TFSAs are supposed to be easy to open, but as I found out today it seems terribly easy to screw the pooch. So to ING Direct — fix your registration software because it doesn’t work. There is nothing wrong with my social insurance number — I have used it to register as an employee, to files my taxes, and to open a few bank accounts already and it’s never been a problem before. Hell, I used it to open an RRSP using the ING web site before, yet now my application is rejected because of a problem validating my S.I.N., which hasn’t changed recently. Yeah, I could call and spend half an hour on the phone registering the account, but frankly do I really want to put some of my money into a bank that has no branches AND doesn’t do full QA on their own web software? I don’t think so. So, no linky for you.
Something for today’s generation to think about
In today’s “upload to Youtube” world, many evidently need reminding that even though you can post it online, maybe you shouldn’t.
Quitting Facebook
I must be starting to show my age a little bit. My back aches and I get muscle cramps with worrying regularity, I don’t in fact like the new-fangled music that young people appreciate so much, but especially I’ve come to reflect on how much I am *not* an exhibitionist. If friends are getting together and I’m the only one with a camera, there will be few pictures taken, and I’ve noticed how antithetical that is to today’s generation, who prefer to go in for the “share everything and hold back nothing” approach to partying and life in general.
Good on them though, I’m not the kind of person who thinks that his way is the only correct way for everybody, and indeed I’ve little patience for those who do. And that, in somewhat of a roundabout way, is why I’ve decided to shut down my Facebook account permanently.
The crux of my problem with Facebook is, in a way, that it is designed for young people who are by and large still in college, even though it is now used by a much wider variety of people; still, it’s not the audience itself so much as the obsession that Facebook has with denying that any such thing as privacy exists. It wasn’t always that way; initially it was conceived as a means for people in colleges and universities to have a sort of common platform with which they could keep in touch with friends and classmates. If you didn’t have a university email account, you were deliberately left out and therefore wouldn’t be able to see who or what was on Facebook, which is pretty good privacy.
Since then Facebook seems to have done a 180. Essentially they started making more and more formerly-private things public with scant notification only delivered after the fact, a bit like a friend you thought you could confide in but who ends up telling everyone at the party your little secrets. This wasn’t done all at once of course, as this informative infographic shows. Nor was it done out of a dogmatic desire for a more open society, but out of the founder’s desire to cash in by turning his site into the data-miner’s dream database in the hopes of attracting buyers.
Of course there are some people who say that all you need to do is watch for updated TOS and privacy policy on the Facebook site. Frankly, that still sucks. It’s like inviting “that guy” to a party at your place, you know, that guy who always drinks too much, that guy who ends up throwing up all over your bathroom and groping every woman there, that guy who ends every evening with a (thankfully drunken and abortive) fight. You could invite that guy to a party and have to spend all night keeping an eye out for him. Or, you could decide that his company’s not worth it and just not invite him. The second way is a lot more fun usually. My point is that Facebook just isn’t worth the bother at this point.
More disturbingly Facebook’s “make everything public” strategy has cost many people dearly. Content on people’s Facebook pages has been used to justify firing people, denying people promotions, or not hiring them at all. Pictures on Facebook have lead to people being arrested (I’m not saying it was without cause, but it’s still a concern). This is all a part of the public record and easily looked up. Clearly there are very significant negatives to having a Facebook account in the first place, and I’m not enough of a “2.0” kind of guy to think that the upsides of Facebook outweigh its downsides. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t care about the users, as long as he can squeeze more money out of the site. Remember Beacon? that was possibly the biggest intentional privacy black hole of the 2000s, yet it was only withdrawn very reluctantly (a class action lawsuit had to be launched) with no sign that Zuckerberg ever thought there was anything wrong with it, and without any guarantee that it wouldn’t rear its ugly head again in one way or another.
Some people are really into social networking; to be without Facebook would be like death to them… but I’m not one of those people. Yes, it’s quite useful if a former colleague or classmate now somewhere else is looking for you, but I’ve had a web site long enough that if you type my name in Google you’ll find this site, which is handy enough for me to share my thoughts with the world.
So, that’s my beef with Facebook. Why bother writing this? Well, I have a number of friends and family who are on the site and may wonder why I’m not on it anymore — now you know.
Adieu à Facebook
Après avoir eu un compte au site Facebook depuis quelques années, j’ai décidé d’abandonner ce fameux site.
Le problème que j’ai avec Facebook c’est que le propriétaire du site, Mark Zuckenberg, ne croit pas que les utilisateurs devraient avoir le droit de mettre quoi que ce soit sur le site pour diffusion seulement privée. Ça n’était pas toujours le cas; au début ça n’était même pas tout le monde qui avait même le droit d’utiliser le site. Cependant avec les années l’avarice de la direction a eu pour effet que le site a fait volte-face sur la protection des informations privées, et a lancé des revisions à sa politique sur le sujet qui ont eu pour résultat que pratiquement toutes les données entrées sur Facebook sont maintenant aussi publiques que si on les écrivait sur le mur d’une partition de salle de bain dans un nightclub. Ça s’est fait graduellement, comme l’indique cet infographique (anglais). Et ça s’est fait sans préavis aux utilisateurs et avec le seul but le profit de M. Zuckerberg. Si vous n’aimez pas, tant pis, il n’y a qu’à ne pas utiliser le site.
