Apparently, students of John Hopkins University are kinda pissed that filmmakers are pretending that the Homewood campus is Harvard’s campus in a movie about Harvard student and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg.
Because Harvard has a policy prohibiting the production of all commercial films on its campus, filmmakers had little choice in the matter. One Hopkins student went so far as to call the situation “degrading.”
Dear Hopkins: Get over it.
If you’ve ever wanted to know the sexuality of that cute guy in your Chemistry class, you may be happy to know that you might soon have a way to do so.
For a recent term project in a class on ethics in the “electronic frontier,” two students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed technology that allows you to figure out someone’s sexuality based on one key piece of information: who they are friends with.
Though the authors of the program won’t swear to the accuracy of all results, they did conduct a test on a sample of Facebook profiles. They looked at the accounts of 1,544 men who stated on Facebook that their partner preference was female, 21 who said they were bisexual and 33 who said they were gay.
“Although the researchers had no way to confirm the analysis with scientific rigor, they used their private knowledge of 10 people in the network who were gay but did not declare it on their Facebook page as a simple check. They found all 10 people were predicted to be gay by the program,” says a recent Boston Globe article.
The article adds that “the work has not been published in a scientific journal, but it provides a provocative warning note about privacy.” It certainly does.
A new survey by Kaplan reports that over 70 percent of admissions officers say that they or a colleague has received friend requests on Facebook, MySpace, et. al, from potential applicants. The rates are lower at professional schools (as opposed to undergrad) but are still fairly high: 48 percent at law schools; 31 percent at medical schools; 50 percent at business schools.
Apparently, the lines have been so blurred that some students believe friending an admissions officer is a leg up. Students: This is likely false, and (I’m guessing) will likely get you likely mocked around the office — especially if you hit up their personal Facebook.