Anyway, it's weird how many people are banking being Social Networking Experts. I work with some. And my reaction is along the lines of, "So you're going to be the company's Facebook expert? Have you walked by any of these cubicles? Everyone's got that one covered and in droves."
Becks!
I bet we can take this thread to Kobe just with shouts of "Becks!"
I guess I meant "Social Media" expert in #5. That's the term the people I'm thinking of (and the Roost site) use.
So, are these people going for Web 2.0 or Web 3.0?
Becks!
I emailed you a while ago, you know.
I emailed you
You sent her an asynchronous rich-content targeted social media message.
I sent her pictures of my "stuff".
I'm surprised it didn't bounce. Attachments that large don't usually go through.
I'm surprised it didn't bounce.
Just landed with a thud.
You sent her an asynchronous rich-content targeted social media message.
No way, man; HTML email is an abomination.
My brother just posted a Facebook status update:
Proof I've finally received so much spam in my email inbox that I can no longer determine what it's trying to say: I actually read the latest as, "would you like to lower your balls?"
The richness of your content transcends MIME types, young neb.
MIME jokes are banned now?
ZDNet will tell you there's now something called the "2.0 Adoption Council". Weep.
When I was looking at personal financial software a while back, I found that one of the online ones allows you to use your facebook login to access all your information (including linking to your bank accounts online). They claim to have all these security features, but the very thought of allowing facebook near my finances makes me shudder.
I have been writing some Facebook integration. There, I said it. But it isn't my fault, I sweeaaaar.
I have been writing some Facebook integration.
Laydeez.
In honor of Becks' return, I suggest we all go Becks-style.
God, I totally want to launch into nerdery about the social media landscape. That's fucking horrible.
Walt is right. Let's all get drunk.
Please don't make me drink right now, Sirs.
I want to hear your social media nerdery.
I was playing flash videogames with Caroline on the Nick website, and in order to keep playing, Caroline needed to create an account and set up her security questions. The interface was definitely aimed at kids. They needed an almost 8 year old to come up with security questions.
I'm not sure why this is wrong, but its wrong. And on my lawn.
I use facebook for work all the time. People post the best stuff on there.
I cross-examined someone yesterday with their facebook postings!
People post the best stuff on there.
It is hard to refuse a friend request from your mistress.
36: This is my favorite application of Facebook. I also love how the jurisdictions are split on whether the material is discoverable if you have increased your privacy settings.
The Nick Jr. website is particularly awful with its interstitial ads. Also, their flash games tend to crash frequently, leaving the youngster frustrated and blaming themselves. Quality Assurance process, anyone?
their flash games tend to crash frequently,
Huh, I thought it was just my crappy computer. Good to know others have this problem.
All Flash games crash frequently.
39, 40, 41: I haven't had an issue with Nick Jr's flash games except for a couple of the fancy ones. I like the one where Wubbzy drives the sub.
Flash is a piece of shit, is the larger issue here.
Re: the social media nerdery, I'm in a four-hour meeting so I can't really ramble about it, but the short form is that trying to be the "facebook" of anything is pretty stupid unless you're (a) facebook, (b) google, or (c) trying to get bought by (a) or (b).
On the other hand, being the _______ of facebook can be very profitable. Notice nobody dicusses becoming the "Facebook of Farmvilles".
I have a sense that most people trying to be the "facebook" of anything wouldn't be unhappy with option (c).
being the _______ of facebook can be very profitable
I AM FACEBOOK'S RAGING BILE DUCT. GIVE ME A DOLLAR.
If Facebook gives me a million dollars, I'll happily sign everything I ever write as "the [essear] of Facebook".
47: "Apostropher gave a PAINFUL BOUT OF VOMITING to URPLE using RAGING BILE DUCT! Buy RAGING BILE DUCT credits to give your friends horrible digestive ailments!"
[Hide updates from Apostropher] [Hide updates from Abscessr]
...but the very thought of allowing facebook near my finances makes me shudder.
That'd be a laugh if facebook and my bank account hooked up and went all Tron/Hal 9000 on my ass, maybe stopped showing me ads for laser hair removal (seriously, did I click "hairy chest" somewhere along with gender and favorite books or something?) and just started making appointments for me.
See, this is why we need to run government like a business. If California had elected Whitmen, they'd be will on their way to being the Facebook of States.
So the way facebook looks at it, every page on the web is potentially a part of facebook. Per their API, every page with a like button or one of those "your friends who came here" boxes, every youtube video is accessed exactly the same way as somebody's profile or wall.
they'd be will on their way
Where theirs a will, theirs a way.
