matgb | Entries tagged with livejournal

Briefly, for obvious reasons I've been busy and not following too closely last few days, but on the most recent news I concur win

demiurgent (Eric Burns of

websnark). I've said a few times here and elsewhere that while the law itself in the US is fairly clear, there are grey areas that will need a test case; where does the boundary lie? One thing I'm sure of, Eric:

Six Apart doesn't want this to be a test case. But I promise you fanfiction communities really don't want this as a test case.

Because while 6A may have broken Californian consumer law (really, not my field), doing this:

They stated that they had received a number of complaints, and that they were contacting Six Apart to try and act as a liason between the unhappy consumers and the company. He did say that he would be contacting me, should Six Apart fail to respond, and that they may need me to provide further information "for legal action against this company by our office on behalf of the consumers".

Almost certainly going to cause more trouble than it solves. Legal spotlight, front and centre, on Lj & 6A. Therefore to include child porn allegations, copyright infringements, etc. The CA AG may not go that way, but it'll get publicity, and other lawyers.

Read the comments of that IJ post; the person who's started it has NO IDEA that this could cause other issues. Houston? We have a problem...

Lovely lunch now finished, back to work...

I got my renewal notice from LJ a few days back, and managed to actually compose my reply-the below has just been sent to Accounts @ LJ:

FAO Livejournal/Six Apart senior management,

( I've turned off automatic payments, here's why )

Renwal date 22nd August. I'm torn. I still hate that LJ has an ad supported level, ir destroys the effective business model and removes part of my impetus to actually pay them money. In addition, the presence of these very adverts was a specific cause for 6A to overreact and mess up in the initial strikethrough debacle.

But now, the main reason to continue paying is to not see the damn things (I don't use adblocking software--the web does need to be paid for). Secondary reasons include access to userpics (I've sort of got used to having 110 of the things), easy syndication of other blogs, post pages in my style (which while it's not finished I'm still uite happy with), etc.

But can I, in all conscience, continue to give money to an organisaton that is as incompetent as this one blatantly is? Is it possible to continue to support the site (which I love) without supporting the current management style (which is crap)?

I may go for a monthly renewal or similar, or I might just suck it up and pay the tenner it'll take. But I did feel I had to express my opinion to them, so thought I'd share the letter openly.

OK, with all the fuss about the latest fandom controversy, many of those not involved in fandom at all (which, let's face it, is a huge chunk of LJ including me) might be wondering why it affects them and why it's more evidence towards the site dying off. Indeed,

publicansdecoy posted a poll yesterday and followed it up today with another point about what he likes about Livejournal as a platform and network. And I don't disagree with him on any of those points.
( Livejournal needs money )
( Money needs users, and they're off )
( Site usage is dropping, and has been for a long time ) In order for the site to continue to exist, the owners need to make money. They're failing in this. Now?

liz_marcs: The fat lady sure does sing,

brad is leaving SixApart, and

insomnia suggests that he don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. The site owner is bored and is leaving. To go work for Google it seems. Mark thinks it's because he's seen the writing on the wall, and we've been aware for some time he wasn't happy with the way things are.
( Long term, the LJ we know is doomed )

And that's why I'm preparing to both jump ship, and make it easy for everyone to follow. There are services that replicate LJ utility, there are ways of keeping up with blogs on many platforms in a manner that's as easy as your friends list. They just require a bit of know how. So, when I've got time (and work has hit me with a bit of extra stuff), I'll begin to write up what I'm specifically doing. Because it'll be easier to be prepared.

Because I love this place, I love the way it's networked and let me meet a lot of cool people. And I hate to see it dying. But it is dying, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. So I want to keep you guys even after it's dead.

ETA: Posted a follow up at

no_lj_ads, specifically linking to this post with a very well done set of graphs emphasising the points made above.

At the beginning of last year during the Bantown cracking incident, I posted about the sucky LJ customer relations. For those wondering why I, and a lot of other unaffected people, are pissed of this time,

liz_marcs has done a very similar explanation, thus saving me the effort. Summary:

The fans who posted the pics were idiots
LJ/6A still haven't clarified their policies
The policies have been implemented badly, in a very cack-handed manner
The Powers that be still haven't managed to understand the way the LJ fen can and will network and react

Key point:

However, LJ/6A continues to treat us (the customers) with contempt, or like we were drama queens with entitlement issues. To be fair, some people are acting like drama queens with entitlement issues, but it's not good customer service for LJ/6A to lump everyone into the same drama queen category. It's really bad customer service to act like that's the case. It's horrendous customer service to not respond to questions and repeated requests for clarification or to respond with vague statements that could be interpreted any number of ways.

