passed by after some time. Again, Love asked for help. But it was to no avail. “No, I cannot take you with me. I am so sad. I want to be by myself.”

When Happiness passed by a few minutes later, Love again called for help. But Happiness was so happy that it did not look around, hardly concerned about anyone.

Love was growing restless and dejected. Just then somebody called out, “Come Love, I will take you with me.” Love did not know who was being so magnanimous, but jumped on to the boat, greatly relieved that she would reach a safe place.

On getting off the boat, Love met Knowledge. Puzzled, Love inquired, “Knowledge, do you know who so generously gave me a lift just when no one else wished to help?”

Knowledge smiled, “Oh, that was Time.”

“And why would Time stop to pick me and take me to safety?” Love wondered.

Knowledge smiled with deep wisdom and replied, “Because only Time knows your true greatness and what you are capable of. Only Love can bring peace and great happiness in this world.”

“The important message is that when we are prosperous, we overlook love. When we feel important, we forget love. Even in happiness and sorrow we forget love. Only with time do we realize the importance of love. Why wait that long? Why not make love a part of your life today?”

---

If you find this story useful, please share with a friend!