Disqus - Latest Comments for sugeneris

Re: Link Drop from October 19th to October 25th, 2009

Su — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:53:49 -0000

What Web 2.0 lacks is the technique of antagonistic linkage.

This isn't quite true. The Vote Links microformat has been around since at least 2005, and allows for attaching implicit dis-/approval for whatever is being linked to. As with so many bits of "Web2.0," however, only so many people know about it, fewer understand it, and probably even fewer actually use it...

Re: Not quite a review, but a couple google wave experiences

Su — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:40:06 -0000

I also noticed that google wave is not “beta” but in “preview ” which is a shift.

This happened a bit earlier this year. Wave is obviously much more recent than that, but it's a fair bet it would've been a "beta" if not for that.

Re: Citing search in a book when the content won’t be released

Su — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:20:22 -0000

I'd expect to see this tactic used someday—if not already—regarding Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. I seem to recall that the estate demands ridiculous fees for it, by the line, to anybody that comes along. Like, oh, textbook publishers. So many of them are simply opting to not include or excerpt it at all. I'm annoyed I couldn't find the reference to that I was looking for, but for fun, here's a recent piece from the LA Times, in which

they had been paid more than $800,000 by the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation for the use of King's image and words on the planned King memorial on Washington's Mall.

Classy.

Re: Link Drop (6·26·09)

Su — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:16:28 -0000

Wow, the tattoo thing is one of the more concentrated doses of misinformed judgmental crap I've seen on the topic in a long time. Any idea where that came from? Originally, I mean. Given the general "quality" of the illustration it just seems like Random Internet Image, unfortunately.

Re: » ScienceBlogs Has Some Problems... (Science - Sealed, Delivered.)

Su — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:21:24 -0000

"Disqus ate a closing blockquote tag in the third paragraph up there." .... blaming the software are we????? Hmmmmm..

Yes, Disqus screwed up, actually. (Come on, I wasn't going to leave an opening that easy hanging out there *grin*) I had a copy of my comment in a local text editor and there was nothing wrong with the original markup. At the time, you could actually see a chunk of the broken closing BQ tag left over that I most certainly didn't truncate myself.

This is a customized version of MT, customized by MT itself just for Sb, so one might see things one does not expect

Understood. But the ultimate cause of the problems appear to be things MT has no direct control over. A properly-configured MT install will always know where its trackback and comment scripts are. That was the only reason I pointed out the non-standard URLs; if you want to obfuscate them, fine, but it's then external to the application itself whether something corrects them. At best, MT could generate an htaccess file with the necessary rewrite rules, but it's still the admin person who'd have been responsible for making the template wrong.

If I'm completely off-base, that's fine, and I'd be interested in seeing what the problem actually was.
A caching change actually makes a lot of sense, at least for the bad entry_id. The new cache options are really powerful and handy, but it's possible to fall into some nasty little traps with them sometimes.

Re: » ScienceBlogs Has Some Problems... (Science - Sealed, Delivered.)

Su — Tue, 26 May 2009 07:44:28 -0000

CMS are systems, but they are really just part of a larger system and therefore subject to issues in other components.

That's an annoyingly reasonable position to take *grin*
But seriously, you're right and are thinking about this a bit more than experience has shown many will. Point taken on the holistic view, but unfortunately, there are too many people who will take Greg's problems as a straight indictment of MT when so far I just see PEBCAK. While I do hope you personally found the comment informative, it was in some ways directed more at them.

Re: » ScienceBlogs Has Some Problems... (Science - Sealed, Delivered.)

Su — Mon, 25 May 2009 22:40:29 -0000

Sorry for the weird formatting. Disqus ate a closing blockquote tag in the third paragraph up there. Hopefully not too confusing.

Re: 10 Things I Love/Hate About Movable Type - Scroll - Webquills.net

Su — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:26:33 -0000

Interesting points, Vince. Some notes below.

Keywords are basically useless.

