Facebook owned Instagram attempted privacy breach backfires!

Instagram follows right on from facebook where changes to policy are instigated without care or concern for its users!
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1 in 4 Instagram users abandoned app

Date

December 31, 2012 – 10:17AM

Insta-backlash… changes to privacy policy enraged users. Photo: AFP

Facebook’s Instagram lost almost a quarter of its daily users a week after it rolled out and then withdrew policy changes that incensed users who feared the photo-sharing service would use their pictures without compensation.

Instagram, which Facebook bought for $US715 million this year, saw the number of daily active users who accessed the service via Facebook bottom out at 12.4 million as of Friday, versus a peak of 16.4 million the week before, according to data compiled by online tracker AppData.

The popular app, which allows people to add filters and effects to photos and share them over the internet or smartphones, experienced the drop over the brief, often-volatile holiday period.

Other popular apps also saw slippage in usage, and some were more pronounced. Recommendation site Yelp, for instance, saw daily active users – again via Facebook – slide to a weekly low of half a million on Thursday, from a high of 820,000 one week ago.

Instagram disputed the AppData survey, which was compiled from users that have linked the photo service to their own Facebook accounts, historically between 20 and 30 per cent of Instagram members.

“This data is inaccurate. We continue to see strong and steady growth in both registered and active users of Instagram,” a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement on Friday.

Looking out over a broader timeframe, Instagram’s monthly active users edged up to 43.6 million as of Friday, an increase of 1.7 million over the past seven days, according to AppData.

“We’ll have to monitor the data over the coming weeks to gain perspective on trends in Instagram’s performance,” AppData marketing manager Ashley Taylor Anderson said in an email.

Attention seeking

The sharp slide in activity highlighted by AppData was bound to draw attention on the heels of the controversial revision to Instagram’s terms of service that, among other things, allowed an advertiser to pay Instagram “to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata)” without compensation.

The subsequent public outrage prompted an apology from Instagram founder Kevin Systrom. In December, a California Instagram user sued the company for breach of contract and other claims, in what may have been the first civil lawsuit to stem from the controversial change.

Instagram subsequently reverted to some of its original language.

The move renewed debate about how much control over personal data users must give up to live and participate in a world steeped in social media.

Analysts say Facebook, the world’s largest social network, was laying the groundwork to begin generating advertising revenue, by giving marketers the right to display profile pictures and other personal information, such as who users follow in advertisements.

According to Business Insider Intelligence, Facebook already controls nearly one-fifth – or 18.4 per cent – of mobile display advertising revenue in the US.

Reuters

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/1-in-4-instagram-users-abandoned-app-20121231-2c216.html#ixzz2GaZRot2D

Tolerance of these crimes must be stopped!

What is happening in the world, regarding the treatment and status of women, as being less than equal to men, must stop, irrespective of race, creed, colour, religion, or childhood upsets!

The six men that committed this atrocity, MUST be charged for murder! And not get a slap on the wrist.

I am fast becoming an advocate of making the punishment fit the crime! You say that is uncivilised? You bet it is! It is just as uncivilised as the perpetrators of these abhorrent crimes against innocent people are, despite growing up in the same societies as normal, good, people!

And stuff you bleeding hearts who have never been subjected to these barbaric practices, yet have given criminals more rights than their victims. Criminals serve a few years in prison, if at all, but the victims, and their families feel their pains forever, for the rest of their lives!

So tell me bleeding hearts, where is the justice in our civilised society???
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Silence in tribute to India’s daughter

Date

December 31, 2012

Ben Doherty, Leesha McKenny

Rape victim becomes martyr in India

Thousands of people hold candle light vigil as people across India to seek justice for Delhi rape victim, who died in Singapore hospital.

DELHI: She has been dubbed ”Amanat”, a treasure kept in trust, ”Damini”, for a Bollywood movie heroine, and ”Nirbhaya”, fearless. But the signs at protests across the country have given her another sobriquet: ”India’s Daughter”. In her anonymity, without a name, a village, a caste, she has belonged to the whole nation.

