The stock market retracted 1% yesterday and THE SKY IS FALLING!

 The way some of those clowns write, one would think the sock… er, stock market had crashed, that Mount Vesuvius had become active once again, and that nuclear war had broken out all over.

 

This is just so MUCH BULLSHIT. (Or instead, perhaps that should that be bullshittery?)

 

I mean, seriously… a 1% and a 1.6% decline?

 

Are you kidding me!?!

 

That’s a “plunge”?

It’d be like dipping the very tip of your little finger in a finger bowl moistened with a few drops of water and then claiming that you went swimming in the Pacific Ocean. 

 

If anyone went to any store anywhere and saw a sign reading “HUGE SALE! Up to 1.6% off EVERYTHING!” they’d laugh the store to shame for promoting such an asininely ludicrous bit of blatantly fraudulent puffery and nonsense.

 

The stock market is that store.

And yet,

Are there good reasons to leave FaceBook?

Sure there are!

However, there are probably as many good reasons to stay.

And yet, for the good reasons to stay, there are genuine concerns, not only with governmental agencies worldwide, but with FaceBook itself.

It IS possible to almost wholesale “lock down” your FaceBook account, but one must decide if those actions are worth it, or not.

Further, another option is, that one could delete everything that could be deleted from FB – likes, comments, posts, etc. – and make invisible those things that cannot be deleted.

Of course, there’s no reason one could not have more than one FB account, either.

However, with all this, it might be wise to consider the ultimate in security, which was proposed several years ago: Public Key Encryption.

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Leaving Facebookistan

May 24, 2012

Posted by Steve Coll

Welcome to FaceBookistan! You are now leaving FaceBookistan.

I established a Facebook account in 2008. My motivation was ignoble: I wanted to distribute my journalism more widely. I have acquired since then just over four thousand “friends”—in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Middle East, and of course, closer to home. I have discovered the appeal of Facebook’s community—for example, the extraordinary emotional support that swells in virtual space when people come together online around a friend’s illness or life celebrations.Through its bedrock appeals to friendship, community, public identity, and activism—and its commercial exploitation of these values—Facebook is an unprecedented synthesis of corporate and public spaces. The corporation’s social contract with users is ambitious, yet neither its governance system nor its young ruler seem trustworthy. Then came this month’s initial public offeringof stock—a chaotic and revealing event—which promises to put the whole enterprise under even greater pressure.There are many reasons to be

How is FaceBook’s IPO like Erectile Dysfunction?

{UPDATE: Tuesday, 22 May 2012 – 2d story added}

Read on, to find out why.

(Oh, and please, dear reader, don’t make me spell it out why.)

And, as an interesting note aside, Mr. Zuckerberg was married yesterday.

Here’s wishing him and his bride all the best.

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Nasdaq ‘embarrassed’ over Facebook IPO

By Telis Demos in New York, May 20, 2012 10:12 pm

Nasdaq OMX‘s chief executive admitted he was “embarrassed” by the delay in the opening trade of Facebook’s initial public offering and revealed that the exchange was in talks with regulators over potentially millions of dollars of customer claims.

Bob Greifeld said on Sunday that the 20-minute delay in trading of Facebook’s $16bn offering on Friday had been caused by a millisecond systems blip due to the largest IPO auction “in the history of mankind”.

The exchange has found itself in the spotlight after Facebook failed to deliver a first-day “pop” to investors, instead almost falling below its issuing price of $38. The shares, having risen briefly, quickly fell away to close the day with a gain of just 0.6 per cent, at $38.23.

As a result of the trading delay, Nasdaq was left with a position in Facebook shares that it was forced to liquidate, according to its own rules, generating $10m for the group. It plans to use that money, plus potentially more, to resolve disputes related to 30m shares that may have received improper trades.

It has requested approval from