From a mindless “life force”, to a sentient being.

Have you ever heard of the mystical life force referred to as Ki, Chi or Qi in the Oriental cultures? This term is defined as the life force associated with breath. That is why you find so much of Chinese Medicine focussed on breathing, in an attempt to rekindle the life force.

In the Bible, the terms most often translated into “spirit” (and sometimes as “soul”) are [nephesh / r­­uach] (Hebrew – Old Testament) and [pneuma] (Greek – New Testament). In both cases they literally mean “wind” or “breath”. For instance when Jesus said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit [pneuma]” He literally said that He gave His breath back to God (Luk 23:46). As Adam became alive when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [nephesh] (Gen 2:7), so Jesus as a human being now died and his breath [pneuma] (i.e. His life) returned to God.

Throughout Scripture it is abundantly clear that this breath, or “spirit”, is considered the life force. This vital energy is lent to every living creature by God. It is not something that they possess innately, nor can they keep it indefinitely. God alone possess life intrinsically (1 Titus 6:16). And when a creature dies that life energy returns to God.

The Encyclopaedia of Taekwon-Do (a Korean martial art) makes an interesting distinction between Chi and Ki. According to Choi Hong-Hi, the author, Ki is the life force, while Chi is the mental aptitude that directs the Ki. “The Chi leads, the Ki follows.” Nowhere else have I found this interesting distinction, but it has proven to be valuable for me in trying to understand the Scriptural principle of the “spirit”.

The spirit is the breath or life-principle. It is similar to the idea of this impersonal Ki. But in combination with the body, when it becomes a living soul, this Ki acquires another level – a personal characteristic – i.e. Chi. “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen 2:7). These last two words “living soul [chay nephesh]” directly translated means “living breath”. The inanimate impersonal “breath” has now become an animate personal “breath”. The Ki is now possessed with a mental aptitude – it has become Chi.

Separated from the body this breath is only life energy – apart from God’s active emanation, it is mindless. However, once merged with the body, “formed…of the dust of the ground”, a wondrous thing occurs. A Divinely ordained synergy between body and life energy creates something marvellous – a psyche. Quickened by this breath, a lifeless body doesn’t merely become alive, it also becomes sentient. And the impersonal life energy becomes personal – mindful.

The complexity of the body itself, (the magnitude of the brain), dictates the degree of sentience. God designed the human body to be the most sentient of all living creatures. Sentient to such a degree that we even imitate something of the Divine: “And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness…” (Gen 1:26).

Comparing the Evilbook with similar services…

Did you read the small print? Let’s compare the “Terms” from Facebook with other similar social networking services.

The Bad:

Facebook

“By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.”

The Better:

Bebo.com

“Bebo does not claim any ownership rights in any Materials that you submit, post, or display on or through the Bebo Services or on the Bebo.com Web site. After submitting, posting or displaying Materials on or through the Bebo Services or on the Bebo.com Web site, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Materials, and you continue to have the right to use your Materials in any way you choose. By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the Bebo Service, you hereby grant to Bebo a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Materials (and all components or underlying works making up the Materials) solely on and through the Bebo Service.”

Jaxtr

“Jaxtr does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials works of authorship (collectively, "Content") that you post to the jaxtr Services. After posting your Content to the jaxtr Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose. By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the jaxtr Services, you hereby grant to jaxtr a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content solely on and through the jaxtr Services.”

MySpace.com

“MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose. By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the MySpace Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content solely on and through the MySpace Services.

“The license does not grant MySpace.com the right to sell your Content, nor does the license grant MySpace.com the right to distribute your Content outside of the MySpace Services.”

Windows Live

“You may be able to submit materials for use in connection with the service. Except for material that we license to you, we do not claim ownership of the materials you post or otherwise provide to us related to the service (called a “submission”). However, by posting or otherwise providing your submission, you are granting to the public free permission to:

· use, copy, distribute, display, publish and modify your submission, each in connection with the service;

· publish your name in connection with your submission; and

· grant these permissions to other persons.

This section only applies to legally permissible content and only to the extent that use and publishing of the legally permissible content does not breach the law. We will not pay you for your submission. We may refuse to publish, and may remove your submission from the service at any time. For every submission you make, you must have all rights necessary for you to grant the permissions in this section.”

The Bad’s evil sisters:

Classmates.com

“When you participate in the Classmates community you are granting Classmates certain rights to use the Content you submit or post through the Website. By submitting Content you grant us a royalty-free, worldwide, non-terminable, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, market, publish, store, distribute, have distributed, publicly and privately display, communicate, publicly and privately perform, transmit, have transmitted, create derivative works based upon, and promote such Content (in whole or in part) in any medium now known or hereafter devised, for editorial, commercial, promotional and all other purposes including, without limitation, the right to publish your name in connection with your Content; and the right to sublicense any or all of these rights. You acknowledge that Classmates owns all right, title, and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created using or incorporating the Content.”

Netlog

“When a user enters data that is meant to be viewable to the public via Netlog, including but not limited to text, pictures, images, drawings or graphics for a profile, guestbook entry, comment entry, a photo description, etcetera, the user grants Netlog an unlimited licence to disseminate, use, process, translate or modify this data.