I'm interested in the nerdy topic also. How long will FB last? I expect that its vital fluids will be corrupt by 2012.
I haven't tried twitter, which seems like a logical extension (even shorter form, greater immediacy). Part of what's happening I think is that people are paying attention to the internet more and more transiently-- a handheld device that's always on, against a machine that you have to sit down at.
I've been curious about whether the size of content that people save with bookmarking services is shrinking over time. Also about quality actually-- review articles get replaced by wikipedia pages get replaced by comments on about.com pages.
Maybe it's just that a few writers of thoughtful blogs I liked have gone silent, but it seems like the middle is disappearing-- there is on one hand carefully produced content with lasting value (articles, music, google's indexes, hyperbole and a half) and there is transient tiny stuff on the other, with less in between.
Coincidentally, I just got an email from my employer today telling me that I am part of the pilot rollout of the company's internal social networking site. Gaaahhhh! I've been unwavering in my refusal to be on facebook, and now the bastards are making me join the in-house equivalent? What if no one wants to be my "friend"? Will I feel peer pressured into joining the group "Fans of Multivariate Regression", or "liking" the capital asset pricing model? What am I going to put on my status update? "Resident President is writing a bitchin' blog comment"?
No good can come of this.
It's amazing (but not really surprising) how quickly your perspective shifts when you start developing things for facebook; "I can not stand facebook apps. They're not getting one additional piece of information out of me" turns into "gee, I wish people would fill out all of their familial relationships, and while they're at it couldn't they pay more attention to tagging pictures accurately?" basically instantly. Not that I'm going to start using facebook apps; I just want other people (who are not my friends or friends-of-friends) to really embrace them.
Quit. Quit now. Unemployment can't be that bad.
56: Hire Sifu to write BILE DUCT programs to run on it?
Is there a BugMeNot equivalent for viewing facebook pages if you're not on facebook? I know I could create an account under an assumed name, but I can't be bothered to go to the trouble.
61: not really; if the privacy settings of the page are set to "everyone" you should be able to see it without an account, but if they're set to anything more restrictive you'll need to have some kind of fb network relationship with the person who posted it.
I just caught myself about to use "@" to refer to someone in a comment thread. Thank god I stopped myself in time. Must. resist. twittification.
OK, my preschool-aged son was just on Nick Jr, and managed to wind up on Facebook, logged in as me, via Nick Jr.s Facebook page.
I reiterated how much Nick Jr. sucks.
And now you have a booty call in three hours.
RE: the OP, am having a similar experience with Geni the social networking site for genealogy.It is an application that is in fact a good match for user-generated content, but the all the little Facebook-y knobs and whistles are proving rather offputting. (And it is owned by the same folks who do Yammer, an entrant into the facebook-of-the corporation derby.)
My problems with Geni are (a) the annoying upgrade teasers and (b) that it hasn't achieved world domination. And I don't think it can get to WD under it's current structure without a lot of people getting upgrades -- and so it's doomed to fail.
Yes, it was the potential for WD that attracted us--the idea of adding our little piece of the puzzle to what would ultimately become the whole puzzle. Actually I want the ice-nine equivalent of genealogical programs, one little drop, and whoomp! everything gets connected up.
While respecting my privacy and not that of anyone else.
In the facesmashing department, I give you a certain former commenter:
I was slightly surprised to discover that I agree with one of the central points of Third Way's post-election column, namely that with the passage of the Affordable Care Act we're now faced with the end of big government liberalism and progressive politics will necessarily need to concern itself primarily with operating the public sector more efficiently rather than operating a larger public sector.
What the hell turned a basically solidly liberal blogger/pundit with a few libertarian tendencies relating to urban policies into a DLC type on the economy and the role of government? I mean, as strongly as I argued in favour of the idea that the HCR that was on offer was a major step forward that you'd have to be insane to reject, it's still deeply flawed and any improvement requires major growth in the size of government. Furthermore, we still live in a country where 80% of total income growth goes to the top one percent and over 100% goes to the top twenty percent. To put it differently, who the fuck cares about gdp growth if it does nada for most people. Does Yggy give a shit about this and if so does he have any ideas on how to solve it without major changes in economic policy, e.g. taxes, empowerment of unions, expansion of the welfare state, sustained rise in the real minimum wage, etc.? #$%@!
I think it had something to do with barbers.