Eh bien c’est justement la décision que j’ai prise. Quand on fait face à une administration qui a si peu de scrupules, on ne peut que se retirer. Beaucoup de gens ont perdu un emploi ou une promotion à cause d’items dans Facebook qui auraient dû être réservés à des amis mais qui ont de toute évidence été inspectés par un inconnu. Dans certains cas des photos d’utilisateurs ont été utilisées pour monter des chefs d’accusation contre certains utilisateurs (qui le méritaient peut-être, mais ça porte quand même à réfléchir). Pour moi j’ai décidé que le jeu n’en vaut pas la chandelle. Je ne suis pas de la génération qui a 20 ans maintenant, ceux qui prennent des photos à longueur de soirée quand ils sortent et qui n’ont aucune hésitation à tout partager en public, et un site qui est fait pour eux n’est probablement pas fait pour moi. Les risques de Facebook ne sont tout simplement pas égaux aux bénéfices. Certes on peut m’y retrouver facilement, mais si on entre mon nom dans Google on arrive aussi facilement à ce site.
An interesting twist to “fiddling while Rome burns”
As if there weren’t already enough known reasons that lead the North American economy to collapse in 08, here’s another — the SEC didn’t see anything bad developing because its staff was too busy looking at porn. So they didn’t see it coming because they were distracted looking at a lot of people coming. They lost sight of the money and concentrated on the money shots. [insert your own porn-themed joke here].
A senior attorney at the SEC’s Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office.
Yes, perseverance is often something to be commended, but it’s really time for that guy to admit he has a problem.
More delivery company fun
I’ve often mentioned the strangely difficult struggle that is trying to get something delivered here. But today I’m in the middle of a story that makes even less sense than most.
I’ve ordered an office chair because the one I have has certain bits that are falling apart. So I ordered one and it was due to be delivered Friday via Fedex Ground. I worked from home Friday, made sure that I wasn’t doing anything that would prevent me getting the door, signed up for delivery notification by email and made sure that the chair was marked as being out for delivery… and around 11:30 got a notification that the Fedex truck had come and gone. This was a little weird, I had been at home all this time and no one had come around. I called Fedex to complain, we fully confirmed my address (including the door code), and everything was correct. When I went downstairs there was a notice on the front door of the building. Next delivery date was today.
Today I again work from home and make sure that I’m able to answer the door when the Fedex people show up. Again I get the delivery exception notification, again I call to complain, again confirm the address. And then when I go downstairs I see a notification. Only now it’s actually in the building (!) on the door of a mailbox, but it’s on the door of the wrong mailbox. Despite the mailboxes being clearly identified and the apartment number for delivery being correctly written on the notification paper. So the Fedex guy actually entered the building without calling me to be let in for some reason, and then proceeded to leave a notice not on my clearly-identified mailbox but on that of a guy one floor below me.
It’s not just today. Clearly for two business days running this Fedex contractor has made it to the building and despite the information he has being 100% correct, and myself being at home waiting for him, has just plain failed to deliver.
Meanwhile the postman had something I needed to sign this morning, he rang up, he was let in, came up to the apartment, got his signature. Just a few minutes ago I got another call from the front door, it was the UPS guy, I let him in, he came upstairs to deliver the package. Yet somehow the exact same instructions just aren’t cutting it with the Fedex guy. I don’t get it. Is this some kind of courier humor? Will the chair end up getting delivered by Ashton Kutcher who will then inform me that I’ve been punk’d? Someone’s putting some effort in it, the only other thing I can think of is that the guy who’s supposed to get the chair to me doesn’t know how to read numbers or something equally ridiculous (how did he manage to find the address then?). It’s beyond comprehension really.
How entirely appropriate!
You may or may not know, but this week is National Procrastination Week. I really wanted to mention this before Thursday, but, you know.
The joys of tooth pain
I have an appointment with my dentist Friday to get not one but *two* root canals… I’m really kicking it up a notch. If dentistry were like World of Warcraft I’d be a Lvl 70 Patient.
Location, location, location
As I walked back from the bar in -16C windy weather having spent the last week in the Caribbean (more on that later) I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a way for me to get back to St. Maarten…
Another place to avoid as a vacation spot…
Imagine this scene — you’ve booked a week’s holiday and enjoyed a bit of Eastern Europe with its tall, leggy blondes and fine beer. You’re getting on a flight to get back to work. Unbeknownst to you Slovakian police have planted explosives in your bag to test their airport security systems, which fail to detect the suspect substance, and now you’re flying at 20,000 feet sitting on top of a bomb and towards arrest. Sounds unlikely? It happened just in the past week.
Feel safer when flying now? Didn’t think so.