Cost of honour ...

"My daughter deserve to die for falling in love." - says an unrepentant muslim father.

How can love, or infatuation for that matter be so wrong? I am so moved by this very story. I felt rage, and hatred for this father who killed his own daughter and felt proud about his despicable act.

I will never get to understand his reasoning ... I felt numbed by just reading this tale. Will there ever be justice for this poor sould of a 16-year old? I hope so ... somewhere ... somehow.

Facebook traps

No one has escaped the Facebook craze when it opened up in the worldwide web. My friends raved so much about this phenomenon. Only now did they discover the bitter truth about being a Facebook-member.

I have been warned about Facebook during its early stages. It was meant to be a “party”-page, and this party is one that never stops. “Party”-page because it offers all the available user-friendly tools that would blow your head away, especially on the social part (dating, games, dinner groups, reunions, etc). You’ll get hooked! Facebook, as in other websites, even encourage you to give input on how to make the site better. They would acknowledge your contribution (some even claim to get certain “thank-you” fees) and will make you feel so much like “family”, and an unsuspecting one at that.

So, what is it you do not know about Facebook? Below are just some of them.

1) Facebook is governed by the California by-laws on interactive media, and they are a lot different to the laws you are accustomed to in Europe. When you accept membership, without reading the fine print, you are likely to be accepting more than what you are prepared to bargain for.

2) Once you’re in, you will always be in. It is not possible for you to get out of Facebook. Once a member, always a member. You can inactivate your profile – meaning just that, inactive. Still it’s out there online, published. You can never erase it totally from its publication nor erase it from the database. Once in, you can never get out!

3) Did you know that Facebook can change your terms of membership? Yes, they can, and they do so without your consent, or even without you being aware of it.

4) You and your “circle of friends” are one business opportunity. When you leave out information about your friends, you are allowing Facebook’s application software to store this information for their own free use – as to how, where and when: you’ll never get to know. One thing quite certain is that Facebook can share the information to just about anyone, advertisers and alike.

5) Privacy? Forget it! All pictures published in Facebook are everyone’s property on Facebook. Users of this online system can easily claim your pictures as their own – you can publish someone else’s picture in the same manner as someone else can publish your pictures somewhere. You can choose to limit view access of your pictures to your “circle of friends” … and that’s how private you can only go. So remember, when you upload your pictures on Facebook, you lose ownership of those pictures – it’s not yours anymore. Facebook owns it as far as their procedure is concerned.

6) Facebook is not a safe online site. As many of its users can attest to, it is one favourite hang-out of hackers. Make sure you do not use your bank account number (or alike) as your password – you’ll be a much too easy prey to the hackers.

These are just some of the known “bitter facts” about Facebook. So, do read the fine print of the Facebook membership before you tick the “I agree”-button.