Does no law apply to facebook?

I recently noticed a plethora of fake profiles popping up. At first all these fake profiles seem harmless. Even hilarious. But as the world gets on Facebook it becomes a mechanism for low lives to exploit the "social network".

Now, many of you must be wondering why I'm whining about this? Doesn't facebook have a "Report abuse" mechanism. Of course they have it. The only problem it's as fake as the fake profiles. Why do I say this? Don't just listen to me. See for yourselves.

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=69178204322&topic=19372&start=0&hash=9177e6ad6ce7e1ce224f0d79f3c7bd3f

Looking at the above discussion it's evident that facebook only has the reporting mechanism just to "appear" as a law abiding citizen. And also having this allows facebook also to "appear" as concerned for the safety and privacy of its users.

So where does this put the rights of its users? Well, there are no rights. Forget about privacy. Forget about justice. If someone puts up a fake profile and tries to ruin your image or abuse you, then there's nothing you can do. Well, "just get off facebook", some will say. But think about it. Even if you get off facebook, still the fake profile will continue, the abuse will continue, and there's absolutely nothing you can do. No one's prosecuting facebook. I mean, why should they? Mark Zuckerburg is Time's person of the year after all. lol.

Govern your SOA deployment easily and it won't cost you a thing...

This blog has moved to : http://mackiemathew.com/2011/01/31/govern-your-soa-deployment-easily-and-it-wont-cost-you-a-thing/

Failure of a marketing campaign - Kik Cola

Most urban Sri lankans by now would have heard about "Kik Cola". So have I. But the impression I got is not exactly a positive one. I was actually wondering what the campaign was about (NOT a good sign, I even understood Inception the 1st time around :P). The name made it obvious that it was a drink. But I was extremely confused about the bill boards (costing a few mil, no doubt) were trying to portray.

One I saw people trying to engage in ermmm... i dunno... it looks like sports, the other looks like school. I don't get it. What are they aiming at? If confusion is the message, then they get an A+ from me. Let's look at the product itself. Hmmm, complete copy of Coke from the bottle to the taste. It actually came close to Coke than I expected. So they are trying to beat the world's most valuable brand, by imitating them. I think the whole strategy has one word written all over. Confused!


Let's look at a good marketing message. A bottle opened and flowers and party frills pouring out, with the tag line, Coca cola - "Open happiness". Clear, concise and effective. Lessons to learn Kik. :)

Sri Lankan president's 2nd term celebrations

It is a great day for the reigning president Mahinda Rajapaksa as he took oaths to officially start his 2nd term in office. I wish him all the best for his term.

The streets have been lit up and various festivities are organized to commemorate this occasion. I've noticed that this brought some criticism among the people that it's a waste of public funds. I think that is an unfair call. I compare this to a situation where the British monarchy celebrating theta special moments with all grandeur. When this happens we all watch in joy and the British also enjoy it thoroughly. They don't claim it to be a waste of public funds. The head of the state should celebrate special occasions and we as responsible citizens should not be so narrow minded. After all, It is the president elected by a significant majority.

XACML with the WSO2 product platform

Here is an article written by me on how to configure XACML based fine grained authorization with WSO2 products - http://wso2.org/library/articles/2010/10/using-xacml-fine-grained-authorization-wso2-platform.

It shows how WSO2 provides a way to fully harness the extensibility and the power of XACML with a few clicks and without having to write a single piece of code. Do read it and provide some feedback.

Running rail road tycoon 2 on Linux

If you ran into some problems like me because your on a 64 bit system. Follow these steps:

1. Install ia32-libs with 'sudo apt-get install ia32-libs'
2. Run the setup file with 'linux32 bash setup.sh'

That should do the trick.

This knowledge is courtesy of someone I'd like to call Mr. Commando :) - http://www.allportal.net/posts/linux/5109592/%C2%BFLos-juegos-no-funcionan-en-64bits_-Solucion-[Linux].html

Unix/Linux network commands on iPhone terminal

This post has moved to : http://mackiemathew.com/2010/09/20/unixlinux-network-commands-on-iphone-terminal/