I don't like big entities. Once they get too big and powerful, the playing field is no longer fair and they stomp you like an ant. That's why I never like to willingly give up rights, freedom and independence. Once gone, you never get it back. So there, I said it, I don't like big government either. Glad I don't live in China right now because apparently, if you get harrassed and your life threatened, even the US embassy is no longer a viable option. But lets get back to the topic at hand.
Facebook, just announced their IPO plans. In an instant, they are poised to become one of the largest and richest companies in the world once the offering is complete.
Coincidentally, here is a facebook issue that I've personally come to experience. I just noticed a few days ago some serious crawling activity on my own website. A google search of the IP's suggested that these IP ranges come from facebook corporation. But facebook.... crawling the web now? And in the course of googling, I find this:
http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/04/how-i-got-sued-by-facebook.html
In a nutshell, this guy made a crawler robot to crawl facebook. Facebook attorney's threatened to sue claiming that even though their robots.txt directive did not prohibit crawling of their site, nobody is permitted from accessing their servers without their explicit permission. Excuse me, but hasn't the internet been crawled/indexed ever since the day Al Gore invented the internet? In any event, lacking huge financial resources to back and contest a lawsuit, the person who's blog is documented above had to sign off his rights.
But here is the hypocrisy.... While facebook will sue you if you dare crawl their site, they apparently feel they can do whatever the heck they want by crawling YOUR site without the same explicit permission. My site never once saw a facebook robot until a week or so ago. I now see they crawl my site, all day, every day, persistently and as many as 10 concurrent connections from different IP addresses, all registered to Facebook.
Facebook, now imperial elephant who makes it's own rules backed by a huge cache of legal team to write their own interpretation of the laws.
Us... mere ants.
Question.... how many ants does it take to lift and throw an elephant on his big azz?
Me thinks, maybe too many.
Facebook, just announced their IPO plans. In an instant, they are poised to become one of the largest and richest companies in the world once the offering is complete.
Coincidentally, here is a facebook issue that I've personally come to experience. I just noticed a few days ago some serious crawling activity on my own website. A google search of the IP's suggested that these IP ranges come from facebook corporation. But facebook.... crawling the web now? And in the course of googling, I find this:
http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/04/how-i-got-sued-by-facebook.html
In a nutshell, this guy made a crawler robot to crawl facebook. Facebook attorney's threatened to sue claiming that even though their robots.txt directive did not prohibit crawling of their site, nobody is permitted from accessing their servers without their explicit permission. Excuse me, but hasn't the internet been crawled/indexed ever since the day Al Gore invented the internet? In any event, lacking huge financial resources to back and contest a lawsuit, the person who's blog is documented above had to sign off his rights.
But here is the hypocrisy.... While facebook will sue you if you dare crawl their site, they apparently feel they can do whatever the heck they want by crawling YOUR site without the same explicit permission. My site never once saw a facebook robot until a week or so ago. I now see they crawl my site, all day, every day, persistently and as many as 10 concurrent connections from different IP addresses, all registered to Facebook.
Facebook, now imperial elephant who makes it's own rules backed by a huge cache of legal team to write their own interpretation of the laws.
Us... mere ants.
Question.... how many ants does it take to lift and throw an elephant on his big azz?
Me thinks, maybe too many.
I don't play the stock market and I don't have a say in what these corporations do.
