Facebook Privacy Settings - Summary

I've never been someone who cared that much about privacy. I make some attempts to exert control over what gets published on Facebook feeds (e.g., me making a comment on someone's picture does not get published on my news feed but who I just became with does.) Really, my attempt at privacy was never consistent. For a while, I unlisted myself from facebook public searches, and then placed myself back but blocked my photo, and then I decided to show my photo but take away all other info. I mean circumstance changes all the time and the key really is to make informed decisions--though in the past, I never really paid attention.

I remember when FB rolled out their mini feed and home feed and everyone can get stalked...that created a huge disgruntlement among users but I thought the feature was really cool...I mean if you dont want people to know then just don't do it right? Recently Facebook rolled out a huge new privacy change and I finally got around too seeing what new options they have given you and what have been taken away. To be honest, I was a little surprised.

Here is a list of superficial stuff that I think matters for the average joe who's scared their boss might find a pic of them drinking.

1. There is a list of publicly available information that you cannot hide if you allow your facebook link to show up as a search result (i.e., someone who searches for your name on google might see a link to your limited profile as a search result). This includes your profile pic (you used to be able to hide it) and pages you are a "fan" of (why is that even available to be seen?!). The only way to prevent this information from becoming available publicly is to delist yourself from the search results. If you did not previously hide your friends list , that will also show up in a public search.
2. You can no longer control what shows up on your mini news feed and wall--although your old settings are still in tact. Remember back in the day when the mini news feed first rolled out and there would be a time stamp next to your activities (e.g., Jan 1 10:15am Lynn is now friends with Adam Kiu)? At the time, you were able to control what gets to be published or not--Don't show timestamp, check; publish relationship status updates, uncheck. All of this is now gone. If you have chosen not to publish photos being tagged of you, you can no longer make it show. If you have chosen to publish them, you cannot make them disappear. On top of that, the news feed also shows that you "liked" something and you can't make it stop.
3. If you want to hide your friend's list from your profile, you can...sort of. You can have your list of friends not show on your profile page but if you allow yourself to show up in public searches and did not previously hide your friends list, your friends list will still turn up when someone searches about you on google.
4. You can now block specific person/people from seeing particular status updates. If you want to stop someone from seeing a particular update, before you press the "Share" button, you can click on this little lock icon and block a specific person or a group of people from seeing that message (e.g., if I want to publish a video about Matt Chan that Matt told me not to publish, I can totally do that without Matt knowing.)

There are a couple of other small and big changes and behind the scene application-related privacy issues. The thing with privacy and worrying about third-party apps on facebook, imo, is that if you don't want your private information given to third-party software companies, then don't add third-party developed apps (like Tal) or just don't put any personal information about you on Facebook, hidden or not. Really, anything you put on the Internet can be compromised and be seen by anyone at some point so if you're that worried, just do put it on. It's all about calculated risk and what you value.

I'm pretty sure Facebook will have to change some of these issues soon, as they are still in a transitional period on privacy policies, as well as getting in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) (The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has called on the FTC to investigate the changes that it says mislead users and "contradict Facebook’s own representations."), so we'll see if the changes I documented will stay.

Anyway, if you want a more detailed look at what the new privacy transition can do to your
http://dotrights.org/what-does-facebooks-privacy-transition-mean-you

Smell, light, and sound of marketing

I bought a coat yesterday from Hollister and now I feel like justifying how I sold myself out, again. You know, I've been selling myself out a lot since going out with Adam...interesting...

The short version of the story is that I bought the coat because
1. The music at Hollister was not loud
2. The smell at Hollister was surprisingly non-existent
3. I could not see the coat in their lighting, so I had to buy it so I can try it on at home.


Here is the long version.
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Adam and I went shopping yesterday (finally!!) and we decided to go to Cambridgeside Galleria, a relatively normal mall, reminiscent of Walden Galleria in Buffalo. Apparently, it's one of the better malls in Boston, though I find the selections lacking; perhaps I'm just missing the familiarity of the stores in Canada, and actually knowing which stores to go when I want a certain type of clothing.

