In fact, the defaults for Facebook’s privacy settings completely expose your profile not only to everyone on Facebook, but to the entire public including non-Facebook users. Meaning your current and potential employers, people you like and have pissed off, your parents – everyone – can see your Facebook profile. For a visual representation of Facebook’s expanding public defaults, click here.

Those pictures of you drinking and smoking weed on the weekend? Those pictures of you in your slutty Halloween costume? The status updates about how you’re looking for a new job? All public, all the time unless you change your privacy settings.

Not only that, but Facebook’s new, and much maligned, “Open Graph” program, which is basically a 20x worse version of the failed Beacon, will invade your privacy in ways you never thought possible. Here I’m going to help you put an end (somewhat) to Facebook’s over-the-top campaign to make all of your data public and available to advertisers. The addition of “Connections,” which I opted out of, is also generating some harsh feedback from users.

1) Open up your privacy settings control panel by clicking Account > Privacy Settings. That will bring you to this screen:

2) Click Profile Information and be sure that everything is set to “Only friends”

3) Click Back to Privacy and then click Contact Information. Adjust accordingly according to your wishes.

4) Click Back to Privacy and then click Applications and Websites. This is one of the most critical sections of the site for protecting your privacy and data from websites/companies that you don’t want to allow access to! First, click the Edit Settings button beside What your friends can share about you. The default settings allow your friends to unknowingly share everything about you – fix this!

5) Click Save Changes at the bottom, then click Applications and websites at the top to go back to the previous page. Edit the setting for Activity on applications and games dashboards to your desired setting (mine is Only friends), and then click Edit setting beside Instant Personalization. Unclick “Allow,” then hit “Confirm” on the box that comes up.

6) Click Applications and websites at the top again, then click Back to privacy to bring you back to the main control panel. Now click Search. This is another really important tool because the default settings let people find your Facebook profile using search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Change your settings to what you’re comfortable with for Facebook search results and uncheck the box beside Public search results.

7) Click Back to privacy, and you’re done! Not that it was easy by any means.

Facebook suffers from a very poor user experience when it comes to managing your privacy, and my opinion is that it’s on purpose. They make money by giving advertisers access to your data they deem public; a ridiculous list that includes your interests (books, movies, music, etc.), list of your friends, etc. How Facebook can deem that type of information public is beyond me, but that’s their policy.

There are actually two other things you can do.

1. Don’t “Like” news stories and blog posts using Facebook’s “Like” button with the thumbs-up on it.
2. If you normally click the “Keep me logged in” checkbox on the login screen so that you don’t have to login every time you head to the site, discontinue this. Facebook can’t automatically share your information with other sites if you’re not logged into Facebook when you’re visiting Open Graph partners.

If you’re curious to see what information Facebook makes public about you before you get started, try using this tool.

Alternatively you could simply delete your account – which quite a few people have done including some engineers at Google – and use other social networking and sharing sites more heavily.

Your data is yours. Start treating it that way! As they say in the financial services world, CYA… cover your ass.

Food 2030

The UK government recently unveiled Food 2030 – a food strategy designed to ensure that Britons have access to high quality, sustainably farmed/grown, food that benefits both the farmer/grower and the consumer. At the same time Food 2030 should ensure that people have good jobs, a reduction in greenhouse emissions and food waste.

Not bad for something that only went out for public consultation in August 2009! That’s right – the British government invited citizens and other stakeholders to comments from August till October 2009. It seems Defra took the results of the consultation away, compiled the strategy and released it last week to the masses. The 24 page strategy summary (PDF) goes over what the UK wants by 2030 (informed consumers making good choices, less impact on the environment, a secure food chain, etc), along with how the government proposes they get there. The BBC covered the announcement here.

Tomatoes by Ben

Overall, there isn’t much to gripe about. I’m sure that some folks won’t like the mention of research and science helping to produce crops that require less water, fertilizer and chemicals but the reality is that high yield crops are a must if we are to food a growing population. Earth will hit 7 billion before we know it and we all have a responsibility to make sure those folks get the nutrition they need.

It would be great to see the Canadian government be so forward thinking. Just one year after massive drought caused food prices to skyrocket (more so than they did here) and caused riots, the UK has taken the initiative to put together a plan that will encourage citizens to take more responsibility for themselves. It’s especially encouraging that 3 major grocery stores only sell free-range eggs now – a move by Loblaws/Real Canadian Superstore or Metro like that would further sustainable food cycle efforts immensely!

