Section: Web, Websites
While the US government mulls over it’s case against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks over exposed embarrassing State Department cables, WikiLeaks has moved on to exposing the truth of another giant in the world: restauranteur McDonalds. McDonalds is the world’s largest food chain, serving over 58 million people every day from over 31,000 stores. WikiLeaks has taken up the sword to expose the truth regarding the “special sauce.”
Why McDonalds? From Wikipedia, “The Big Mac is known worldwide and is often used as a symbol of American capitalism.” It seems in today’s socio-political climate, being American means being a target.
From a holding cell in Brussels, Assange made this statement, “The first ingredient of civil society is the people’s right to know, because without such understanding no human being can meaningfully choose to support anything. Knowledge is the driver of every political process, every constitution, every law and every regulation.” “Today we add to that knowledge the ingredients that fuel the world largest corporate entity that far too many of rely on for sustenance - we’re exposing McDonald’s secret sauce.”
The “special sauce” in question was widely theorized to be a variant of Thousand Island dressing. WikiLeaks aims to expose the sauce, in complete detail allowing competitors such as #2 Burger King and #3 Wendy’s to catch up in the burger race. Even more importantly to Assange, it allows home cooks to prepare healthy meals while adding the “special sauce” that we are all addicted to.
“Addicted” is actually the best word to use in that last sentance. FDA investegator Chip Cuerva made these forshading statement, “when WikiLeaks exposes the “special sauce” we’re very interested to see if there is an addictive additive that we’ll need to reign in. This sauce could be the linch pin to unraveling the entire McDonalds conglomerate.”
The “secret sauce” expose is expected to run in early 2011.
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking
Facebook today has made radical changes to it’s terms and conditions regarding IP content ( like photos and videos). As of today, Facebook is pulling back the privacy settings on IP content allowing them to be seen by the world. As of late, Facebook has struggled to maintain a grip on allowing marketers access to users while maintaining user privacy. Today, the are dropping the latter mandate.
“This is about helping users experience the feeling of freedom. Freedom is what this country was founded on and we’re proud to be sharing that idea with our users. Besides, read the ToC; we own it and we can do what we want with it,” says a bold Mark Zuckerburg referring to the terms and conditions the majority of users signed up for the service with. Those terms and conditions still apply (as they created a binding agreement between users and Facebook), which read:
“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers).”
Social Network watchdogs, SocialPooch, CEO Gerald Bailey has these warnings, “today, regrettably, Facebook has taken steps to alienate them from their users. We are advising users to delete all content such as pictures, videos and answers to questions such as religious and political views.” When pressed on the issue, Bailey admitted Facebook was legally within their rights to expose the data but pointed out, “it goes against their principles, but honestly, let’s be thankful they didn’t take us up on that bit about publicly performing our material. Can you imagine a what a $hitstorm that would have been?
Also of interest, a new social network is aiming to replace Facebook, FriendFace. See the promotional video here:
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Gadgets / Other
We here at Gadgetell just wanted to take a moment and wish all of you a Happy Holiday. And of course what that really means is that our coverage is going to be a little lighter than usual because we are going to be spending some quality time with friends and family and stuffing our faces.
Happy Holidays, and we look forward to rejoining you with a regular posting schedule on Monday morning.
With that, we figured we may as well have some fun given the news cycle is going to be much slower than normal this weekend. That said, enjoy and take these weekend posts with an open mind.
Image courtesy: clipartclipart.com
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
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