Within the three floors of retail stores, Club Monaco, A&F, and Hollister were lined up side-by-side in the corner of the highest floor, with A&F in the middle. Now, to provide a context of my relationship with A&F and Hollister, let me tell you about my past experiences in these stores.

The first time I walked into an A&F and spent more than 30 seconds in the store was in was in NYC, at their 5th Ave. flagship store that was three or four stories high. I was with Jen and Andrew Ho, and some other people, whom, at this point I cannot remember. The group of us walked in and within a minute, I felt nauseated by the smell and the extremely loud music, and the very dark lighting. I got out of there fast. Andrew Ho trailed out after me after a few minutes and we decided we wanted to leave. However, after waiting outside for a long time, the rest of the group is still not out and none of us had US phones. So we went back in on a hunt that lasted for about 30 minutes. By the time we finally got out, I almost cried. This was about four years ago.

The second time I walked into A&F and stayed for more than 30 seconds was this summer, before I went back to Taiwan. Two years ago, when I went back to TW and gave my cousin some American Eagle clothing, she was disappointed that they were not from A&F. Apparently A&F is a status symbol and there are fakes everywhere in TW. So this time, I decided to get all my friends in TW A&F stuff. I was in there for about 15 minutes in search of the right and not too expensive stuff before I had to leave the premise and take a break for 10 minutes before I went back in for another 15 minutes to finish my purchases.

Yesterday, was my first time at Hollister.

Smell
To be fair, I headed for CM first. Funnily, CM smelled like A&F, you know, the smell of that cologne (apparently named "Fierce"), which the employees must spray on the clothes every 30 minutes to a few hours, according to this source and this source, and this source. It surprises me that people actually go and buy this cologne to spray on their own A&F clothing, but that's probably a discussion for another day. Adam and I were cracking up in CM because we felt so sorry for the employees of CM...they totally did not sign up to smell like A&F all day...or did they? Ironically, when we went into the Hollister store, expecting that scent to be stronger, the smell was actually not present AT ALL. (Btw, I just ran a search on the smell in Hollister because for a second there, I realized that I don't actually remember whether Hollister usually has a smell at all since I almost never walk into those stores and I always group the two stores together in my head so I don't actually know which store I'm in when I'm there. The results told me that I was not wrong and Hollister does do the same spray-on cologne deal, but the two stores apparently do not smell the same. Hollister uses the "Social" spray....) . I wonder what happened with the ventilation and management in these stores.

Music
Surprisingly, the music at Hollister was not exceptionally loud either. We had walked in A&F right after CM since I thought if we had to be forced to withstand the smell at CM anyway, we should just go into A&F. We were in there for five minutes (or less), checked out a coat that was on sale but left because I had no interest in buying an A&F item for myself. However, at Hollister, we saw that exact same coat for $20 less. Since there was not loud music and obnoxious scent, I actually stayed in the store and attempted to try it on! (On another note, Guess downstairs on the second floor had a DJ playing VERY loud music. The sales ppl were screaming at each other in order to have a conversation).

Lighting
So the coats were hanging on a rolling rack and there were different colours...unfortunately, Adam and I could not tell what those colours were. So I took out one of the darker colours and put it on, then attempting to look for a mirror, to no avail. Naively believing that we would be able to find a mirror with better lighting at the fitting room, we took a dark and a light colour coat towards the direction. Outside of the fitting room, we found a full-length mirror, without any lighting AT ALL. What is the point of having a mirror you can't see?!?!?! The fitting room girl came and asked us if we wanted a room, and I asked her if there was lighting in there. She laughed and said yes so we got a room. Well, it turned out that the lighting in there was rather dim still and after walking toward and away from the mirror a few times, we were finally able to see that the dark colourwas brown and the light colour was maybe a beigey colour (it could be white actually, who knows). Adam thought the jacket was nice, I wasn't sure since I can't really tell in the dark, so we decided to buy it so we can take it home and actually see the fit and the style. (so that's their marketing scheme!).