Web Communities

Farmers and consumers alike are increasingly turning towards the Internet in order to identify where the nearest source of sustainably grown food can be found. Change.org identified 5 popular websites where people are connecting and I particularly like Local Harvest because it includes Canadian sources. If you’re a Canadian farmer producing organic, sustainable or low impact produce please add yourself to Local Harvest to make it easier for the rest of us to find you! Better yet, if you know of a good Canadian directory please leave me the link in a comment.

Vertical Gardens

There are many examples of people growing vertical/urban gardens. Again, Change.org has linked to several different ways you can setup your own urban/vertical garden, from thrifty to eco-chic. One of the greatest benefits I see from the vertical garden boom happening is a greater amount of plants taking carbon dioxide out of the air, a much cheaper way to grab fresh produce when you need it and also something nice to look at in your home. This is also a good way to use typically unused space in a home or apartment.

I hope that provides you with some food for thought – both literally and figuratively! While it’s becoming easier everyday to get your hands on food that was produced in a sustainable manner, it will still be some time before all the pieces of the puzzle come together. We can all chip in and help out though.

I will also mention that I’m going to be speaking to the folks over at Local Food Plus soon about their organization – how it works, how we can get it to expand beyond its current Toronto-centric focus, where they get their funding, etc. I hope it proves to be a mutually beneficial conversation!

I don’t know if you know this or not, based on reading past posts, but I quite enjoy my civil liberties. I like having a driver’s licence, I like being able to walk around town without constantly being watched (except for the areas of downtown London with surveillance cameras), I like that police need probable cause to pull me over or arrest me, etc.

I know what you’re thinking – “Well duh Derek, we all like those parts of living in London/Ontario/Canada.” Indeed, and yet lately the Ontario government, led by Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty, seems to be taking an ever increasing level of control of our lives.

Most recently are two major items of contention – the smoking ban (in vehicles) when children are present and the impending cell phone ban which is now set to come into effect October 26, 2009. The police are going to be on an education and warning campaign for several months though, and won’t start issuing tickets until February 1, 2010.

Disclaimer: I am not a smoker, and I do have a child of my own.

That doesn’t lead me to believe, though, that adults need to be smart enough and care enough about their children not to smoke in their vehicle on their own accord. Having the government legislate against this behaviour impedes on a person’s rights to do what they please without overtly causing any harm. I don’t buy the argument that opening the windows while smoking does not help, and last I heard there were no clinical trials to backup that claim (if you can prove otherwise, please do so).

That issue, unfortunately, is said and done with and I have no great amount of power to change it at the moment. American President Obama has set a good standard by speaking to adults as if they are adults – why can’t we treat our own in this way? “Hey dude, smoking in your car while you have kids in there is a bad idea and here’s why…” should suffice. If that can’t convince them, the solution should not be to simply ban the activity.

226 - Drive to Seattle by eyeliam | Flickr

This does, however, bring us to today and the soon-to-be-implemented ban on talking on your cell phone while driving (and holding it). The logic for this ban astounds me – talking on your cell phone (while holding it) is supposedly very distracting, leading to crashes and general mayhem. That’s a bunch of bull. Holding and talking on your cell phone is no less distracting than a number of other things that are currently very legal to do in your vehicle, which I’m going to get to in a moment.

I do want to point out that texting while driving, in my opinion, is very dangerous. This typically requires a person to take their eyes off the road for, perhaps, several seconds at a time. When you consider the statistics on people falling asleep at the wheel for just 2 seconds, it’s easy to make a correlation.

But talking? Nope, I don’t buy it. I know and see hundreds of people everyday that drive with only one hand on the wheel whether they’re on their cell phone or not. What puts them in a situation very comparable to the scenario the government is so afraid of is driving with one hand on the wheel AND talking to a passenger(s). How is this any less distracting than talking on your cell phone, especially if it’s an argument?!

That being said, if the Ontario government (and several other provinces) are going to ban texting and talking on your cell phone while driving (although buying a headset or speakerphone exempts you from the ban), then I propose we ban many other distracting things, such as:

• Advertisements within 250m of roads
• Driving around with crying/upset children
• Attempting to soothe crying/upset children (either verbally or physically) while driving
• Talking to passengers in your vehicle while driving
• Listening to the radio/music while driving
• Eating while driving
• Putting on makeup while driving (I witness this pretty often)

All of these things distract you at least a tiny bit while driving, although a better way to put that is that they all require one to take some level of concentration away from the act of driving. So they should all be banned, right? If not, then why does the cell phone ban make sense in the first place?