I have other posts planned, on real world meaty issues. But I'm reading my new books, and wrestling with install scripts, and screaming at idiots. So they can wait until I'm in the mood.

K, I've mentioned several times, and I've had my 'replacement' site set up for ages anyway. But, y'know, other things to do, etc. Never had the impetus, or the reason. Well, guess what? ( LJ have deleted a bunch of accounts again )

( The law in the US is fairly clear on the point though, they had little choice )

( So I'm going to use my upgrading hosting package to set up my own site )

( Anyone wanting to help out welcome )

So, beta testers useful when I've got it installed. Others thinking of jumping ship and self hosting+cross posting also welcome. Others using Wordpress for other things are invited to help out the codebase, suggest useful plugins, etc.

I've been putting this off for two damn long.

eclexys and

johnwordsworth both prove you can maintain an LJ as well as a WP powered blog, and there are many plugins that could make lives even easier for them.

[1] I'm exhausted anyway, didn't sleep at all well last night, so I'm not going to Inferno this evening, I've been ill on and off all week so I'll stay in and relax.

Oh yeah, they've made the Message Centre almost usable, although the removal of links to pages beyond the first is annoying.

For those that are but don't follow

paidmembers, go here and make with the clicky (explanation).

One thing in their favour; they reimburse for stuff not their fault (although they'll likely get something out of 365 Main) and announce in advance when they're going to do upgrades or turn stuff off deliberately unlike certain other sites. *cough*Facebook*cough*

OK, it appears that the DDOS attack that was causing issues for many of us in posting has ceased (as of Wednesday).

ljkrissy posted in

news at times we were being hit with over 10 times our normal traffic load. Ouch. LJ has, I'm told by those that know, a remarkably robust server structure, but 10 times normal traffic is horrible. Some of the preventative measures involved censorship and it y appears to be linked to a rather nasty Russian extremist group ^[1]. Meh, reading the comment threads as I ate my noodles, found one entitlement arse with a few issues. It's likely going to happen again, DDOSes are nasty (update and re-run spyware protection if you haven't done it recently, just in case), but in the meantime, I can post again without worrying if it'll go through.

[1] -- the Russian language sector of LJ is very political. That's about the most you'll get from me about such things; I did a study on Russian extremist movenets as part of my degree, and, well, ouch. These guys aren't even that nasty compared to many.

[2]

faeriecween? I'd love to read that long update post you had queued now. I'll try to get mine done at some point, but I'm busy busy tomorrow; off to the ballet with two gorgeous women. Both of whom will read this... Ah well, hmm, 4.25am. Best not write said post now then.

Some great stuff in today's worcester LJ code push, prompting my desire to test a feature. Still, one good thing, but would've liked to know it was happening; they've changed the tag limit from 100 to 1000, so my careful go back and split up my 'life' tag that I've been doing for the last month or so became fairly pointless overnight; has made the tag cloud itself look better though; it works out all sizes based on the biggest used tag, so having none over 100 makes the mid range tags look much bigger. Külness.
[Poll #999114]
However, still planning to decamp my journal hosting reasonably soon; NB, not leaving LJ, just hosting my journal elsewhere as well as here, not sure how to handle comments yet, but I'm not the first doing it and it seems to work for them. So, via

lj2wordpress, Infotropism – Weaning yourself off LJ: Why you might want to. Followed up by a series of how-to guides, quite a nice post that.

Posting mainly to clear the text file. Due to an ongoing DDOS attack, a lot of LJ users (but by no means all) are finding it difficult to post full entries, at least four people on my friends list are now affected~~, but I don't seem to be~~. There's more at known issues, and there are a large number of open support requests on the subject.

There's a botnet attacking LJ, and it's making the site and staff work really hard just to keep it open, let alone adding new content. Not good. ~~Apparently using clients like Semagic or deepestsender mean you can get around some of the problems.~~

Oh yeah; happy birthday

harlotqueen

Very good article at ReadWriteWeb on the massive growth of Facebook:

As well as quantity, Facebook has on its side that it is a very sticky site - 50% of registered users come back to the site every day. Facebook is generating more than 40 billion page views per month, from 24 million "active" users - 50 pages per user every day, which is very very high. In comparative terms, Facebook is now the 6th most trafficked site in the U.S. and gets more page views than eBay.

( Facebook is getting the new users that want privacy )

( Livejournal dropped the ball, Facebook took it and ran )

( The new applications mean Facebook truly can conquer the web )

( Community is what these sites are about )

Any site like this needs new users to keep feeding in, else it withers and slowly dies. LJ is dying, and the owners are helping kill it. Ah well.

Pretty sure that most of those involved in fandom and RPGs will already be aware of this, but for those not...

