Follow-Up

There are 521 posts filed in Follow-Up (this is page 21 of 53).

More Dead People for Romney


An inspired wag created a Change.Org petition to have Mitt Romney’s Facebook account suspended. While there’s of course no chance of this actually happening, I did find the following comment from the petition to be interesting:

Terren Braen EASTHAMPTON, MA 1 day ago Liked 0

THEY MADE MY GREAT UNCLE LIKE MITT ROMNEY THE DAY HE DIED. THERE’S NO WAY HE SIGNED ONTO FACEBOOK AND LIKE MITT ROMNEY AS HE WAS DYING. THAT’S JUST SO SO SO RUDE AND ABUSIVE! WHO EVER IS RESPONSIBLE SHOULD PAY THE PRICE FOR THEIR LACK OF RESPECT.

Cheap Thoughts: a new role for the U.S. Postal Service?

Speaking of antiquated ways of doing things, I’ve often wondered if the U.S. Postal Service might be better off transitioning to more of an IT role. Perhaps it could rebrand itself as a Information Delivery or Information Directory service and deliver both hardcopy (i.e., mail) and softcopy (i.e., email,fax,etc.) materials to Americans. I’ve often wondered if it should play the role similar to IANA in routing traffic on the Internet.

I’ve also thought before that the postal service missed an opportunity to take on the directory role by providing each American with a free .us email address.

The postal service has long been an information delivery service, it’s just that now an increasing amount of this delivery is taking place on the Internet. Could the USPS one day deliver packets the way it now delivers packages?

Mark Zuckerberg’s Letter To Shareholders

I started today feeling very down on Facebook. This feeling changed when I found this letter from Mark Zuckerberg to shareholders, basically saying that Facebook doesn’t exist simply to chase money. Crazy as it sounds, I believe him. I think Zuckerberg’s still very much still a hacker, in spite of Facebook’s popularity.

It’s given me hope that Zuck’s not a bad guy and there might be hope for Facebook yet. That said, if Zuck thinks he controls Facebook he’d better pay attention to the Hacked by Mitt Romney stuff.

It’s Becoming Clear That No One Actually Read Facebook’s IPO Prospectus Or Mark Zuckerberg’s Letter To Shareholders

As Facebook’s stock continues to collapse, the volume of whining is increasing.

Four months ago, you will recall, Facebook was viewed as “the next Google.” Now, with no major change in the fundamentals, it’s viewed as an over-hyped disaster. Meanwhile, there is ever-louder grumbling that 26-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in over his head and should be relieved of command.

As I listen to all this whining, I have a simple question:

Didn’t anyone even read Facebook’s IPO prospectus?

The answer, I can only assume, is “no.”

via It's Becoming Clear That No One Actually Read Facebook's IPO Prospectus Or Mark Zuckerberg's Letter To Shareholders – Business Insider.

Facebook stock soars but is it built on fraud?


Facebook’s stock soared today on news that its mobile advertising efforts are paying off. The stock is up 22% over its price yesterday. As VentureBeat says:

After investors jumped on Facebook stock in after-hours trading yesterday, following the company’s mobile-focused earnings report, it’s not a huge surprise to see the stock make another huge leap this morning.

Facebook’s stock is up 22 percent from yesterday, trading at $23.80, as of the time of this post. The stock reached a high of $24 this morning, and it was up almost 28 percent in pre-market trading. Facebook’s stock is still well below the $38 it opened at, but the rise is still a good sign for investors.

via Facebook stock on the rise: Up 22% after solid mobile earnings | VentureBeat.

What does Mitt Romney have to do with this rise in Facebook’s stock?
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Clickjacking the cause of Romney Facebook likes?


I decided to delve a bit into the hacking underworld yesterday, wanting to learn more about how Facebook users could be signed up for pages they didn’t like. It turns out that a Google search for “facebook clickjacking” returns a lot of results.

I downloaded one clickjacking kit from a site called zarabyte.com and took a look. It includes this line in a file called like.js:

var thehairs = “< iframe id='theiframe' scrolling='no' frameBorder='0' allowTransparency='true' src='http://www.facebook.com/widgets/like.php?href=" + encodeURIComponent(fan_page_url) + "&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=53&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=80' style='position:absolute;width:53px;height:23px;overflow:hidden;border:0;opacity:" + opacity +";filter:alpha(opacity=" + opacity * 100+ ");' >< /iframe >“;

Basically, it sneaks in an iframe on the page and kicks off the like.php script to “like” the desired page. There doesn’t appear to be anything magic about what this does. If the user is logged into Facebook (in another browser window, for instance), this script should register a like. Futhermore, that like should be logged in the Activity Log as any other like would be.

Based on this behavior, I’m pretty confident that these mysterious Romney Facebook likes aren’t being generated through clickjacking.

What’s up with Debra Goldman’s cash?

Debra Goldman


So after I’ve gotten over the initial shock of the extramarital hijinks allegedly going on between Wake school board members Debra Goldman and Chris Malone and the revelation that Goldman keeps six figures in cash in her home, I can’t help but be drawn again to the money.

Goldman gives a bizarre excuse for having so much cash:

Police asked Goldman why she kept so much money at home. According to the notes of Detective Joseph Lengel, who referred questions to Bazemore, Goldman said that she began to keep large amounts of cash at home in case of emergency because “she found it very difficult to get money from her bank in order to pay her bills” after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
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How the Hacked by Mitt Romney page got its name


I’ve seen comments out there about the “cute” URL the Hacked By Mitt Romney page has, http://www.facebook.com/MittYouDidntBuildThat.

The truth is I would’ve loved to call it simply http://www.facebook.com/HackedByMittRomeny but Facebook would not let me for some strange reason. As I mentioned before, I went through a ridiculous number of iterations until I landed on the current address, so many of them that I began to take screen shots of the rejections.

http://www.facebook.com/YouDidntBuildThat:

You Didn’t Build That


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