Comments | infohigh: eternally unconvinced

infohigh

eternally unconvinced

Nov 26, 2007 16:39

I have come to the conclusion that I absolutely despise facebook, as a company, and am permanently quitting. In as soon as a week, I suppose. I also despise LiveJournal and am quitting that too. The reason for the delay is so that I can get a blog and such nicely rolling on my own domain/host ( Read more... )

Comments 32

anonymous November 27 2007, 00:36:48 UTC

Are you designing versions of Stat 230/231 that actually work?

infohigh November 27 2007, 01:10:10 UTC

That's quite a lofty goal..... it is my hope to work towards that, but in small steps. I am using those two courses as a base, and attempting to discern how to teach a first (or maybe second) course on statistics to math students. The result may or may not be an alternative of stat231. It would be cool if I could get an equivalent going -- that would likely motivate a lot of student input!

I have had many discussions with students and even professors about those courses and how they might improve. It's really difficult though because there are so many different learning styles and ideas about what is important. I'm at least trying to make a stab at the way I would have liked the material to have been presented, and then I can see how other people respond to it.

infohigh November 27 2007, 01:11:20 UTC

Furthermore, if you have any suggestions about how you would have liked those courses to be different, I would appreciate your insight. (I'm assuming you're a student? If not that's okay too)

silverwizard November 27 2007, 01:40:10 UTC

Trying your own blogging eh?

I highly reccomend geeklog. It's pretty powerful and open source enough to be cool. It took me something like... erm... two seconds to setup.

Why do you despise both products? Honestly, I can understanding disliking LJ, I mostly use it due to the sheer number of people using it, I however blog nearby on Neoaxial.org. Honestly, the thing about social networks is that you need people on them, a sad thing since it's whoever has the biggest advertising budget that means...

If you are writing stats lectures, I regret I can't help. So there.

infohigh November 27 2007, 03:25:12 UTC

geeklog..... seems a little heavy. Maybe I'll toy with it though.

While facebook as an application is terrible (interface, social customs, the whole "sell-your-soul-i-mean-data for a myspace-style application" thing, etc.), it's really the company that I've come to despise. All of the direction they've taken is to finding new exciting ways to exploit you -- using you as an advertisement to your friends for the products you like, and all sorts of other crap like that. I want the company to die. I didn't mind it when it was little. LiveJournal has made all sorts of stupid decisions lately, like those magical popups on all hyperlinks that "preview" the site -- WOW THAT SUCKS SO MUCH! We're being exploited, people. :-)

Also, I'm not really sold on the social network thing.

Also, don't you have to take some stats, as a psych major? Jeez, the psychologists I've met know their stats; much better than I do for some things. It's kind of awesome. And yes, psych stats education is very relevant for my purposes, and I'd be ( ... )

parudox November 27 2007, 03:55:38 UTC

Undergrad psych stats is kind of a joke, at least at UW. I don't think that's where they really learn it.

infohigh November 27 2007, 04:01:46 UTC

Oh, how sad. Perhaps that's a problem, then?

Thread 13

alfedenzo November 27 2007, 03:59:50 UTC

I was never that much into Facebook, and don't have much of a presence there, but I disapprove of some of their more recent moves.

For LJ, they're not the company that they used to be. Getting bought out by Six Apart was the tipping point. When they introduced the sponsored Diet Pepsi Max gift thingies, it was clear that they'd lost touch with what they used to be. I post occasionally, but mostly use it for the friends list capability. Friends locking allows a degree of privacy that's hard to achieve with plain blogs.

Where is your blog going to be set up? Doubleplum is looking very minimalistic these days.

infohigh November 27 2007, 04:05:21 UTC

Hm, friends locking is a useful thing, that I guess can't be otherwise well-achieved without some open social-networking protocol of sorts. Rats; cuz that stuff will take some time to pick up steam, I guess.

Minimalism is happy :D and yeah, I've just gotta decide some system (or roll-my-own, but I'd like to avoid that) for doubleplum.

I'd scrap the blog thing altogether, except that every now and then I have the urge to rant about statsy things. As the above post might indicate, I have some reason to believe this might pick up.

Or fall out of the projects-buffer in about a week, like everything else :/

deedalee November 28 2007, 02:05:05 UTC

Though this is entirely unhelpful to the previous discussions, wonderful use of italics in this rant ;)

g4c9z November 28 2007, 13:26:21 UTC

I don't understand the advantage of custom blogging software over (LJ + an RSS reader). Is it just that you get to host it on your own domain? Pick your own URL?

infohigh November 28 2007, 15:10:00 UTC

Not all blogging software is created equal. :-) In particular, I think the lj feature set is pretty bad, especially since I consider minimalism to be a feature. But really, it comes down to a matter of control. Hosting on my own domain is a big issue for me; it means I can do whatever I want with my data and its presentation, which extends beyond the mere blog contents. But also the metadata, presentation (copyleft notices, etc.), usage statistics, etc. It's no longer in the hands of a company that has broken my trust.

But furthermore, I don't feel like I'm being used or scammed. Using LJ, I'm constantly plagued by the idea that if I want to do anything nontrivial, they want me to either pay 'em up, or lambaste my lj with ads. And now with that inane link-preview thing magically showing up on my lj -- what "features" will they hit us with next? Screw that, I'm out of here.

Also having an lj encourages lj usage, which I no longer support.

g4c9z November 28 2007, 15:23:31 UTC

Hmm, good points. I definitely agree about the minimalism. But do you still have to trust the server hosting your website? (Maybe you host it on your own computer? But most ISPs don't allow (or restrict) that, and most people would be greatly inconvenienced having to have a computer running nonstop.)

Is there a good (free?) way to get a domain name and place to host a website? I'm pretty clueless about that, and it seems like it would be a chore, though I don't doubt that it would actually be really easy. I have my website through my mom's ISP, but it's kind of annoying to update it through ftp, and worse, it doesn't support RSS. I don't really know how to have an RSS feed that automatically informs people of what I've updated on my website, and I'm not sure if it can be done on my current website.

infohigh November 28 2007, 18:19:30 UTC

I do trust the server I use for hosting. I have an account on theorem, which is run by an acquaintance-friend whom I trust. It gives me a shell account to a linux server. It's reliable, maintained well, and $80/a. I also have had my own domain name for years, which I use for most of my email.

To register a domain name, it costs money, orrr something else I suppose lol. Hosting can be free, but probably with some catch. The UW CSC does a decent job of hosting for $2/term.

RSS.... is there actually something that needs to be done to "support" it? I thought it was just a file you update along with your site. But I don't know much about RSS.