Recently it has become apparent that indeed, I am a centrist. I don’t tolerate overly polarizing views or people very well (though I do hear them out on the issue and give them their opportunity to explain their rationale) and would much prefer to see people get to the bottom of an issue, brainstorm all of the possible solutions and then pick the best. Sadly that doesn’t happen very often in this “democracy” of ours where few-to-no MPs actually listen to their constituents after gaining power.

The Liberals, however, seem to be mounting a new steed and marching forward under the leadership of an intellectual. Someone who is truly smart, creative even (he has written several fiction novels which, so I read, are actually good). And so I have begun breaking my ties with the NDP both in private and in public in favour of re-joining the Liberal party in the hopes that I may help push them in what I would consider to be the “right” direction.

So yesterday when I e-mailed the riding president for Sarnia-Lambton asking him to take me off his mailing list because of a newly realized difference of opinion, he replied stating that he was “sorry that you feel that way about the NDP’s support of Unions and Pensions. I guess there is only one Party that you would find favour with at the present time.”

Indeed, I’m sorry too.  I’m sorry that the NDP is such a staunch supporter of unions no matter if they misbehave and care little for the financial state of their employers and that the NDP is a staunch supporter of defined-benefit pension plans (as opposed to defined-contribution) that place such huge liabilities on the employer and the employee thinks poses no risk to them (which Stelco employees can tell you certainly isn’t the case in the long run). The NDP candidate also seems to infer that I support the Conservatives – hardly! They’re a polarizing party that cares about nothing more than winning and retaining power, not truly what’s right for the country. They follow a methodology of certain values which is dangerous to any country or economy.

This is the e-mail I sent back to the NDP candidate in question, slightly refined for the purposes of flow with this entry.

There’s nothing wrong with supporting pensions and unions. My problem is that lately unions tend to misbehave and act only in their own interest without regard to the business they work for – that’s a problem. Staging protests outside an arena and slowing down traffic is an absolute nuisance and unnecessary; especially when a good portion of the people arriving at the arena don’t even live in Windsor.

And the CAW seems to be delighted in single-handedly destroyed the auto industry in Canada recently! I used to work for a non-unionized auto plant and could not have been happier. Individuals were rewarded with increased pay and promotions, laggards were punished – exactly the way it should be. The CAW cares about nothing more than increasing the pay and benefits of it’s employees without giving a damn about what shape Ford, GM and Chrysler are in. That’s not a sustainable model! The plant I used to work for just made some changes to it’s pay structure and positions in order to remain viable and more realistic when you compare workloads of different positions – to me that makes sense, and in the end it rewards the people who work the hardest there.

The CAW and CUPE are doing nothing but alienating what little non-union support they have, even within Windsor. They do their best to maintain the status quo without innovating or taking into consideration that the companies they work for are doing so poorly. Why would Chrysler stay in Canada when someone like Ken Lewenza explicity blurts out that there’s no way they’ll concede $19 worth of compensation? It’s ridiculous.

If the banks can’t maintain defined-benefit plans and the CPP has to be extremely aggressive in their investments in order to do so, why must the auto companies be kept to theirs? Because heaven forbid the auto companies download a little bit of responsibility onto the workers and the financial advisors working the account, right? A defined-contribution plan puts the responsibility back into the worker’s hands, along with their financial advisor, giving them the ability to choose the right investments for them. Doesn’t that make more sense? Shouldn’t that be the way we always operate?

Government has its place, and looking back at history and moving forward, I think a very centrist approach is the only way to go. Find the best ideas, leave the partisanship out, and you end up with a better country in all manners. The Conservatives are a bunch of morons and a few candidates have recently jumped ship from the Green Party to the Liberals. Jack Layton is a great man, but in the end I can’t support unequivocal support for unions or the defined-benefit plans they adore so much. It’s unsustainable when they act the way that the CAW and CUPE have recently.