Does Yggy give a shit about this and if so does he have any ideas on how to solve it without major changes in economic policy, e.g. taxes, empowerment of unions, expansion of the welfare state, sustained rise in the real minimum wage, etc.?
My understanding of his position is that he favors addressing it through much higher taxes to finance generous social services, combined with less extensive but more effective regulation. He's kind of iffy on labor issues, obviously, and his "the welfare state is now complete" attitude toward health care reform is pretty bizarre, but he's hardly become a rightwinger. He's always been on the centrist side of the liberal blogger spectrum, and I don't think he's actually moved much further right recently but has just started writing more about issues on which he's always had more conservative positions. He's also recently mentioned making a deliberate effort to differentiate himself from the other prominent center-left bloggers.
My understanding of his position is that he favors addressing it through much higher taxes to finance generous social services
That doesn't quite seem to work with the 'no expansion of the public sector' line. Unless he means making the revenue side sharply more progressive, e.g. something like creating a big payroll tax exemption for the first x of income while lifting the cap and keeping benefits the way they are. Eliminating sales taxes and replacing the revenue with sharp increases in income taxes on the rich and treating capital gains like wage income would be another one. But I haven't seen anything like that at all.
74: Much higher taxes on whom? And "less extensive but more effective regulation" sounds like gobbledy-gook.
That said, I don't read Yglesias, so I don't know what he's trying to say.
Note that I remember him back in the day writing about how much higher effective marginal taxes on those with high incomes would be good because it would make it more expensive for corporations to pay a handful of employees crazy amounts of money and instead provide incentives to hire more people at the levels below that. However, that was quite some time ago, back when he did write about how to reduce the growing inequality in our already very unequal society.
Unless he means making the revenue side sharply more progressive, e.g. something like creating a big payroll tax exemption for the first x of income while lifting the cap and keeping benefits the way they are. Eliminating sales taxes and replacing the revenue with sharp increases in income taxes on the rich and treating capital gains like wage income would be another one.
Yeah, this sort of thing. I don't know if he's ever proposed any very specific proposals for how to reform tax policy, but he's definitely done some posts about the desirability of making the tax code more progressive and eliminating most deductions.
Much higher taxes on whom?
Rich people, mostly.
Here he advocates his latest enthusiasm on the taxation issue, a progressive consumption tax (which I had forgotten about, but he's done several posts on it in the past few months). I had to go back six pages into his archives to find a post on the subject, so point taken that it's not one of his highest posting priorities these days.
FWIW, I basically agree with him about this stuff, which is why I'm going to such lengths to defend him.
So the solution to the crazy increase in the total incomes of the super rich is a tax that only affects a small portion of their incomes? Yes, the Buffets and Waltons of this world spend a huge amount of money, but it's a pretty small amount as compared to their total incomes. To me his enthusiasm for consumption taxes indicates a basic lack of seriousness in grappling with the problem. It also indicates his assumption that the enormous wealth that is 'invested' is a good thing. But most investment done by the very wealthy is at best marginally helpful to the economy as a whole, and that only in the sense of providing liquidity to financial markets which also has some unpleasant negative effects, e.g. making bubbles more likely and larger than they would be otherwise.
I'm not necessarily going to defend the consumption tax idea specifically, or his related enthusiasm for sin taxes, but I do still think you're being uncharitable to him in accusing him of being unserious or overly conservative about this. Arguing for higher taxes of any kind is hardly a DLC or libertarian thing to do.
Actually, Buffet lives fairly modestly.
Anyway, the super rich aren't paying income tax right now because they don't have income (or at least most of their earning are not what counts as "income" on a 1040). They have capital gains, which are taxed at a lower rate and not taxed at all until the gain is realized.
Anyway, I don't want to get into a big fight about this, but the way I see it Yglesias is basically arguing that government should function primarily by taking in lots of money through higher taxes and redistributing some of it through more generous versions of the entitlement programs we have now (including the new healthcare system) and using the rest of it to more adequately fund other worthwhile government services, including regulation of the most important parts of the economic system to ensure economic stability, environmental protection, and other public goods that the market can't provide on its own. Part of this would be getting rid of all the government regulation and subsidies that serve no useful purpose except to protect various powerful interest groups. To the extent that this is what he's saying, I'm on board with it.
On the other hand, the guy who started "Godfather's Pizza," that guy went all out on a house.
Buffet lives quite modestly for a multi-billionaire. More like your standard person with tens of millions of dollars. In any case that was my point. To the extent that a progressive consumption tax were to replace even the way too low capital gains tax it would amount to a huge tax cut for the very wealthy. Furthermore, contra teo, this is a longtime favorite idea among right wing econ policy circles.