Two weeks after she was attacked on a bus by six men, beaten with an iron rod and gang raped for nearly an hour, the 23-year-old woman – her name still a closely guarded secret – was cremated early on Sunday morning.

The Hindu cremation service was performed in the outer Delhi suburb of Dwarka before family members and a small number of friends. ”I came because I really loved this girl. She was the brightest of all the girls in our neighbourhood,” Meena Rai, a friend and neighbour, told reporters.

A sand sculpture in the eastern state of Odisha created by sand artist Sudarshan Patnaik. Photo: Reuters

She was to be married in February. ”They had made all the wedding preparations and had planned a wedding party in Delhi,” Ms Rai said.

Much of central Delhi remains on lockdown for fear of violent protests.

The anger of the first days after the woman’s attack has given way to a period of national mourning. The furious protesters have been replaced by students walking in neat lines in complete silence.

An Indian schoolgirl holds a placard with an image of a hanging man during a rally in Ahmedabad. Photo: AFP

A woman is raped in India every 22 minutes according to crime statistics, but this attack has exercised the country and, in particular its capital, like none before it.

At a protest in Jantar Mantar, in central Delhi, a student, Vijaya, told Fairfax Media this victim represented all Indian women.

”This could be any one of us. Every woman in Delhi knows what it is liked to be grabbed or for someone to say something filthy to us. This happens every day; we are not safe ever.”

Urbanisation has brought Old India, a deeply conservative, patriarchal rural society – still half of all Indian families live on small farms – into conflict with modern cities’ ideas about women, their right to education, to work and a prominent place in society.

India has had a woman prime minister, and one of the most powerful people in the country today is Sonia Gandhi.

But sons are still valued above daughters in India. Girl foetuses are aborted and infant girls allowed to die. Boys are fed better and sent to school, while girls often go hungry and are kept at home. Such attitudes may take generations to change.

The six men alleged to have committed the attack against this woman have all been arrested. Most are from rural villages, where rape is seen less as a crime than a risk girls run growing up. A common solution is to bully the girl into marrying her attacker.

But this case may be the one where India, finally, says no.

The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has opened a commission of inquiry into the safety of women and tougher penalties for rapists have been promised by government ministers.

But the most significant change has come in the consciousness of the public and in that of India’s institutions.

Dozens of other attacks on women, usually barely reported, if at all, have become front-page news. Police forces, so often seen as part of the problem, are promising swifter, more sensitive action, in cases of sexual assault.

And there is pressure for India’s justice system, sometimes so slow-moving as to be almost irrelevant, to be fast-tracked for sex cases.

India has had its ”I am Spartacus” moments before, displays of a remarkable solidarity across a country of more than 1 billion people of disparate wealth and circumstance.

A year ago the country was unified behind a retired truck driver named Kisan Baburao Hazare, known as Anna Hazare, who led massively popular hunger strikes against India’s endemic corruption.

Twelve months on, Hazare’s protests are forgotten, but the corruption lives on.

Protesters in Delhi are demanding and hoping their campaign against sexual violence will be different.

”There has to be change,” Darshan Gupta said at Munirka, near where the woman boarded the bus a fortnight ago. ”Too many people are angry, the government, the police, the people in power, they have to listen now.”

About 120 people from Sydney’s Indian-Australian community gathered at Parramatta Park on Sunday afternoon and signed a petition calling for India’s government to pass stronger laws to protect women and marking a moment’s silence.

One of the organisers, Manbir Kohli, suggested those in attendance boycott travelling to India until it could ensure their safety.

His 18-year-old daughter Naina, who grew up in Australia, said law changes had to be accompanied by cultural change. ”There’s all these [Hindu] goddesses but if we seriously can’t respect what we’ve got in front of us … what’s the point?”

with AFP

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/silence-in-tribute-to-indias-daughter-20121230-2c1iz.html#ixzz2GY3oHq9p

It gives me pleasure to post something good about Islam, for a change!