Completing the Sale
Ironically, Adam had to use the restroom when I was lining up to pay. As soon as he left the store, the music got turned on to be extremely loud. The girl at the head of the line was taking a very long time, so by the time Adam came back, i was still in the same position in line. After about 15 minutes, I was finally at the register. But then the girl screws up, and had to do a return and then a payment again. By the time we finally got out of the store, we thought we were in a different world. It was like that scene from Shawshank Redemtion when the dude crawled out of the tunnel into the light, I swear. We went into Banana Republic next and I saw Adam carrying the bag in his arms and realized that the handle had broken and he didn't tell me because he did not want to go back to the store. That made me laugh pretty hard. Anyway, I volunteered to go in myself and switched the bag.

Did I like the coat when I got home, you might ask? Yeah, it was alright, tho i think the fit is a little big. The XS size that the store was sold out of is on the website though, but plus $10 shipping, so we may still have to go back to that store to return the one I got. Sorry Adam!!

Btw, note the blinds at the NYC 5th Ave Flagship store in the first image. Why do they bother having windows?! I wonder if the blinds ever get used...

Adam thinks that the marketing scheme for the A&F chains and subsidiaries work because their clothes actually look nice. I beg to differ, although I have no idea why their marketing scheme works on the mass. Someone enlighten me?

Belief and Discussion of Belief Tolerance

I have two stories and two points to make that are really one point.

STORY ONE

A couple of years ago, I took the subway downtown with Andrew and Danny to go study at the UT library. On the way there, we started discussing the subject of Santa Claus. I stated, quite loudly because I have a loud voice, that I would never allow my children to believe in Santa Claus; the idea of being bribed to be good is pretty absurd to me, a lot more so than blackmail (i.e., if you don't be good, I am going to take you home and never take you out again). I feel that people, big or small, should realize that they will not always be awarded for being good, whatever good may mean to them. I want to teach my children the value of caring for other people, and being considerate, and that they should never expect to be rewarded for doing the right thing. Now here, we can get into a whole discussion on what being good is to them, or what doing the right thing is. But my point is, I don't believe that children should be awarded for being good, because being good should be a fundamental way of life.

Upon hearing our conversation, in which Danny and Andrew stated their full agreement, a malicious and cowardly lady on the subway came up to us, as the subway was halting to a stop, and told us condescendingly that we should watch what we say and that there are little kids in the car. Then, she left the train without waiting for a reply. Her attitude was very rude and disdainful, as though we were ignorant little Chinese kids who were too obnoxious and self-absorbed to watch what we say in public. The three of us all felt very indignant. Admittedly, we did not take note of whether there were children in the car throughout our conversation, but after she got out, we looked around and found that there were no children in the car.

But let's say there were children in the car that day and there we were spewing our mouths off about how we would never lie to our children about Santa Claus...Are we being obnoxious or religiously intolerant? Or are we enjoying the freedom of speech that we so deserve? Or maybe, to that lady, we were immigrants who have no respect for its culture.

STORY TWO

Today, during lunch, the subject of Santa Claus came up among a table of full-grown adults, who have all stopped, at some point, believing that Santa Claus is real. Now I, being the run-my-mouth-no-matte-where-I-am dumbass, decided to state my opinion, to a guy, who happens to be Jewish, about the absurdity of Santa Claus, because, you know, we're all adults here, we're allowed to have a mature discussion on whether or not we should allow our kids to believe in Santa. The guy agreed with me. But just as he began to elaborate on his reasons for having told his children that Santa was not real, a woman heatedly interrupted, sounding very very offended, and began defending the idea. She said that the reason why she thinks Santa is important is because you can't buy your children everything just because they want it. That's why there is Santa. Parents draw the line, but Santa can give them whatever they want without spoiling them.

