Disqus - Latest Comments for Dan Jones

Re: How Apple Can Beat the Hackers and Please Their Customers at the Same Time

Dan Jones — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:53:34 -0000

Are you kidding me? You actually believe the hackers are in the wrong, here? How would you feel if you went to your local Ford dealership, and bought a new car, but they told you that you're not allowed to put in a new stereo, you can't adjust the seat, and you can't even open the hood. In fact, the only thing you're allowed to change on it is filling up the gas tank. Would that seem right to you? After all, you bought the car: it belongs to you. Who are they to say how you can and can't use it?

That's essentially what Apple has done with the iPhone. They've sold you a device that you can only use within the narrow parameters that they've given. "Hacking" the iPhone is not illegal, and certainly not immoral. All the hackers have done is try to make the phone usable in a way that pleases them.

Really, the solution is to not buy an iPhone, but unfortunately, there aren't any other smartphones yet that have the feature set for that price. The Linux-based GTA02, which will hopefully come out this month comes extremely close, and actively encourages REAL third-party apps (not just crappy web-based Javascript ones you can view in Safari), and works on any GSM network. Unfortunately, it'll be a couple hundred dollars more than the iPhone.

Re: Should Facebook Allow Aliases?

Dan Jones — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:31:10 -0000

It seems they only catch so many fake accounts.

I wonder when they're going to notice I created an account for my motorcycle? It doesn't pretend to be an account for a real person at all, and yet it's been up for about half a year now.

If they delete it, it's no tragedy for me, unless of course they delete my main account as well because I created a fake account. It wouldn't be hard to figure out that I created the account. We're listed as being in an "Open Relationship," and I'm sure they can check their logs and see we login from the same IP address.

Next week, I'm going to work on a Facebook backup program. It'll let you backup the uid's of all your friends to a file to save on your computer, and if you get booted off, you create a new account, add the app again, upload your backup file, and it'll let you readd all your friends.

I wonder if FB will delete that app?

Re: Facebook Users Won’t Pay

Dan Jones — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 10:27:36 -0000

I already have an ad-free Facebook, and I don't have to pay for it.

In the days of Adblock Plus, it's silly to have a subscriber version that ONLY removes the ads. There must be some other value-added feature.

Re: SuperPilot is Super Addictive

Dan Jones — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:46:19 -0000

6.29s on my third try. Haven't beaten it yet, though.

Re: Facebook Stops Recommending Friends

Dan Jones — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:50:53 -0000

You're talking about the "People You May Know" feature, right?

This feature isn't down for me.

Also, it never took anywhere close to 30 seconds (or even more 1 second) for it to load.

Re: Facebook Chat Launches for All

Dan Jones — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:22:08 -0000

I like it, but with one complaint. Once the "Online Friends" list gets too big for the window, it becomes annoying to have to scroll through the list. Perhaps Facebook could use the "Friends Lists" and group people into collapsible lists.

Re: Facebook Chat Launches for All

Dan Jones — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:30:46 -0000

Actually there's one other problem I have with it. I use the site-specific browser Prism by Mozilla Labs. It uses the most recent Gecko rendering engine, so it can do everything Firefox does.

However, when I logged into Facebook this morning, there was a message on my main page saying that the new Chat feature didn't work on my browser, and I would have to use Firefox or Flock. I had to go into Prism's config to change the user-agent so that it looked like I was using Firefox. Once I did that, it worked perfectly, which just shows that Facebook didn't know what they were talking about.

I sent them a complaint about it already.

Re: Facebook Updates “How I Know You”

Dan Jones — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:13:08 -0000

You can see this information in your friends list. Just click on "Friends" at the top, click on the picture (or somewhere in that box that's not a link) of a friend for whom you've added these details, and then in the information that comes up will be a field called "Details."

I noticed they removed "Met randomly," although if you used that field (I used to use it to write funny stories about my friends), then that still appears under "Details."

Re: Facebook Updates “How I Know You”

Dan Jones — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:14:51 -0000

Oh, and it did use to show up in the "Friends Timeline" but only for information which included a date, but, yes, the "Friends Timeline" is gone now.

Re: Facebook Releases New Design, Bugs Abound

Dan Jones — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:52:04 -0000

I've found that my application is now getting that blasted "No data" error since they released the new design. It never happened before, and my webserver seems plenty responsive, so it must be a screw up on their end. Maybe releasing the new design somehow slowed down the Platform.

Re: Facebook Movie In the Works?

Dan Jones — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:57:31 -0000

Under Privacy Settings, click "Search."
Then uncheck the box next to "Add you as a friend."

There, now nobody can add you as a friend.

Mark Zuckerberg isn't the only one to have that feature. It's been available for a LONG time.