Twitter has been, among other things, “barred for 20 years from misleading consumers about the extent to which it maintains and protects the security, privacy, and confidentiality of nonpublic consumer information…”  I believe that Twitter should not be misleading consumers about any aspect of their security, but it almost seems that a specific bar of this nature, and with a specific duration, seems like an implicit permission for other companies to mislead consumers (as they have not been so barred) and that, after 20 years, Twitter can mislead consumers all they want.  Seems like a bit of common sense that the FTC has felt the need to spell out…

For those of you who are curious about the next steps for Severed Fifth; my Creative Commons music project:

• On Monday I launch the brand new website.
• Writing for the second album is nearly complete and I will be streaming the entire recording sessions live.

I have created a new Severed Fifth Twitter account, so go and follow it to keep up to date with the latest.

These words may seem like big words to some people. Hey, to me they are even large ones. So, I’ll very quickly explain both of them.

• Federation

There are many definitions of this. The best one, IMHO, comes from dictionary.com – “a federated body formed by a number of nations, states, societies, unions, etc., each retaining control of its own internal affairs.” So, in terms of software (which is what i’m going to talk about today) means a bunch of programs (desktop or web etc) that all work together but can still be different internally.

• Segregation

This one is more obvious. “The policy or practice of separating people of different races, classes, or ethnic groups, as in schools, housing, and public or commercial facilities, especially as a form of discrimination”. So, again in terms of software, this is when different programs that are similar are split up and don’t work together, and sometimes don’t even know that the others exist.

Well, why am I talking about these? Well, I’m thinking about things in terms of social networking services just now. Facebook is huge. Noone knows exactly, but its probably between 350 and 500 million people. Lets be honest, the biggest social network in the history of the internet. However, they are having a huge backlash just now on their privacy settings, and a number of people are leaving it. Now, obviously a few people leaving it won’t change it much, but what happens when those people leave facebook? What do they do? Where do they go?

This is the horrible situation we have just now. Web apps are mostly segregated. They don’t work together, infact sometimes they work AGAINST each other, actively seperating themselves. Facebook is facebook, twitter is twitter, etc etc.

Well, this is where federation comes in. Let us take status.net into consideration. You can have any status.net instance (identica, or your own instance) and follow anyone on any other Ostatus federated web service. So, say twitter because Ostatus federated. this would mean that I could have 1 identi.ca account and follow anyone on identi.ca, twitter, twitarmy or any other status.net instance. And then, say facebook used Ostatus on their news feed? That would mean that I could have an identi.ca account (or twitter, facebook, or status.net account) and follow anyone on identica, twitter, facebook, or any other status.net instance. That is practically everyone on the internet, isn’t it.

So, the point of what I’m saying is that you could federate any part of a social network. This would mean that a new service (like diaspre) or an old service (like facebook or twitter) could implement these features as well, and then anyone could have 1 account on any of these services, and follow/be friends with anyone on any of these services. No more having 3/4 accounts on different services. Makes everything so much simpler and more open, and stops 1 service having a huge monopoly like facebook does just now.

So, yeah, federation, not segregation…

Semester GPA 3.4 #
Less than 2 hours left to pay what you want for the Humble Indie Bundle! http://j.mp/9WtdAm #
Holy crap, 2.2 brings JIT compilation to the kernel apparently #
Guys please, get rid of your facebook http://calacanis.com/2010/05/12/the-big-game-zuckerberg-and-overplaying-... #
The Humble Indie Bundle has reached $1,000,000 in contributions! Starting to release the source. http://j.mp/9WtdAm [...]