Lakemba Mosque removes Christmas ‘fatwa’ post

Date

December 23, 2012 – 2:59PM

Natalie O’Brien and Rachel Olding

Lakemba Mosque. Photo: Kate Geraghty

Australia’s biggest mosque has removed an online post that called for a ‘fatwa’ against Christmas following harsh condemnation from the Muslim community.

The Lakemba Mosque had posted the religious ruling or ‘fatwa’ on its Facebook page on Saturday morning, warning followers it was a “sin” to even wish people a Merry Christmas.

The notion that Muslims wishing other people a merry Christmas will take them out of their faith is outright ridiculous, laughable and borders on the extreme

It followed a similar lecture during Friday prayers at the western Sydney mosque.

One of the posts from the mosque’s Facebook page that has been removed.

The head imam at Lakemba, Sheikh Yahya Safi, had told the congregation during prayers that they should not take part in anything to do with Christmas.

Samier Dandan, the president of the Lebanese Muslim Association, confirmed to Fairfax on Sunday morning that the post had been removed from the mosque’s Facebook page.

He said a youth worker had copied the text of the fatwa from another Islamic website and it did not reflect Sheikh Safi’s lecture or the views of the LMA.

One of the posts from the mosque’s Facebook page that has been removed.

The fatwa, which sparked widespread community debate and condemnation, warned that the “disbelievers are trying to draw Muslims away from the straight path”.

It also says that Christmas Day and associated celebrations are among the “falsehoods that a Muslim should avoid … and therefore, a Muslim is neither allowed to celebrate the Christmas Day nor is he allowed to congratulate them”.

The posting of the fatwa has shocked many Muslim leaders. The Grand Mufti of Australia, Ibrahim Abu Mohammad, said the foundations of Islam were peace, co-operation, respect and holding others in esteem.

“Anyone who says otherwise is speaking irresponsibly,” he said.

“There is difference between showing respect for someone’s belief and sharing those beliefs,” Dr Ibrahim said.

Dr Ibrahim said the views did not represent the majority of Muslims in Australia. “We are required to have good relations with all people, and to congratulate them on their joyous events is very important.”

The fatwa quotes the teacher Imam Ibn Al-Qayyim as saying that congratulating disbelievers for their rituals is forbidden, and if a “Muslim who says this does not become a disbeliever himself, he at least commits a sin as this is the same as congratulating him for his belief in the trinity, which is a greater sin and much more disliked by Almighty Allaah than congratulating him for drinking alcohol or killing a soul or committing fornication or adultery”.

A community leader, Dr Jamal Rifi, said he did not agree with the school of thought behind the fatwa.

“We can share the festivities with friends and families and neighbours – I don’t think there is any civil, religious or ethical reason not to,” he said.

Dr Rifi and Sheikh Youssef Nabha, the imam of the Kingsgrove Mosque, are travelling to Nauru on Sunday night with priests from the Maronite and Melkite churches in Sydney to attend Christmas celebrations with the asylum seekers held there.

Dr Rifi said he and Sheikh Youssef would be distributing Christmas cards during the visit.

A community advocate and Muslim convert, Rebecca Kay, told Fairfax Media: “It’s sad to see the Lebanese Muslim Association, which considers itself the peak body representing Australian Muslims, with comments like these. It goes to show how far they are from representing the community.

“The notion that Muslims wishing other people a merry Christmas will take them out of their faith is outright ridiculous, laughable and borders on the extreme.”

Keysar Trad, a former official with the Lebanese Muslim Association, said in his time with the organisation they used to regularly greet people with merry Christmas. “I don’t know what has changed,” he said. “But now as a representative of Australia’s peak Muslim body, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, I would like to wish all your readers a merry Christmas and a happy new year.”

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/lakemba-mosque-removes-christmas-fatwa-post-20121223-2btaj.html#ixzz2Fse0DWMn

CANCER-CAUSING FOOD WARNING ISSUED

AA December 23, 2012, 11:16 am

AP ©Enlarge photo

Ready-made pies and pickles could increase cancer risks this Christmas, a health charity has warned.

