On Sat, 5 Jan 2013, Max Shinn wrote:

>>> You're close minded and, please, stop.
>>
>> Only closed to invasive and intrusive things, not all.
>>
>> Toss YOUR prejudices and incorrect presumptions.
>
> Objectively speaking, it is very difficult to get information in a 
> timely manner from Twitter without a Twitter account.  There is one 
> account on Twitter I "follow" via RSS, however they are dropping support 
> for this in a few months.  I have many reasons for not getting a Twitter 
> account; most of them personal reasons that are irrelevant to this 
> discussion.  However, it is difficult to call a company that refuses to 
> even support RSS/Atom feeds "open".
>
> Speaking to Facebook, of which I am also not a member for personal 
> reasons, it bothers me when organizations call their Facebook pages 
> their "websites".  In most cases, I cannot access additional information 
> about these without being a member of Facebook.  I have a hard time 
> understanding how one would call this "open".


Good points, Max.  It is a never-ending struggle with these information 
gathering companies.

The other day I saw someone post "If you are concerned about privacy on 
Facebook, don't post anything private on Facebook," or something like 
that.  But I don't think they understand how data mining works and how 
much about us can be divined from seemingly irrelevant things.  I'm on 
Facebook anyway.

Mike