She then proceeded to tell me that when I have children, I will know what it's like--as though I am not allowed to have an opinion on this matter unless I have children. Perhaps she felt attacked when I said that children should not be awarded for being good. Or perhaps she really believes that I have no right to have an opinion on Santa Claus unless I have children. But either way, she completely nazied the conversation. No one replied to her after her angry speech. You know, I would have loved to have continued exploring this matter with her a little deeper and hear her opinion, but the anger in her voice completely took everyone by surprise and we all shut up.

Similarly, the topic of Secret Santa is not a topic to be discussed at the table either. "WE DON'T DO PRESENTS IN THIS COMPANY" one woman stated loudly, at least twice. No ifs and buts, no discussion.

What about Christmas decorations? Apparently the decorations need to be non-denominated because a few years ago someone complained about Christmas wreaths.

I know, right?!
___________________________________


In both of these stories, the question of beliefs and value come into place: you have a series of people with beliefs and values that they try to enforce it on to other people and they can't tolerate otherwise.

1. Santa Claus is real and should stay real for children. You can't state otherwise, even if it's on a subway or a table filled with grown adults, or someone will get very offended.
2. You can't put Christmas decorations up or else people who are not Christian will get offended and feel persecuted.
   
3. We don't do presents in this company, no matter who wants to do it.

POINT ONE
Why is it that we can't tolerate the fact that people have their own beliefs? Someone without a belief but enforces other people to give up their beliefs in their presence, that's a belief too.

That situation on the subway should be a two-fold compromise:

1. Knowing that many people around me choose to weave this fantasy tale of an old man who reward children for being good and give coals for the bad ones, I should be more careful next time I talk about the idea of Santa Claus being a bad idea so I don't make kids cry. In this case, I respect your beliefs and values on how to raise children.
2. If you choose to lie to your kids about the fact that Santa Claus exists, you should be prepared that your child might have to hear that Santa Claus is not real and not go telling every person in the world to shut up as soon as the topic of "Santa is not real" comes up. In this case, you respect my beliefs and values on how the world works.

I have no problems with you wanting your children to believe in Santa, but you cannot expect the world to censor itself based on your belief.

Similarly, if you don't want to exchange presents, don't participate--don't stop others from doing it. And if you don't like Christmas decorations/Hannukah Candles/Chinese New Year stickers, should you really get offended if someone puts it up? I mind my business and you mind yours. I won't enforce my beliefs on you, don't enforce yours on mine.


POINT TWO
Sometimes, you have two beliefs that clash. Some people might feel that if I put up Christmas decorations in the office, I am enforcing my belief on them (an example of course, since I am not Christian). I get that and this is where discussions happen. If you try to discuss these beliefs or values, these people will get offended and upset.

Why can't we discuss why you really want Christmas decorations or why Christmas decorations bother you? Why can't we discuss why Santa is important or not important to you?
I don't understand why there is no room for discussion.

Is tolerance for other people's beliefs, or even the discussion of other people's beliefs that hard?

The Origin of Boston Pizza

There's a Pizzeria downstairs of our complex called Regina Pizzeria. This place is the only place that rendered me to actually crave for pizza. Otherwise, I tend to go "ugh" when pizza is being served, anywhere. Sometimes Adam and I would order one of their gourmet pizzas, bring it upstairs, and eat it fancy...i.e., with wine.

When guests come and visit, we usually tell them about this place, and if they are so inclined, we'd go in, order a pizza, and have a few beer (or pina colada). After the guests eat the pizza, they'd sigh with satisfaction and say, "Oh, this is the real Boston Pizza," which would usually remind me of the fact that I have not seen a Boston Pizza anywhere in Boston.

Today, Kenny randomly msged me on MSN. "Why is it called Boston Pizza! [sic]" he asked. Not knowing the answer, I asked Google. The Boston Pizza website did not give me any story about its origin, but it did tell me to direct my questions to their three regional offices: one for Western Canada, one Eastern Canada (ON and the Atlantic), and one for Quebec...because obviously, Quebec is neither Western nor Eastern Canada... I know, right?! But I digress.