Breast Cancer UK is offering a series of tips about what to eat and what to avoid during the festive period to help families reduce the risk of developing breast cancer.

It urges families to opt for organic and chemical-free products when possible.

Pre-prepared pie fillings and pickles can contain parabens, a class of chemicals which disrupt the hormone system and are linked to breast cancer but which are commonly used as preservatives.

Clare Dimmer, chairman of Breast Cancer UK, said: “Many of the gifts and festive food we buy can contain chemicals that increase our risk of breast cancer, so we thought we’d share some toxic-free tips this Christmas.

“With breast cancer rates at an all-time high this year, choosing alternatives to these products is a great way to help protect the health of family and friends.”

The charity is warning people to take care when reheating leftovers in the microwave because plastic containers contain chemicals such as bisphenol A (BPA) which can leak into the food.

This chemical is also in the resin lining of food tins, so customers should look for ones which are BPA-free.

People looking to buy pampering gifts this Christmas should avoid products with strong, synthetic fragrances and instead use natural products or even make their own moisturiser with raw coconut or olive oil.

Parents buying toys or other plastic products should avoid PVC plastic labelled No.6 and No.3 because they contain hormone-disrupting chemicals which are banned in toys for very young children across the EU but which may still be present in soft plastic.

Plastic cups and plates should also be thrown out when scratched, or after they have been used regularly in a dishwasher and or microwave. Old plastic products are more likely to leak chemicals.

WTF is the matter with these creatures???

This is Australia! Not the god forsaken shithole countries these primitives left! And now they want to turn Australia into a shithole country too!
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Christmas greetings ruled a sin

Date

December 23, 2012

Natalie O’brien

Lakemba Mosque. Photo: Anthony Johnson

SYDNEY’S Lakemba Mosque has issued a fatwa against Christmas, warning followers it is a ”sin” to even wish people a Merry Christmas.

The ruling, which followed a similar lecture during Friday prayers at Australia’s biggest mosque, was posted on its Facebook site on Saturday.

The head imam at Lakemba, Sheikh Yahya Safi, told the congregation during prayers they should not have anything to do with Christmas.

The fatwa, sparking widespread debate and condemnation, warns: ”Disbelievers are trying to draw Muslims away from the straight path.”

It says Christmas Day and associated celebrations are among the ”falsehoods” for a Muslim to avoid.

”Therefore a Muslim is neither allowed to celebrate the Christmas Day nor is he allowed to congratulate them,” it says.

It quotes teacher Imam Ibn Al-Qayyim as saying that congratulating disbelievers for their rituals is forbidden, and if a Muslim who says this ”does not become a disbeliever himself, he at least commits a sin, as this is the same as congratulating him for his belief in the trinity, which is a greater sin and much more disliked by Almighty Allaah than congratulating him for drinking alcohol or killing a soul or committing fornication or adultery.”

The posting of the fatwa has shocked many Muslim leaders.

The Grand Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammad, said the foundations of the basis of the Muslim religion were peace, co-operation, respect and holding others in esteem.

”Anyone who says otherwise is speaking irresponsibly,” he said. ”There is difference between showing respect for someone’s belief and sharing those beliefs.”.

Dr Ibrahim said the views did not represent the majority of Muslims in Australia.

”We are required to have good relations with all people, and to congratulate them on their joyous events is very important.”

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/christmas-greetings-ruled-a-sin-20121222-2bsr2.html#ixzz2FoqRSK4h

Too bloody hot!!!

Soaring temperatures send internet crashing

December 20, 2012, 11:43 am By Chrissy Arthur ABC

NEWS

ABC ©

A Longreach grazier in central western Queensland says extreme heat is now causing “meltdown” issues with some rural internet infrastructure.

Longreach reached 43 degrees Celsius yesterday, the hottest in the state, and there has been a run of successive days with the thermometer getting above 40.

Karen Emmott from Noonbah says the family’s internet has crashed for several hours each afternoon.