This isn't quite true, although the underlying reason is bad(which is to say, you should be right): Tags are not currently used for compiling regular search results. Keywords are. There's a freebie "hate" item for you *grin*

Also, the Keywords field is slated to default to hidden for newly-created blogs, or those not using it, in the next major version. If it's already in use, then it'll be shown, to support legacy users.

In order for them [plugins] to work you have to mix the plugin files with the original MT code in the same directory.

Be more specific? Plugins are isolated into a dedicated directory. They may have things that go in extlib, but that's generally not recommended anymore; they should now be including those things in a plugin-specific extlib(or lib) sub-dir. Older plugins which haven't been updated to use the new "plugin envelope" architecture are obviously another matter.
I think there are some edge cases where the main extlib needs to still be used, but they're beyond my level of knowledge. There's been plenty of talk about this in the mtos-dev list, though. Also, if I remember correctly part of the reason for slow adoption is that the extlib dir under each plugin wasn't being scanned properly at first(though lib was). I'm pretty sure this has been fixed for a while now, though.

8.hate loses me a little. In order for you to lose your changes to a refresh, you have to manually choose to refresh the templates, manually un-check a toggle for them to be backed up, and then confirm all of that. What else do you want? Honest question.
I think I have an idea where you're going with this(and it's something that is a bit of a problem), but I'll let you explain it first.

9.hate should be easily solvable with use of global templates, a source blog, or creating a custom template set first, unless I'm completely misreading what your problem is, since none of these are particularly arduous, at least in terms of the situation being presented.

Re: Twitter is choking themselves by suggesting how their users should use the service

Su — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:37:10 -0000

[Semi-coherent notes. You've been warned.]
While there's necessarily a technical aspect here--it's in their interest to control how much data/SMS they're sending out--I doubt that had too much to do with this. A cursory scan of Twitterholic will quickly reveal accounts whose friend numbers will make up for a good chunk of the people who won't get anywhere near 2000. You have a technical objection to the number, but the practical reality is that the overwhelming majority of users will never have any clue such a limit even exists.

What you're more or less correctly objecting to at a low level is that this is Edwards' Law in effect. Where you're not entirely correct is that you chose the wrong mention of that number to quote. Further up on that page, it's defined that the 2000 is an initial limit, which will grow with the number of people following you reciprocally. Also a little more in the third point under "If I hit a limit, what should I do?"

I don't think your RSS counter-example quite holds up for me, on probably several points. On the technological side, no single entity has to eat all the traffic, server load, etc. you cause by following 2000+ feeds; each site independently takes a small portion of that. But RSS subscription is also inherently unlimited, by definition of the medium. To a certain extent, Twitter created a new-ish medium, and are therefore allowed to define it.[1] (Though user behavior has resulted in changes, which we'll come to.) Sociologically, it was and still is defined as primarily an inter-personal communication tool. Having a wildly-skewed follow ratio could in that context be seen as "anti-social," I guess. Part of the problem right now is that more and more people and entities are using it as a broadcast medium. (Sidenote, I think you're the only person I've ever encountered who has referred to "Twitter feeds" not specifically in reference to the syndication feeds the system creates for users, which may be telling something of your position.)

And, yes, Twitter themselves have almost certainly been complicit in that, so your questions are valid. In the immediate, though, I think they're stuck in the middle of working out a proper answer to them.

[1] Such as "no images," which I continue to be surprised isn't being constantly griped about. Pownce had them and more, and languished. There's obviously a tipping-point argument there, but if Twitter's constraints were seen as "bad" then more people should still have jumped ship.

Re: Frustrated with my lack of knowledge of MT

Su — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 08:39:33 -0000

Did you look at the MT distro first? There's a WXR importer plugin bundled with the thing.

Re: Frustrated with my lack of knowledge of MT

Su — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 08:39:33 -0000

Did you look at the MT distro first? There's a WXR importer plugin bundled with the thing.