This information led me to believe that Boston Pizza is wholly Canadian...until I realized that there was a tiny link at the bottom of the "About" page for the U.S. site. Clicking on it led me to Boston's The Gourmet Pizza restaurant website, leading me to believe that perhaps it is American after all. So I go into their locations section, where they provided me a map of American States--the dark blue states are ones I can click on to find the locations. After clicking around all the dark blue States along the Atlantic (I still don't know where I am on the map), I realized Massachusetts is one that is NOT clickable. Double-checking on their pull-down list of States (I should have done that first) confirmed the fact that there is not, indeed, a Boston Pizza in Boston.

Finally, after doing some investigating, I found their "Our Heritage" page in the "Company Info" link menu, which proceeded to tell me:

1. The first Boston Pizza opened in Edmonton, Alberta in 1964.
   
2. It was opened by an illegal Greek immigrant who had jumped ship in Vancouver.
3. In 1998, Boston Pizza expanded "south of the border" into Dallas, Texas. "The Boston Pizza name was changed to Boston's The Gourmet Pizza to communicate [that] it's 'gourmet pizza.'"
4. The real reason why it was named Boston's is because "Boston was a recognizable and established name ... Boston Bruins, Boston Red Sox, Boston Celtics, Boston Cream Pie. It was the 'Big Leagues.'"

To take Adam's favourite phrase....Are you joking me?!

What a scam.

Location is key

I know a lot of people complain that coffee at Starbucks is ridiculously expensive, but that's usually because they are not buying regular brewed coffee when they go there. If you are asking for an "iced, grande, caramel, triple, non-fat latte, easy ice", or any other espresso drinks that are as ridiculously customized, then yes, you might be paying around the ballpark of $5. However, if you went to the counter and asked for a "tall bold", essentially a ready-made dark roast brewed coffee, you'd be paying around the $1.50 range, give and take a couple of dimes...probably a little more pricey than Tim Hortons but not to the point of unreasonable.

Every time I take the T at my home stop, next to the gates is this little donut/coffee shop that makes the station smell like heaven. The line up is long and the place is always busy. One day, as I watched my train leave the station without me, I decided I'd give the place a try while waiting for the next train to arrive. I asked for a medium hazelnut coffee (I admit I'm a lover of flavoured coffee) and the total came to be $2.05. I was a bit shocked because from what I recall, a "Grande bold" at Starbucks in Canada was exactly $2 after tax. This coffee is not only five cents more, but the price is also in AMERICAN. Admittedly though, if I were to ask for a hazelnut flavoured shot at Starbucks, it'd be thirty cents more so I accepted that cost in my head after doing some thinking. Was the coffee good you ask? It was decent, as far as I could tell (I asked for two cream and two sugar and it ended up tasting like quadruple-quadruple on crack).

A few weeks went by without me missing the train so I didn't have the opportunity to stop by this little stand again...but then one day, I decided, I believe on a weekend, to spend that $2.05 again because Adam's mom gave me a bag of change she didn't want. I carefully counted out the exact change in pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters before I left the house, only to be told that the price is $2.30 after I ordered. Apparently last time a mistake was made last time and I was not charged the extra quarter for the hazelnut flavour. I had to give the man bills rather than getting rid of the change, but that's not the point. I felt a little ridiculous walking into the train with an un-corporately-branded cup of joe that cost me more than what I would have paid for had I gone to Starbucks (especially because I don't pay for the price of syrup with my registered Starbucks card (I know, I have issues)).

Now some of you might point out the shallowness of the above comment...why does the brand even matter? Shouldn't you just pay for the quality of the coffee? Well, yes, of course, ideally, if the coffee was that good, it would be worth it to pay a little more, brand-name or not, especially when it's just a cup of coffee and not an ugly little handbag with little G's printed all over it. Well I guess my point is, Starbucks jacks up the price of their brewed coffee because they can. They have upped their branding enough (with all the advertising and customization and interior design) so that their pricing appears justified. The question is, what justifies the coffee price next to the T? Their coffee is not, by any means, so good that I'm willing to pay more than for an avg Dunkin Donut coffee. My answer: location, location, location.

On another note, I should make a new tag for my coffee posts.