She says the internet provider has told her it is because the roof where the satellite dish is located gets too hot.

“Apparently it is quite a widespread problem,” she said.

“They told me I was the seventh caller in several days.

“The heat is just too much for it.

“It is basically unable to cope with the extreme temperatures we’re getting out here at the moment.

“We’ve had four weeks of basically over 40 degrees most days.

“Once the temperature gets over 41 or 42, everything drops out and has a little meltdown.”

Researchers discover, but do not understand, new form of magnetism!

Scientists discover new form of magnetism

December 21, 2012, 1:12 pmYahoo!7

NEWS

 Researchers at MIT have demonstrated the existence of an entirely new form of magnetism, called quantum spin liquid, only the third type ever to be discovered.

The kind of magnetism most of us are familiar with, ferromagnetism, is what causes compass needles to point north and kids’ artworks to stay on fridges.

The second form of magnetism won scientists a Nobel prize just for predicting its existence.

Antiferromagnetism describes a state where opposing magnetic fields of tiny particles within a metal cancel each other out but alter the structure of the metal.

Without that discovery the kind of hard-disks we take for granted in modern computers wouldn’t exist.

The new, third form of magnetism has been dubbed quantum spin liquid (QSL) and it behaves very differently indeed.

Within a sparkling, solid crystal that took scientists ten months to create, magnetic “moments” spin and fluctuate constantly, changing their orientation like molecules sliding across one another in a liquid.

This state of flow is something scientists have predicted and aimed to create since the late eighties, but only in recent years did progress accelerate to the point of demonstrating QSL.

So what does this discovery mean for those without a background in theoretical physics?

Well, it’s such a fundamental shift in understanding that even the researchers involved can’t yet predict the ramifications.

“It may take a long time to translate this very fundamental research into practical applications,” said MIT professor of physics Young Lee.

The work could possibly lead to advances in data storage or communications, he said, perhaps using an exotic quantum phenomenon called long-range entanglement, in which two widely separated particles can instantaneously influence each other’s states.

The findings could also bear on research into high-temperature superconductors, which today run MRI machines and mobile phone base stations but could one day enable electric super-trains and smarter power grids.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the exotic, QSL state the scientists created is the way that the magnetism of tiny particles within the crystal influenced one another.

“There is no static order to the magnetic orientations within the material,” Lee explained. “But there is a strong interaction between them, and due to quantum effects, they don’t lock in place,” he said.

In quantum terms, these states are bafflingly, neither one thing nor the other.

While most matter has discrete quantum states whose changes are expressed as whole numbers, this QSL material exhibits fractional quantum states.

In fact, the researchers found that these excited states, called spinons, form a continuum, “a remarkable first” for Lee and his colleagues.

“There is no theory that describes everything that we’re seeing,” Lee said.

Subir Sachdev, a professor of physics at Harvard University who was not connected with the findings said they were “very significant and open a new chapter in the study of quantum entanglement in many-body systems.”

Gun Laws and death!

I have the most profound feelings of sympathy, and condolences, for the families of those whose loved ones met an untimely death in the recent school massacre. I know, from personal experience, what it is like, to feel the pain, of a loved one’s death.

But it was not the guns that killed those beautiful people. It was society’s inability to recognise a violent and disturbed individual that was the cause of these sad deaths.

But to ban guns, that are a cause for less deaths, than any other diseases or events, including traffic accidents, and gangland shootings, is simply a way, to ensure that the only people that will have them, are the criminals in our societies.

We must not let emotional issues, override, the reality of letting a society have the capability to defend its people and its homes, against unlawful actions. 

I know I will find much opposition to my comments, but I will stand by them.

One thing that is never recorded, is how many burglaries, and murders, have been prevented, simply because criminals have known, that that the occupants of certain premises, or households, have access to firearms, for defensive purposes.

Our society will never, in my lifetime, at least, know when a misfit will cause terrible death or deaths.

But when only two or three massacres have happened in a population of over 300 million people in a decade, is it really such a reason to ban guns?

