waited several minutes to
confirm what I suspected
would happen—the connection failed. So, I pulled
out a Palm Pixi on Sprint,
downloaded the Facebook
app and posted my update
in about a minute.
Between common data
failings like the one just
described and AT&T’s inability to complete a phone call
when it’s most needed in
major metropolitan areas,
it’s obvious that AT&T has oversubscribed its flimsy 3G network. Any
marketing attacks leveled at its
pathetic coverage are completely and
totally warranted, no matter what
AT&T begs the courts to rule on the
matter.
—Andrew Garcia
Facebook’s TOS
Changes
In February, Facebook riled up
users by changing its terms of service. Facebook deleted a provision
saying that users could remove
their content at any time and added
language indicating that Facebook
owned users’ content, even after an
account was terminated.
The changes, which were brought
to most people’s attention by a blog
called the Consumerist, enraged
many of Facebook’s users. Two
weeks later, Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg posted on his blog that
“we have decided to return to our
previous terms of use while we
resolve the issues that people have
raised.”
In his post, Zuckerberg also invited
users to get involved in crafting new
terms by posting comments, questions and requests at the Facebook
Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.
A quick look at that link today shows
a campaign to reinstate some guy
named Periklis Koutsogiannis, invi-
tations to view porn and a thank
you to Zuckerberg: “I am a single
guy and [Facebook] keeps me out
of trouble when I get home. (More
time on here than in bars, therefore
more disposable income for your
advertisers!)”
The Facebook TOS brouhaha was
not the first social network faux pas,
and it won’t be the last. As Facebook
and the like look for new ways to
monetize their services, the social
network envelope will get pushed fur-
ther and further. These sites need to
remember that their user base is their
business, and work to protect users’
privacy and maintain their trust.
—Deb Donston
Tech Grounds
Thousands
On Nov. 19, the Federal Aviation
Administration’s flight
plan filing system went
down, causing delays
in airports across the
country. What caused
the system to go
down? As reported by
eWEEK’s Chris Preimesberger, the outage was the result of
a faulty part inside a
telecom router link in
Salt Lake City—and
perhaps an FAA con-
tractor. The incident is under inves-
tigation, but it shines a spotlight on
the power of technology—both to
make life easier when it’s working
and to bring life to a grinding halt
when it fails.
—Deb Donston
Confounded by
Conficker
Conficker is a work of malware
that, in the form of multiple variants, wormed its way through
unpatched Windows desktop and
server machines.
Early this year, Conficker garnered mainstream attention due to
a supposed April 1 trigger. On that
date, Conficker-infected machines
were expected to “phone home” to
fetch new code and instructions
from whoever holds the worm’s
reins. Presumably, the goal of Conficker’s controllers involved the creation of a botnet that would carry
out illegal machine-based activities
by proxy.
Microsoft released a patch for
Conficker outside of its Patch
Tuesday schedule, and members
of the security community prepared a set of freely available tools
to aid in Conficker detection and
removal for infected systems.
Whether it was because of these
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attempted to calm
riled “friends.”