This goes hand-in-hand with my post on self-responsibility. You should be able to rely on government to provide health care, police protection and municipal services along with a small portion of your retirement income (but only because you pay into the CPP, and the money is invested by the CPPIB). People need to take more responsbility for their lives at home, at work and at play. You can’t always rely on government to protect you, let alone your employer. Ford, GM and Chrysler are in business to make money, not to make sure you have a nice retirement fund or that you have the best benefits possible. Those are perks and niceties, not necessities. In fact they cost so much they take away from the money you could be making hourly instead but it’s less expensive for a business to provide benefits instead of wage increases.

If you don’t like what your employer is doing, find a new job.

9:30PM UPDATE: And here again we see a great example of what I’m talking about. Local manufacturing firm Accuride wants to change their defined-benefit pension plan to a defined-contribution benefit plan for new employees. Reduce liability on the employee, put it back where it belongs on the employee and their financial advisor! Unfortunately the London Free Press article mistakenly states that the investments rely purely on how the stock market performs, which isn’t true at all. Most investment portfolios include some fixed-income investments, which are not traded on the stock market. This type of misinformation doesn’t help anyone but the union employees in their fight for better wages and benefits than the rest of us.

I’m tired of it. I’m tired of people trying to blame a third party for their own losses and problems. With all of the evidence that goes against the bad habits, or addictions as people may refer to them now, like smoking, constantly eating out and the potential for losing money and causing problems with your friends and family if you gamble too much – not to mention all of the ads on TV and radio -  how can you still feign ignorance?!

The latest debacle includes Peter Dennis, a self-described gambling addict, who is suing OLG for “allowing him” to gamble away $350,000 in about 4 years, even after signing a voluntary self-exclusion contract giving the ability to casinos and racetracks to kick him out if they recognized him. He lost $350,000 – and so he’s suing OLG for $3.5 billion! What?! That’s an increase of 1000x the amount Peter lost. Where’s the sense in that?

[One can only assume his lawyer told him he could probably win that much. I'm sure the lawyer will take a hefty percentage if Peter wins or settles out of court too!]

So first – where does Peter get the gall to sue OLG for his own shortcomings? I know plenty of people who gamble, only one of which has ever recognized enough of a problem to join the self-exclusion program. The difference? She actually stayed away from the local casino (and she lives in Sarnia, about 10 minutes away from the Port Edward Casino). If she had enough strength to do that, why didn’t Peter?

And why, instead of signing a voluntary program, wouldn’t Peter try to get professional help? None of the stories I’ve read have mentioned Peter seeking counselling or alerting extended family members that they might try seeking him out at local gambling agencies if they couldn’t find him. If I had a drinking problem, the first thing I would do after admitting it is tell my friends and family that if they can’t find me, check the bars! One would think that’s what lengths one would go to if they seriously want the help they need.

In fact, where was his family when all this was going on? The lawsuit’s been launched on behalf of him and his wife – doesn’t sound like she did anything to stop him. Why does Peter sue his wife? Or his kids? Or his parents? Seriously now…

I’m sick and tired of people trying to offload their problems onto other people. No one’s forcing you to smoke cigarettes, or drugs for that matter; no one’s forcing you to eat at McDonalds, Burger King or Wendy’s; no one’s forcing you to play Lotto 6/49 or to bet on the horses! Take some responsibility for your own actions already! You have a choice! You have free will! USE IT!

Secondly, $3.5 billion? That’s a gross amount beyond belief. That’s the equivalent of me punching a neighbour in the arm and him then cutting both my legs off. The restitution/retribution does not equal out in any way, not even when you factor in the time Peter might have lost from work or family relationships he may have lost. $5.5 billion is probably more than the GDP of at least a couple of countries. Unless he’s planning on donating the majority of that to charity, which by the way is where some of the money he already gambled away went anyway, then there’s no way to justify $3.5 billion.

You can’t expect any casino or racetrack to recognize any one of the 12,000 people who have joined the self-exclusion program. I come from a town of 15,000 and I don’t know even a quarter of them, let alone 12,000 of them. Face tracking technology doesn’t work as well as it does on TV either, nor is it very affordable. OLG says they’re experimenting with it, but with the false positives likely to be recorded by any piece of face tracking software they definitely have to be careful.

You can only expect government to look after you for so long. At some point you need to step up and admit that you have a problem and then actively seek help – even if that help is paid for by the government. If Peter wants to experience George Orwell’s book “1984″ then maybe he should go live south of the border where the USA PATRIOT Act can account for almost everything you do, or in England where there are CCTV cameras almost everywhere in metro areas.