Each day, more people die, from so many other causes. Let’s not knee jerk to conclusions that will cause even more murders in the future, when the only people to have guns, will be the criminals!

We need more people like this man!

We need more people like Mr Falciroli in this country! Well done sir!

You showed this dickhead up for what he is! A stupid, ignorant, uneducated, example of the lower levels of humanity!

I reckon, all Australian racists should be imprisoned in Indonesia! That should sort a few of them out!
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Racist threatened cage-fighting champ

Date

December 14, 2012 – 11:41AM

Deborah Gough

Friends on Facebook are calling it a lucky break for the racist who taunted and threatened an Australian cage fighter champion.

In the second recent publicised racist attack on Melbourne’s public transport system, cage-fighting bantamweight champion and former Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion Gustavo Falciroli and his family were threatened last Saturday on the South Morang line.

A man approached Mr Falciroli after hearing him speak in Portuguese and told him that this was “not his country”. He then threatened to “cut” and “rape” him, his wife and two children.

Mr Falciroli got off the train and called police. His aggressor was intercepted at Reservoir railway station.

“Despite it [being] a bad situation, once again life has showed me that violence just creates more violence and I never should use my skills outside a cage, a ring or a mat,” Mr Falciroli said on social media.

Thai kick boxer and instructor Dynamite Dennis O’Dea described the incident on Facebook as a “near miss for the racist!”

Another Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitor, Chris Freeman, said the abuser obviously did not know that Mr Falciroli was a reigning champion in cage fighting and a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

“Despite having all the skills to take this guy out, Gustavo Falciroli chose to get off the train. The abuser got lucky despite his ignorance,” Mr Freeman commented on Facebook.

The racist incident is the second such publicised attack on public transport in less than a month. On November 11, three bus passengers launched a vicious verbal attack on a French woman who was singing in her native language at the back of a bus.

The attack was captured on a mobile phone and went viral on YouTube.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/racist-threatened-cagefighting-champ-20121214-2bdvp.html#ixzz2EzbWt4aN

Damn!!!

Bugger!!! Looks like I will still need to do my Christmas shopping on the 22nd! 😦
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WHY DIDN’T THE WORLD END YESTERDAY?

Yahoo!7  December 14, 2012, 11:15 am

Why didn’t the world end yesterday?

Well, it’s the wrong date for a start, but that hasn’t stopped NASA prematurely releasing a video explaining why the Mayan ‘end-of-the-world prophecy’ won’t come true.

A full week before the world is supposed to end on December 21st, 2012, NASA has released a video debunking the many myths surrounding the so-called prophecy.

‘If you are watching this video then that means one thing … the world didn’t end yesterday,’ the video begins.

The video goes on to debunk the claim that Nibiru, a rogue planet known only to the Sumerians, will crash into Earth destroying all life.

Conveniently, there is no planet, NASA says.

How it might look when the world doesn’t end. Photo: NASA

Another theory put forward by doomsayers is that the sun will destroy the Earth, but luckily for us, NASA says this theory is wrong too.

‘Right now the sun is approaching the peak of its 11-year activity cycle but this is the wimpiest solar cycle of the last 50-years,’ Lika Guhathakurta says.

Perhaps the Earth’s magnetic field will reverse, causing extreme weather events?

Or maybe our planet will hurtle headlong into a previously undiscovered black hole?

Nope, NASA says.

In fact, there simply is no Mayan prophecy at all. The doomsday prophecy stems from a misreading of the Mayan calendar.

“The concept of time used by Mayan’s dwarfed those of modern astronomer,” Dr. John Carlson says in the video.

“According to our science the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago but there are dates in Mayan ruins that stretch back a billion billion times farther than that.”

“The Mayan Long Count calendar was designed to keep track of such long intervals and is the most complex calendar system ever developed.”

So there you have it. There is no doomsday prophecy, just the astronomical equivalent of failing to carry the one, or forgetting to set the alarm clock.

But then they would say that, wouldn’t they.