LJ Abuse has shut down a massive pile of journals for simply listing illegal interests in their profiles, and they won't unsuspend, at all( Cut for those not involved ) Becausee some of the accounts shut down are 'bad guy' RPG characters. Some of them are simply goths who like 'loli'. One is a Nabukov reading group. Yes, they're being that unsubtle.

Just think of the children? Yeah, right, doing more harm than good isn't helping anyone.

OK, heads up for those not subscribed, both

the_lj_herald and

lj_maintenance are reporting that the recent LJ clunkiness may be due to:

f a distributed denial of service (DDOS) and we've taken a number of measures to mitigate the impact in order to bring LiveJournal back to full functionality.

In the meantime, as not all comment notifications are getting through, I've rediscovered the usefulness of the Recent Comments page, now with extra souped up paid account goodness.

For the record, I'll repeat my recommendation that everyone should read

the_lj_herald, completely unofficial, but summarises all the useful LJ announcements from their various sources, a lot easier; it's on my main filter, all the others are on a 'read when bored' filter, and it'll mean you get told about things such as UK voice post numbers, new features, etc fairly quickly without wading through all the crap on the official comms.

OK, just got in, and rather than do my usual friends list read then attempt to update, if I update first I might actually get an entry in tonight, n'est ce pas? Anyway, a meme from

frightened that I've always liked the look of before anyway:

explain three icons and three interests. Comment and I'll demand explanations for yours.

She gave me:

Interests: "china miéville"; "george r. r. martin"; "steph swainston".

Icons: "Anarchist Fineas"; "Categories" (Captain Jack quote?); "Temptation".

And, well, I should've known someone would ask about dear old Fineas. Anyway, interests first. Curious that she choe the three authors, but not too hard to explain. ( China Miéville and the 'New Weird' )

Edit (before posting even), any idea how hard it is to write a post with lots of well researched links when your wireless craps out every five minutes? Yeah, this is fun. The above paragraph? 40 minutes it's taken me to get this far. The connection has been mostly fine for ages, but today? *kicks PC* Please to be imagining there are more links in the above (and below), because there was meant to be.
( Steph Swainston and a book signing ). ( GRRM, board games and evil knights )
Now, those next two paragraphs? Half an hour. With many many kicks. I'm going to save a draft and reboot the machine. FFS.

Icons

( Fineas - Mad scientist anarchist with a taste for dropping bombs from blimps )

( On the pointless nature of trying to define people by what they are, not who they are )

( On icon philosphy, and LJ sponsored communities )

[1]Thursday, June 7th with a mass signing at Waterstones Piccadilly (5:30pm - 7pm) with Steph Swainston, myself, John Lambshead, Andrew Dennis, Steve Savile, Eric Brown, David Devereux, Jon Courtenay Grimwood and Robert Holdstock.

tyrell is also planning to be there,

jantshira /

faeriecween? I know you both like Steph, pretty sure you liked Jon as well but I forget.

[2] Who, let's face it, should be on everyone's friends list, just because, ok? Plus, she looked damn hot in the outfit she wore to Sin City Friday night, which is an added bonus in a friend I always think. Don't believe me? Reflections and Opinion. Go read. Plus, did I mention the dinosaurs? Yeah, she plays with dino bones for a living.

ETA: TWO HOURS this post took to get online and edited for my little tags not being closed errors. Two hours. Gah!

In response to the stupid CCTV with recorded kids voices stunt that our Glorious Leaders are planning,

james_nicoll asks:

Is there any hope that the Tories will be any better than Labour or that the LibDems can win enough seats to form a government?

I tried to reply that the Tories would be better in that they'd be a bit less authoritarian, but less does not mean good, just less bad in this case, and I trust them not one jot.

The Lib Dems haven't a snowballs chance in hell of winning the next General Election, what they have got is the chance to get 100+ seats and dictate a few basic terms to the coalition partner. More Liberalism, less Laws would be a good one to start with. 100+ seats in a hung parliament is what we have to work for anyway.

And yes, this would've been a comment, but LJ wouldn't let me post it, all I get is:

[Error: DBI connect('theschwartz_livejournal;host=10.16.129.220','lj',...) failed: Can't connect to MySQL server on '10.16.129.220' (113) at /home/lj/cgi-bin/Data/ObjectDriver/Driver/DBI.pm line 54 at /home/lj/cgi-bin/TheSchwartz.pm line 349 @ sf-lj-web002]

~~Anyone else had a similar issue or is it just me?~~
It's not just me, and my comment there wouldn't go through but a comment I made at

davidnm's did. Go figure. From the number of open support requests, it's a site issue and they'll be on it. Whether they fix it is another thing...