“Netlog RESERVES ALL RIGHTS AND DENIES ANY LIABILITY WHATSOEVER.”

The Verdict:

There are okay social networking websites and there are bad ones. And then there’s Evilbook. Choose carefully who you wish to sell your soul to.

Facebook – More intrusive than previously thought

A friend forwarded me this link to the article below from PCWorld. If people would just take the time to read Facebook’s Terms of Use, they wouldn’t be surprised at these privacy intrusions. Facebook makes it very clear that they collect information about their users outside of the Facebook-interface. I hate to tell you: I told you so!

The real question is not if they are collecting personal information about it, but rather why do it and what do they do with it?

…ooOoo…

Facebook's Beacon More Intrusive Than Previously Thought

A Computer Associates security researcher says that Facebook's controversial Beacon online ad system goes much further than expected in tracking people's Web activities.

Juan Carlos Perez

Friday, November 30, 2007 4:10 PM PST

A Computer Associates security researcher is sounding the alarm that Facebook's controversial Beacon online ad system goes much further than anyone has imagined in tracking people's Web activities outside the popular social networking site.

Beacon will report back to Facebook on members' activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends.

That's the finding published on Friday by Stefan Berteau, senior research engineer at CA's Threat Research Group in a note summarizing tests he conducted.

Of particular concern is that users aren't informed that data on their activities at these sites is flowing back to Facebook, nor given the option to block that information from being transmitted, Berteau said in an interview.

"It can happen completely without their knowledge, unless they are examining their network traffic at a very low level," Berteau said.

The CA news comes after Facebook scrambled on Thursday night to tweak Beacon in order to calm complaints from privacy groups and Facebook users that the ad system is too intrusive and too confusing to opt out of.

Beacon is a major part of the Facebook Ads platform that Facebook introduced with much fanfare several weeks ago. Beacon tracks certain activities of Facebook users on more than 40 participating Web sites, including those of Blockbuster and Fandango, and reports those activities to the users' set of Facebook friends, unless told not to do so.

Off-Facebook activities that can be broadcast to one's Facebook friends include purchasing a product, signing up for a service and including an item on a wish list.

The program has been blasted by groups such as MoveOn.org and by individual users who have unwittingly broadcast information about recent purchases and other Web activities to their Facebook friends. This has led to some embarrassing situations, such as blowing the surprise of holiday presents.

On Thursday night, Facebook tweaked Beacon to make its workings more explicit to Facebook users and to make it easier to nix a broadcast message and opt out of having activities tracked on specific Web sites. Facebook didn't go all the way to providing a general opt-out option for the entire Beacon program, as some had hoped.

But Berteau's investigation reveals that Beacon is more intrusive and stealthy than anyone had imagined.

In his note, titled "Facebook's Misrepresentation of Beacon's Threat to Privacy: Tracking users who opt out or are not logged in," he explains that he created an account on Conde Nast's food site Epicurious.com, a site participating in Beacon, and saved three recipes as favorites.

He saved the first recipe while logged in to Facebook, and he opted out of having it broadcast to his friends on Facebook. He saved the second recipe after closing the Facebook window, but without logging off from Epicurious or ending the browser session, and again declined broadcasting it to his friends. Then he logged out of Facebook and saved the third recipe. This time, no Facebook alert appeared asking if he wanted the information displayed to his friends.

After checking his network traffic logs, Berteau saw that in all three cases, information about his activities was reported back to Facebook, although not to his friends. That information included where he was on Epicurious, the action he had just taken and his Facebook account name.

"The first two cases involve the transmission of user data despite 'No thanks' having been selected on the opt-out dialog, and are causes for deep concern. They pale, however, in comparison to the third case, where Facebook was receiving data about my online habits while I was not logged in, and was doing so silently, without even alerting me to the cross-site communication," he wrote in the research note.

If a user has ever checked the option for Facebook to "remember me" -- which saves the user from having to log on to the site upon every return to it -- Facebook can tie his activities on third-party Beacon sites directly to him, even if he's logged off and has opted out of the broadcast. If he has never chosen this option, the information still flows back to Facebook, although without it being tied to his Facebook ID, according to Berteau.

Berteau wasn't able to determine where this data flows to in Facebook. "That's part of the concern here," he said in the interview. He repeated the Epicurious experiment with Kongregate.com, another Beacon-affiliated site, and got similar results.

In e-mail correspondence with Facebook's privacy department, Berteau was told, among other things, that "as long as you are logged out of Facebook, no actions you have taken on other websites can be sent to Facebook."

A similar statement was made by a high-ranking Facebook official on Thursday. In an interview with The New York Times, Chamath Palihapitiya, vice president of product marketing and operations at Facebook, was asked whether Facebook would receive information about a user's purchase if the user declined to broadcast the purchase to his Facebook friends.

His answer: "Absolutely not. One of the things we are still trying to do is dispel a lot of misinformation that is being propagated unnecessarily."

Facebook didn't immediately reply to requests for comment from IDG News Service.