Gyroscopic Investing

craigr wrote:
De-anonymizing is not fiction! I had considered writing a tool to do this years back but decided it could only be used for bad purposes and dropped it. I have seen early versions of tools that did this later however. They will use word patterns, sentence structure, typos, etc. to build a confidence factor of a person being the same across multiple text sets. I am sure the technology must be far more advanced now.

That's similar to the programs used by lawyers to detect plagiarism for their clients, and the programs used by professors and teachers to detect plagiarism in their students.  That process is called textual analysis or literary analysis (if it's about literary exemplars).

The idea is that writers will maintain the same sentence structure, language patterns, etc. across a variety of different books, articles, etc.  In addition to computers analyzing words, it also includes handwriting analysis.  A Vassar English professor and forensic linguist, Donald Wayne Foster, used it to determine that Joe Klein was the author of the book, Primary Colors, written after Bill Clinton's second term.  Joe Klein eventually came forward to admit it was his work. 

But forensic linguists have gotten into trouble, including Foster, who was sued following his work on the 2001 anthrax case.  He fingered Steven Hatfill as the likely culprit, which turned out to not be true.

With our anonymity disappearing so quickly, it's like we're waking up in the middle of a Philip K. Dick novel.

Time to bust out my "re-anonymizing" software that converts my writing style into that of George Orwell before I post it anywhere on the Internet.

Okay, okay, I'll be the one with the opposite viewpoint.

I love Facebook. Wait, that's not strong enough-

I ***LOVE*** FACEBOOK.

I don't know how I would stay sane without Facebook. I mean, I'm sure I could do it, but it would be hard.

There are many reasons for this. First of all, I'm a white bread American girl living in a foreign country. Everyone I know and love (other than my husband and sons) are all scattered around the world at large. Different places in the States, different countries around the world, you name it... my friends and family live everywhere, all across the earth. And nothing - nothing at all, anywhere - gives me the ability to reach out to everyone I miss and treasure like Facebook does.

A week or so ago? When it felt like the world was ending for many of us who live overseas? Well, I have DEAR friends in many of the cities/countries where there were horrible riots, etc. And my friends/family know that I'm in China. They were having riots while I was having "demonstrations." Thank GOD for Facebook - I knew that my treasured friends were safe, even when their cities seemed to be burning down around them. I kept Facebook up all day long and would see updates from my friends living in places with uprisings and my heart would be soothed ("We're safe at home! We're okay!"). Likewise, I would update Facebook so friends/family knew that I was safe even when the anti-Japanese demonstrations were going on around me. And that was just last week!

Nothing but Facebook can do such a wonderful job at keeping me connected with folks around whom I do not live on a daily basis (but wish I did). I can log onto Facebook and immediately see new pictures of my dear girlfriend's baby... read the update on another friend who is battling cancer... see/read the local news article about my cousin, the starving (but talented) artist... it helps to keep me sane. In this day and age when family members no longer live close together because everyone must move where jobs take them (just like my family does) - Facebook helps us all stay in touch. There's no other platform that can touch it. Not one.

I honestly don't care at all about this and that advertisements or this and that privacy concerns. They literally don't matter to me one iota. I would walk through hot coals in order to have Facebook. If Facebook decided to go fee-based, as long as my friends/family were still on it, I would pay through the nose to keep it in order to have that platform for keeping in touch with everyone I love and miss. I can't live anywhere near them, but I can still see them every day. And that, you guys, is PRICELESS.

smurff wrote: The idea is that writers will maintain the same sentence structure, language patterns, etc. across a variety of different books, articles, etc.  In addition to computers analyzing words, it also includes handwriting analysis.  A Vassar English professor and forensic linguist, Donald Wayne Foster, used it to determine that Joe Klein was the author of the book, Primary Colors, written after Bill Clinton's second term.  Joe Klein eventually came forward to admit it was his work. 

But forensic linguists have gotten into trouble, including Foster, who was sued following his work on the 2001 anthrax case.  He fingered Steven Hatfill as the likely culprit, which turned out to not be true.

Fascinating. I love it ! ! !

MomTo2Boys wrote: A week or so ago? When it felt like the world was ending for many of us who live overseas? Well, I have DEAR friends in many of the cities/countries where there were horrible riots, etc. And my friends/family know that I'm in China. They were having riots while I was having "demonstrations." Thank GOD for Facebook - I knew that my treasured friends were safe, even when their cities seemed to be burning down around them. I kept Facebook up all day long and would see updates from my friends living in places with uprisings and my heart would be soothed ("We're safe at home! We're okay!"). Likewise, I would update Facebook so friends/family knew that I was safe even when the anti-Japanese demonstrations were going on around me. And that was just last week!

