Graham 15 • User • The Register Forums

Has UK gov lost the census to Lulzsec?

Tuesday 21st June 2011 13:00 GMT Graham 15

It gets worse

One of the worst effects of this - besides the leaking of everyone's data and the fact that the government are likely to target the hackers rather than sorting themselves the fuck out - is that compromising the security of census data will massively discourage people from participating fully in the census. Census data is enormously useful for all sorts of things that benefit everybody, and this sort of shit will ruin it. If this turns out to be true, shame on LH and the government for their abysmal approach to security, and shame on Lulzsec for not taking the implications into account.

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Countries where Facebook is not, yet, king

Sunday 20th February 2011 23:51 GMT Graham 15

@Mark 65

Facetious or not, I'm going to respond anyway: You're right - of course I have and use a phone, and it was a poor example for that point. That question originally referred to a list of other services I don't use, which I later cut from the comment. For example, I don't use flickr for photos, and frequently use facebook chat, messages or wall posts when the same thing could have been achieved with a text or email - facebook is just less effort than either.

Privacy concerns are a perfectly legitimate reason not to use facebook - and the possibility remains that at some point in the future I will come to regret giving Zuckerberg such information as I have, but for the moment my position hasn't changed. Perhaps I'm just naive.

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Friday 18th February 2011 14:27 GMT Graham 15

My, my, Reg readers do seem to reserve an awful lot of hate for facebook

Dear AC 13:37 and all the others bitching about the very existence of a site which they have no obligation to use:

You seem to be under the impression that people use facebook: so they can waste the time of themselves and others; to fit in; and/or because it is interesting in and of itself. It is my sad duty to inform you that facebook allows me to:

- keep in touch with and up to date with friends

- easily organise social occasions, see who is going, etc

- hear about things I am interested in, whether through friends' links of from facebook pages

- keep (or at least see) a photographic record of things without having to source those pictures from whoever took them (yes, I know this has no guarantee of permanence and it does bother me a bit)

- amongst other things.

Several of these functions are not provided by services other than social networks, and social networks are the only place they are all colocated. The fact that some of these services are already available elsewhere ("why don't you just use your PHONE, idiot") is not an argument; why would I use multiple services when one site can provide them all adequately for me? The fact that these services tend to come and go in waves of popularity does not reflect on the usefulness of the predominant service at any one time, merely that if a better service comes along people tend to switch to it. Yes, privacy is an issue and facebook's attitude to it bothers me but doesn't outweigh the benefits of it for me. Yes, the account deletion option is still cumbersome but is possible now at least. Yes, sometimes the content is inane - fortunately there you can block or unfriend annoying people.

Anything I have failed to address?

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Apple's app store policies: What will they provoke?

Friday 4th February 2011 16:41 GMT Graham 15

Yes, but

Not sure what you mean by "they don't allow other markets in the market" - Google doesn't have a total stranglehold on Android apps in the same way that Apple does with its app store. Yes, the android marketplace is the dominant source of apps at least at the moment, but (and correct me if I'm wrong) on android people can install 3rd party apps - and will do, if Google goes all Apple on them and starts turning down apps people want.

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