This is cool. I hadn't heard they were planning it, but definately cools,

apod reports on the first international space Quidditch match, between the US and Russian teams.

burr86 reports in

news about some forthcoming changes to LJ, a beta-test of which can be seen here at

lj_dirtycache, and a summary of all the wangst is, as usual, supplied by

axurelunatic here.

In fandom news,

liz_marcs has an interesting >compare/contrast with the original Battlestar galactica miniseries and the new version.

libdemvoice_fd is backing David Owen for London mayor.

And in personal news, I can't find any decent April Fools jokes. Does anyone out there have any?

NASA - Cassini Images Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn:

How weird is that?

LiveJournal Drama Queen Bingo

ginasketch is attending the Wrexham Science Festival Animation Exhibition

Yes, that is the Corpse Bride. Clicky for hordes of Pingus, including a few headless thingies.

Oh yeah; happy birthday

rho and

vampire_gothica. G'night all.

For those of you that navigate via your friends page and never go to the main site, you may be in for a shock when you do.

Livejournal has done another of their holiday themed site schemes. It's PINK! *shudders*

Ouch. I may be forced to either avoid LJ main site for a few days, or go back to Dystopia. What were they thinking? (I have asked)

I mean, the emo heart gifts, and the more recent beating heart and similar, they were bad, but this? You can't avoid it, it's horrible, make it go away!

Right, The Herald has given us links to this years virtual gifts gimmicky attempt to get you to pay 6A more money for something of no value. They're, um, interesting...

[Poll #922852]

I mean, why? Just...

Or am I being too jaded and cynical (again)?

Mat, having had a weird day in which he fell asleep multiple times when not supposed to, checks his LJ friends list. Everybody in the UK, it seems, is talking about the same damned thing. I agree with

liadnan, where's the news?:

Obnoxious and ignorant woman famous solely for being obnoxious and ignorant on reality tv show is obnoxious and ignorant on reality tv show. This sentence really ought to be followed by "film at 11", not by "international furore and mild diplomatic spat follows", surely. What did anyone expect?

Jade, and family, are stupid, ignorant bigots. I could've told you that just from her damned media profile. Endemol are cashing in and looking forward to the eviction vote with greedy anticipation. No one is actually watching anyway (less viewers than the vegetable show on BBC2 according to Private Eye).

Even the main news blogs are at it. I expected Pickled Politics to cover it, it's sort of their remit, but Doctor Vee and Chris Dillow? No, just please, no.

Seriously, it's dull. Now the Guido/Tim Ireland Blog Brother spat? That's worth watching, handbags at dawn everyone...

Part xvii, comment notifications that make me smile. Where? here:

This suggestion has been submitted to a team of staff members for implementation consideration.

From

coffeechica on my comment editing suggestion.

Red Dwarf series iii. Backwards & Bodyswap, two of my more favoured episodes, with Bodyswap having one of the best sample quotes to hit the charts ever (Carter USM sampled Rimmer's fat bastard speech).

Buffy VTS special Faith DVD. Because, y'know, Faith. Buffy still a whiny preaching moraliser, but Faith = cool.

Books. Specifically, have now also finished Bester's The Stars My Destination, which I'd never read before. Gaiman's right (the Gollancz classics edition has an intro from him), it's prot-cyberpunk and then some, complete with magic mcguffin. Definately deserves the description one of the great SF novels, and although it's got some elements that are incredibly dated (I just don't see jaunting leading to the repressive society with women effectively locked away as described), overall as a future dystopia novel it's not bad.

That puts me on 5 books read so far this year. Considering last year I could find about 20 total, maybe I'm back to my old ways?

I also bought a copy of John Rawls' Political Liberalism. I've read (and studied) A theory of Justice, but not the follow up work. Given I've read the great 17th, 18th and 19th Great Liberal Thinkers, I really ought to finish of Rawls, right? And then I'll add back a little Nozick just to make sure I'm not going nuts...

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Mat Bowles

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Mat Bowles

Dreaming in Digital

Entries tagged with livejournal

The Fandom vs Six Apart trainwreck

Automatic Payments Turned Off

On sinking ships and LJ...

Livejournal customer relations: 2007 edition

LJ: Emboldened-time to really get started on moving out

PSA: LJ reimbursement

DDOS done with - Botnet with nasty links?

New LJ stuff

Livejournal under DDOS attack - posting problems

Facebook: What Livejournal could've been

Livejournal fandom gets trashed

Livejournal problems - DDOS attack?

Icons, interests and some rambles they've inspired

Icons

Talking CCTV cameras and the chances of dumping this crap

Groggy morning linkspam

Saturnian hexes lead to animated LJ drama

Ouch. Ouchy ouch

Valentines thingies...

Isn't there anything else going on out there?

Things that make Mat happy