Nothing but Facebook can do such a wonderful job at keeping me connected with folks around whom I do not live on a daily basis (but wish I did). I can log onto Facebook and immediately see new pictures of my dear girlfriend's baby... read the update on another friend who is battling cancer... see/read the local news article about my cousin, the starving (but talented) artist... it helps to keep me sane. In this day and age when family members no longer live close together because everyone must move where jobs take them (just like my family does) - Facebook helps us all stay in touch. There's no other platform that can touch it. Not one.

I honestly don't care at all about this and that advertisements or this and that privacy concerns. They literally don't matter to me one iota. I would walk through hot coals in order to have Facebook. If Facebook decided to go fee-based, as long as my friends/family were still on it, I would pay through the nose to keep it in order to have that platform for keeping in touch with everyone I love and miss. I can't live anywhere near them, but I can still see them every day. And that, you guys, is PRICELESS.

Very illuminating perspective.  Thanks so much for sharing that!

Incidentally, if you do ever develop concerns about the "this and that advertisements" (as I did), installing AdBlock rids you of them forever.  Then we're just left with privacy concerns to worry about. 

Also look into the Ghostery extension.  It automatically blocks a bunch of third-party trackers, which you can whitelist for given sites if you want to.

http://www.ghostery.com/download

Lone Wolf wrote: Incidentally, if you do ever develop concerns about the "this and that advertisements" (as I did), installing AdBlock rids you of them forever.  Then we're just left with privacy concerns to worry about. 

16 football fields wide in three buildings to hold all the accumulated tracking and demographic data on each of Facebook's 1 billion users.  Big Brother would be proud.

Interesting psychic video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 7pYHN9iC9I

TennPaGa wrote:

craigr wrote: Interesting psychic video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 7pYHN9iC9I

Dude.

Amazing! You see I posted that message above several weeks back before I even closed my Facebook account and somehow the database of the forum knew it and posted it just now. These new mind reading algorithms are pretty awesome!*

* Sorry I missed your video!

Bobbi Duncan desperately wanted her father not to know she is lesbian. Facebook told him anyway.

One evening last fall, the president of the Queer Chorus, a choir group she had recently joined, inadvertently exposed Ms. Duncan's sexuality to her nearly 200 Facebook friends, including her father, by adding her to a Facebook Inc. discussion group. That night, Ms. Duncan's father left vitriolic messages on her phone, demanding she renounce same-sex relationships, she says, and threatening to sever family ties.

The 22-year-old cried all night on a friend's couch. "I felt like someone had hit me in the stomach with a bat," she says.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1 ... DI3Wj.html

I did not realize anyone could make someone a member of a their Facebook group without that person's consent.  I also did not realize that doing that could override that person's privacy settings.

Still, I am not surprised at any violation related to Facebook.

Nuked my account two weeks ago. Good riddance. The straw that broke the camel's back was their "inadvertent" posting of prior years' private messages publicly on your wall.

One day someone will invent the "Nuked my Facebook account" party.

* I own shares of Facebook in my VP

Been using it for years now, but sort of getting tired of it. I do use it to keep in touch with extended family. It's useful in that sense. Yes, the users of Facebook make up the product. Same with Google.

However, the "private messages fiasco" from prior years turned out to be false. Those were simply Wall-to-Wall  posts that people used as a method of conversation back in the days before you could Comment on a post.

There does seem to be quite a bit of hating going on, and while some of it may be justified, I find a lot of it unfounded raging from sensationalist pieces. Yes you can control whether you get tagged in photos or checked into the restaurant, but most people won't bother having to audit their privacy policies.

The problem is that Facebook understands the power of defaults and makes them as open/intrusive as possible. Sure, I can edit my settings to lock it down, but I have to be constantly on alert since every time they add a new feature, the default setting is to make it wide open. And sure, I can untag myself from the pictures and places people tag me in, but that's annoying manual work. At a certain point, I found myself cleaning up after it more than I was actually using it.

Pointedstick wrote: ... every time they add a new feature, the default setting is to make it wide open.

And as the WSJ article shows, when they add new features, they can override the privacy settings you think are already in place.