Comments on: Big Brother is watching you on Facebook

By: phil

phil — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 12:07:32 +0000

And when the “ordinary working person” behaves in a similar manner they are labeled as yobs, hooligans, thugs, chavs etc. and are more likely to face criminal charges.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:30:12 +0000

I’d guess the Cambridge equivalent to this post-graduation Oxford excess is Suicide Sunday (the Sunday after all exams are done, traditionally the day for all the garden parties and thus student drunkenness). My abiding memory of my final Suicide Sunday is walking down the street past some roadworks with workmen (on a Sunday, yes) and being regaled with something drunken by some champagne-yielding, blazer-wearing twits rolling down the same street. One of the workmen turned to me and, shaking his head, said “they’ll be running the country some day”. Sadly, I had to concur.

No particular point to this story, but it does somewhat back up the “ordinary working person” theory – i.e. seeing the braying idiots behaving like this doesn’t do much for the general impression of students.

By: ejh

ejh — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:54:23 +0000

How much of a miserable, curmudgeonly sod would you have to be – ‘ordinary working person’ or no – to feel anything other than amusement at the sight of a bunch of people who’ve just finished a reasonably unpleasant ordeal having fun by doing something silly and harmless?

You’d just have to be one who lives in Oxford, where the students get on one’s nerves for a sizeable proportion of the time and therefore lead one to take a different view from yours.

By: john b

john b — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:33:42 +0000

[my guess is ‘a lot’.]

By: Martin Bento

Martin Bento — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:25:26 +0000

Caslon, that makes sense to me. The less privacy we allow ourselves, the less we can maintain secrets to protect our dignity. From what I can tell, people under communism kept little of their personal lives hidden. Since they were under surveillance anyway, it was counterproductive to have secrets.

By: Caslon

Caslon — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:58:28 +0000

The less privacy we allow ourselves, the more we seem intent on divesting ourselves of dignity as well.

By: rea

rea — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:03:08 +0000

As far as I know, even photos on paper aren’t considered evidence in court, but rather hearsay.

No.

Photographs are not hearsay, becasue they aren’t statements of a witness (hearsay is an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement).

Photographs are generally admissible on foundational testimony that they accurately show what they purport to show.

By: ejh

ejh — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:34:37 +0000

A fair few along the High, I think.

By: ajay

ajay — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 09:03:20 +0000

he became very angry with me and lectured me sternly on the effect that I would have on “ordinary working people” on their way home.

Ah, yes. Because there are an awful lot of “ordinary working people” going home along Merton Street.

By: walt

walt — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:34:20 +0000

Somebody needs to buy fardels bear a drink…

By: fardels bear

fardels bear — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:10:41 +0000

What is the obsession people have of posting photos of themselves in a drunken state on facebook? This, as far as I can tell, is the only reason facebook exists: “Here’s me at a party with my friends! Lookit how drunk I am! Har!”

I don’t get it.

By: lindsey

lindsey — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 16:57:24 +0000

No, you can make it so that only students within your network can see certain things. You can specify only students, faculty or alumni. But, the problem comes when employers/universities have other students use their accounts to dig up information… In which case, you ought to keep incremenating photos to yourself all together…

By: Kenny Easwaran

Kenny Easwaran — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 14:59:42 +0000

“my privacy settings were such that only my friends and students in my networks could view my photos.”

I thought normally the setting lets everyone in your networks (student or staff or faculty) see them, though I haven’t checked recently. It’s very easy for people to be confused by this, but it doesn’t seem that Facebook has any blame here.

By: phil

phil — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 14:50:40 +0000

PJ, I doubt they actually posted the pictures when they were drunk.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 14:46:31 +0000

“I think their rapidly increasing level of inebriation probably precludes any reasoning beyond the “need beer, now!” level of complexity.”

I’m sure you’re right. And, in all, this is probably a good thing since if it were not for this quite stupid aspect of people a huge amount of crime, for example, would go unsolved. (I’m quite willing to bet that much, much more crime is solved by criminals doing quite stupid things- taking photos of themselves committing the crime or w/ the loot, having a car full of drugs but then running a red light, etc. than anything that could properly be called police work. Again, all besides the point as to whether these students should be fined or not, a topic about which I have no opinion.)