PrivacyFix

Be careful what you put on-line. It WILL come back to haunt you.  Just ask General Petraeus. Data companies harvest ans sell your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogspot, Wordpress, MySpace, and You Tube. Read the following article.

How to Stop Companies from Collecting and Selling Your Facebook InfoNovember 15, 2012 By Brandon Ballenger, MoneyTalksNews.com

     PrivacyFix is a browser plug-in for Firefox and Chrome that analyzes your privacy settings across social networking sites. It tells you what percentage of sites you’ve visited that Facebook tracks and estimates what you're to Facebook.
     PrivacyFix provides tools you can us to “fix” this privacy leak, such as excluding your Facebook profile from search engines, blocking your friends from inadvertently sharing your personal information, making your postings private (visible only to friends) by default, and so on.
     Likewise for your Google settings. You'd be surprise about how much of your browsing activity Google tracks. It also lists other websites that share your visits and your info with third parties.
     Enabling Privacyfix's Healthbar adds a browser icon which accesses a dashboard which you can use to check a website’s privacy flaws, delete cookies, and provide a history of privacy issues. 

FUD

FUD, I never heard this term used before, which is surprising after Y2K, the Bush invasion of Iraq, attack on Obama as a socialist, Obamacare, and now the fiscal cliff.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD), is a tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda. FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information. An individual firm, for example, might use FUD to invite unfavorable opinions and speculation about a competitor's product; to increase the general estimation of switching costs among current customers; or to maintain leverage over a current business partner who could potentially become a rival. The term originated to describe disinformation tactics in the computer hardware industry but has since been used more broadly.  FUD is a manifestation of the appeal to fear.

I ran across it in Comments following an article about computer hardware.  The commenter referenced it as a Fox News tactic when he mentioned FUD. Amen to that.  After reading Fox News for a couple of years, I have begun to wonder if Joseph Goebbels wasn’t the editor.  Fox News has become the political version of the National Inquirer.

Fiscal Cliff is Media Hype

Two months ago, I said Washington had no plans to block the fiscal cliff inevitability.  The political parties are just looking for ways to have the other blamed.  It looks like my prediction is likely to come true.  The markets will react negatively, initially, but recover in reasonable time because the changes about to happen on Jan 1’st are a necessary good.   The market will react to a future of Washington incompetence and not to the fiscal cliff.

Remember Y2K?  Planes were predicted to fall from the sky.  Nothing has changed in world of media hype.  Below is another hyped story.  Tired yet of being a pawn?

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/20/opinion/avlon-post-office/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The U.S. Postal Service is bleeding money and heading toward insolvency
• Congress can save the postal service in deal on the fiscal cliff
• Urgency is clear
• Washington dysfunction can doom the postal service

Republican Brain

I recently resigned from the non-profit organization that I and two friends founded because of one simple fact: it became predominantly populated by liberal types and my conservative brain found the environment intolerable.  It wasn’t because of their politics.  It was because of their thought processes.  I liked the way the liberal mind is more open to new ideas and willing to debate the facts.  Likewise, I dislike the conservative mind’s “my way of the highway” approach and its predilection to elevate misinformation.  I remembered that great statement from a member of the Republican Presidential Election committee, “We are going to let the fact-checkers run our convention.”