I don't think Teo, or Yglesias, is proposing this in place of a capital gains tax. And I've never read any of the right wing economists talk about making a consumption tax progress, thought they do talk about consumption taxes.
"making a consumption tax progress" s/b "making a consumption tax progressive."
Also, I'm kind of meh on the whole thing.
I hate grading. I hate my students.
This one student is okay. I guess.
This one student is okay. I guess.
I think the idea of a progressive consumption tax does come from somewhere in the conservative economic literature, and like I say I don't have any desire to defend that particular idea. I can't speak for Yglesias, but I'm definitely not talking about replacing any current taxes with different ones. I don't care where the money comes from, there just needs to be more of it.
If less than ten students are O.K., I think you can destroy the whole class.
If you want more evidence that Yglesias isn't just a stalking horse for the rich, here he is arguing that Social Security benefits should be more generous.
I skimmed Genesis so I may have missed parts. Maybe is only works for whole cities or maybe the students need to be "Not O.K." in some kind of moral sense, not in understanding of math.
If less than ten students are O.K., I think you can destroy the whole class.
The one student gets to walk away, as long as he doesn't look back. He should be wary of gifts of alcohol from his daughters, though.
And just don't eat or drink anything from Pope Alexander VI's daughter.
Kinda sorta apropos the discussion above, one of the weirdest corrections I've ever seen in the NYT, appended to Bob Herbert's column:
My column on Tuesday incorrectly described the situation of the small group of Americans earning $50 million or more annually. Their incomes declined by 7.7 percent between 2008 and 2009; they did not quintuple. The incorrect information came from a report based on flawed Social Security Administration data. An inspector general is investigating after two individuals filed false W-2 forms that led to the skewed data.
Huh?
Teo sure. But to the extent that this tax is going to provide meaningful revenue (which it won't if it's aimed at the very wealthy) and the size of government is to remain the same, it has to be balanced by tax cuts elsewhere. Given Yglesias' statement in the post linked above that a tax base of consumption is more economically efficient than a tax base of income, I'm not at all convinced that what he is saying isn't to replace taxation of the income of the wealthy by the taxation of their consumption.
And another quote from arecent Yglesias post on the issue:
To me, a big part of what this whole series of back-and-forths does is re-enforce the idea that it would be desirable to tax consumption rather than income, and simultaneously to make the rate structure more differentiated and more progressive. here
To be fair, reading through his stuff suggests a genuine desire to reduce the tax burden on the poorest people in society through a reduction of their consumption taxes. And he also seems deeply confused on what reducing taxes on 'savings' and increasing them on higher end consumption would effectively mean. So no, he hasn't gone all Cato. Yet. He is clearly moving in that direction. He also talks about how this would increase economic growth and about providing a tighter safety net for the poor. But the thing is, for economic growth to be a good thing, we need to drastically change the way it is distributed, and in particular slash the percentage going to the top one percent by a very large amount.
NB I have read stuff by rightwingers suggesting some sort of first x exemption for consumption taxes while increasing their rate, along with removing all capital gains (aka taxation of savings and investment) and introducing a flat rate income tax, again with a first x exemption.
Huh?
That is weird. It seems to imply that two extremely wealthy people cheated on their taxes to make it look like they made more than they actually did.
100: Aside from all of the other questions that this bring to mind, I'm wondering how you get room for printing $50 million in a W-2.
I skimmed Genesis
I hope you got to hear at least part of "I Can't Dance". Man, what a great tune.
102: Maybe the earlier tax returns were altered to show less?
105: The correction seems to say that it's the lower numbers rather than the higher ones that are correct, though.
If you want to tax the rich, tax being rich and getting rich, don't piddle around trying to indirectly tax through consumption. A simple tax on income, all of it without differentiating the source, is the way to go. Messing around trying to target certain types of consumption or only certain types of income simply invites evasion of taxes and manipulation of the tax code.
With a simple tax code loopholes are more obvious (and more likely to get fixed as they become election issues), and giveaways to campaign contributors are harder to conceal. Complexity simply serves to conceal and enable corruption.
With a simple tax code loopholes are more obvious (and more likely to get fixed as they become election issues), and giveaways to campaign contributors are harder to conceal. Complexity simply serves to conceal and enable corruption.
I agree with this 100%.
107 seems wise. With the exception that I'd allow for a specific tax on any food item with the word "chipotle" in its ingredients.