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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

private facebook photos are not private

From Ars Technica:

Nathalie Blanchard took leave from her job at IBM a year and a half ago after being diagnosed with "major depression," according to CBC News. At that time, Manulife began paying out monthly sick leave checks as part of her benefit package—until Blanchard posted photos to her private Facebook profile depicting her having fun at her own birthday party.


How did the insurance company obtain the photos? It's hard to say. But the takeaway here is that Facebook photos — even those published privately — are open to the public.

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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Edsger Dijkstra on Algol

Edsger W. Dijkstra on the influence of Algol-60:

In a short summary I could formulate as follows: through its merits ALGOL 60 has inspired a great number of people to make translators for it, through its defects it has induced a great number of people to think about the aims of a "Programming Language".


from the essay, Some Meditations on Advanced Programming.

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