Mike's PCjr Page

I'm not much of a user of Facebook, but I stumbled into a "private" PCjr Users Group. I requested access, and received access today.

I was surprised to see a decent sized group. 216 members as of today.

For me, I'm just not in sync with the Facebook user interface. However, it seems to make sharing pictures easy, and a lot of the group there posts interesting pictures.

I suppose scrolling through posts in Facebook is faster than the forum type UI. I personally like the categorization of forums, but to each their own.

Anyway, the recent resurgence of the PCjr's popularity is amusing!

I kind of hate the idea that people are doing this kind of thing on Facebook. Creating a Facebook account means giving up so much personal information; it's just not something I want to do no matter who else is on there.

It's easy for people to put Google in the same evil bucket. The difference is that Google has never sold or leaked anything they've collected (which is used to target advertising more precisely.) Facebook has had quite a few privacy scandals and data leakage.

This forum is open - anybody can read it. And I've never refused to create an account for anybody.

I kind of hate the idea that people are doing this kind of thing on Facebook. Creating a Facebook account means giving up so much personal information; it’s just not something I want to do no matter who else is on there.

I totally agree. That’s why I’m here and not on the Facebook PCjr group, even though I know people are posting interesting things there.

It’s easy for people to put Google in the same evil bucket. The difference is that Google has never sold or leaked anything they’ve collected (which is used to target advertising more precisely.) Facebook has had quite a few privacy scandals and data leakage.

Don’t get me started on Google. It’s true that Facebook is more openly exploitative and careless, but Google is like a private NSA, quietly hoovering up massive amounts of data on everyone and everything while maintaining the wholesome persona of an online Disney. Google has its tentacles everywhere on the Internet, far more than Facebook.

And it hasn’t sold or leaked anything…yet, that you know of, except, of course, for the PRISM program and the massive network breach that Edward Snowden revealed. And that Google+ oopsie. I guarantee there’s more going on behind closed doors than you know about. I can also guarantee that there will be leaks and scandals to come—it’s just a matter of time.

This forum is open - anybody can read it. And I’ve never refused to create an account for anybody.

Kudos to you for going to the trouble and expense of maintaining this forum and the rest of your site over the years. They’ve been of great service.

Apart from its invasive nature, Facebook also sucks for this kind of thing because it’s relatively closed and focused on presenting an ephemeral stream of consciousness. Somebody posts something interesting, others comment on it, and then it gets pushed out of sight by other posts and is hard to find again. What we need instead is an open, stable, searchable record.

I also appreciate your use of phpBB. Though it’s clunky and non-ideal in a number of respects, it’s also mature, familiar, and still allows me to use it with a locked-down browser (though I expect the phpBB people will rectify that oversight eventually).

Going a little off topic:

• PRISM affects any company working in the US. Ask AT&T or any telco.
• The response to the NSA network breach says a lot more than the breach. The three letter agencies are not supposed to be spying on US companies. Google reacting by encrypting everything in sight (and then pushing HTTPs broadly shows you how that was received. Every government is not considered a potential adversary.
• The Google+ API breach was discovered by Google itself. The reaction was to fix the hole, and to accelerate the turning down of Google+, which made me sad as Google+ communities were like an adult version of Facebook.

I have a lot of insight on Google, but the rest of it has to be saved for a private conversation. (Look me up on LinkedIn.) Anything can change (and eventually will); when you see a mass exodus of people leaving Google then you will know.

Back to on-topic ...

phpBB (and web forums in general) work well for this purpose, and you are totally spot-on about the stream of consciousness aspect of Facebook. I just wish we could pull some of that energy back over here; what happens on Facebook is closed to a good portion of the population and is also effectively ephemeral, which makes it the wrong tool for anybody with more than a passing interest.

There is another PCjr web site and forum now, also running phpBB, also with a lot of the same content I've been curating for close to two decades now. I don't understand why the splintering happened, and I kind of wish it had not because it really is counter productive to the entire group. (/sigh)