ugly web sites...

[Leigh Honeywell]

Zbigniew Koziol wrote:

>
> My wife left me, just a very short time ago. A pain, isnt it? It is. I 
> am not an angel, just a largely confused. I went to this web site:
>
>     http://www.okcupid.com/
>
> Try to use it. You will need to register first. After you register, 
> you will have an option to fill in their database ;)
>
> I guess that what they are doing is illegal. Simply, they fool people. 
> But in a very, very fine way. That all this is anti-christian or 
> anti-normal, or anti-heterosexual people does not count so much. They 
> simmply fool people. That sort of collecting information and fooling 
> people they are doing is not fair.
>
> This is not really Linux related. I am sending this message to this 
> list because I know that Linux users are sensitive also about how the 
> Internet is used.
>
> zb. 

People might be more interested in knowing that OKCupid runs off the 
open source OK Web Server: http://okws.org/

There are a gazillion sites out there which collect personal information 
about people.  How many of them describe in such exacting detail how it 
is used as can be found at this link:
 http://okcupid.com/static?p=faaaq

They describe the algorithm used to "match" people based on their 
answers to the 2000 or so user-submitted questions on the site.

Of course, their privacy policy is available too: 
http://okcupid.com/static?p=privacy

But I think the most amusing part is that in your personal settings you 
have the options (as checkboxes, defaulting to unchecked):

Can we send any of the following to your primary e-mail address?
    monthly -- OkCupid's Newsletter
    weekly -- Matches in your inbox
    weekly -- Pure math/stats/logs about our growth
    whenever -- Notification if you have new mail, if you haven't logged 
in in 24 hours
    constantly -- SPAM

What am I getting at here?  Simply:

It's a dating site.  It's better than most and even runs on open source 
software.  Get over it :-)

-Leigh

(who got dragged onto OKCupid for the silly personality tests)
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