oceana

So I have this folder in my emails. It is labeled "ANSWER!!!!". It
contains (duh!) unanswered comments, going back to, oh, January, I
think. Definitely not 2008, because at the end of the year I threw out
all unanswered comments and emails with the intention to never ever
let it get that far again.

Hah.

Anyway, I was going to answer these old comments, just for the fun of
it. But, since I'm never at home, I can only answer comments via
email, which

a) seriously limits my choice of icons (no choice at all is more like
it, which is why you see me use the cow so often these days), and
b) means that I cannot check if maybe I have already answered that
comment and forgot to take it out of the folder. Which is why I
usually give up very quickly on answering comments via email, and then
I'm never at home, and well, it's a vicious circle.

I was going to just throw them all out again, because frankly, who
cares about comments after such a long time in a fast-moving medium
like the internet? But I like answering comments. So, I decided that
I'm going to slowly make my way through the folder. Expect to get
answers to really really old comments from me during the next days.
Sometimes even twice. ;.)


(this entry is part of Oceana's "Wasting Time
Whernever I Can"-Series, brought to you by Oceana,
Bad-Time Management and Procrastination issues. Viewer discretion is
advised.)

The soundtrack to this entry was written by Jagger/Richards and
performed by the Rolling Stones:

I'm living a life of constant change
Every day means the turn of a page
Yesterdays papers are such bad news
Same thing applies to me and you

Who wants yesterday's papers
Who wants yesterday's girl
Who wants yesterday's papers
Nobody in the world


You can contact the author of this entry by leaving a comment to this
post. Please be advised that the answer may take a few months.

No time to write a real opinion on the sale (but hey, Russia! Now we
can whatever we want, because they don't have reasonable laws! Or a
democracy! - *blinks* - Wait, that would have been true for the US as
well, so, no change there)
// end of sarcasm

Anyway, here's a link to a German article about censorship of
blogging in Russia

Link: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,514472,00.html

I'm at work, so I don't have time to read the whole article, but it
seems that blogs are censored in Russia for political reasons (no
surprise there), that Anton Nossik, according to the article the
"Chief Blogging Officer" of SUP, the Russian company which has worked
with Six Apart since 2006 in Russia and has now founded the Company
that acquired LJ, is one of the most famous Russian bloggers and has
adviced that (this was after the Russian licensing) the server stay in
the US, so that Russian authorities would have to go through US courts
to get to them.

Now, what I would like to know is: where will these servers be from
now on? (will have to ask that question in one of those official
communities), what law will be applicable (on first sight and without
getting deeper into this, for Germans that should be German law, since
the offer is in German language directed to us, but I could be wrong
about this).

The article also states that lj seems to be THE Russian blogging
platform and that ljing is a lot more political in Russia than in the
US. Apparently, bloggers are anti-Putin (oh, I wonder if these words
will get me suspended), but not radically anti. Since anti-evil
overlords with dubious ties to former German evil overlords (I'm so
ashamed of my country for ever having elected Mr. Cigar-Smoking
LookAtMYSuit Schröder) is always good, this makes me feel a bit better
about the sale. Also, that one of the main guys is a famous Russian
blogger could be a good sign. I wish I had some sort of insight,
knowing what famous in this context means. And I will have to find
out, if that guy is still responsible.

This just as a short info, because I stumbled upon it by accident.
There will probably more opinions on Evil Overlords and such in here
shortly: let's carry democracy where it is needed, I say.

I'm this close to unfriending people. And not the ones that have a different opinion from mine, but the ones that keep being insanely unreasonable about this whole thing drive me crazy. Can people please behave like adults again?

metafandom "mysteriously" links only to posts that are in favor of THE BIG MOVE that's not going to happen unless you are twelve years old and throwing a fit or you like twelve-years olds, without or without fits, way too much. What annoys me most is that these are the same people who will cry blue murder when someone writes fiction which goes against their rules. I'm thinking of one remarkable Supernatural wank here.

I already stated my opinion on the strikethrough (two! TWO! journals. With GRAPHIC content that raised hairs on my neck, and trust me, nothing but incest usually does. Yes, let's call it a strikethrough. Right.)

But I'm getting so annoyed when I read my flist that I feel I need to say something else.

We all know that all the sites that everyone is so excited about moving to will have and implement the same policies LJ is implementing now. There is no sign that they will be any clearer on what exactly is against their policy.

LJ:
Has repeatedly given us more icons when we cried fro them.
Is continuously improving its features, even if the result isn't always 100%.
Has brought us features like scrapbook, photobucket support, youtube embedding and phone posts. Can also be used via email and SMS.
Has accepted and yes, I dare say supported, fandom for all these years, and still accepts lots of content that is WAY off mainstream even for fandom.
Has a support team that answers questions within a very reasonable amount of time.
Has a DIVERSE and active community of people, who do not always agree, but at least you can be outspoken for anything without getting shunned (try that on journalfen...)
Is remarkably reliable and has next to no downtime for such a big community, and if they do, the compensate paid users.
Tries. Real hard. Okay, so sometimes they fail, and yes, they should start hiring professionals, but they try.

Other places:
I can't generally say much about them, because I haven't spent much time there, but here's a few facts:
Journalfen, run by fen who like to wank, apparently refused to delete someone's real identity from a comment. Not knowing details about this I don't want to discuss if it was right or wrong, just stating that it makes me feel a queasy about the service. I also remember the total unreasonable behavior of the people who (claimed to ) run the site when some Narnia archive got a C&D. LJ's management was nothing against that.
Conveniently doesn't allow invite codes or the creation of new free accounts anymore when fandom threatens to migrate. I'm sure they made quite a lot of money on fen these last days.
No change in the navigation in the last years, tons of dead links, yep, someone really seems to care about its users.

Greatestjournal
Hasn't once changed the layout, which is not very user friendly, in the four years I've had my account there.
Has promised 1000 icons, then deleted more than 300 that I had saved over there because apparently I wasn't active enough. Not that I know why they deleted them, it's not as if they had given me a warning or a reason. Not even when I asked.
From the one time I tried to contact them (see above), I got the feeling that they have no customer support whatsoever.

Insanejournal
Is too new for me to say anything good or bad about them, but it doesn't support Opera. You firefox people could probably care less, but even if I were willing to leave LJ, which I'm not, I sure as hell won't change my browser.



In the unlikely case (I hope) that you are as annoyed by me speaking up for lj as I am by people running around like screaming squirrels crying "Migrate me! Migrate me!", feel free to unfriend.

Oh, and metafandom? Please don't link. It would ruin your censorship.

I finally installed LJ Talk. Looks like fun, but I had to set my status to busy, because I'm writing applications right now. Okay, I'm not, but I should, because I need a job. Only there are no jobs that look even remotely interesting to me. Why did I study this again?