is blogging fun?

[kimpossible]

I wanna be a sexyloser but blogging seems like owning a dog: Rather than be entertained by it, you're more like a slave maintaining it.

[ism]

Depends on what you view it as. Entertainment for others? You're a slave, performing for an audience. Simply put: do not consider anyone but yourself. As long as it's a toy to you, to play with when you want to, it will be fun.

I think of it as owning turtles.

[YuheiCarreau]

The good blogs are the ones where people write about what they think instead of what they did. There's plenty of melodrama in the world already, no need to add to the pile.

[Faithless]

Is a blog allowable voyuerism?

[hooligan]

Is a blog allowable voyuerism?
yes!

i only blog when i feel that i have something to share that doesn't fall within the monotony of my life.

[rice cracker]

I have a secret blog. I've tried keeping journals on my computer, but I never have the same desire to write in them like I do an online journal. I'm just weird that way.

[teaz0r]

iiiiiiiii like it.

[kboy75]

"The things you own end up owning you." --Tyler Durden, Fight Club

[Chester]

I wanna be a sexyloser but blogging seems like owning a dog: Rather than be entertained by it, you're more like a slave maintaining it.
To some extent. I guess you actually have to really enjoy it in the first place. Personally, I enjoy reading my own stuff, which sounds kind of lame, but my site has become a surrogate for my long-term memory, so it's kind of necessary at this point.

Edit: What's a "sexyloser"?

[moJo]

no. when i was a kid, i'd try to keep diaries and journals. i'd inevitably fill up about 2-10 pages in each one before i forgot about them. sorta like my blog is now. i have random, introspective thoughts that float into my head at any time during the day, and i don't carry my computer around to record these thoughts. nor do i keep a notepad and pen with me. and then when i get around to opening my blog, my mind goes blank and i end up writing about what i did that day. yawn. so...no, i don't keep it up...therefore it is not fun for me. :)

[Faithless]

Do bloggers have the right to tell folks not to link their stuff?

Say, I wanted to link Chester's blog (don't know what it is, actually), then criticize the shit out of it (not saying that I would).

Could a blogger claim his stuff as some sort of intellectual property right?

[pfc beansprout]

bloggin...maaan....if u happen to have friends that do it too...~sigh~...them cats can use your vents and bad days against you...fuckin bullshit...be fair warned.....i stopped now >=X

[thaite]

No, it's stupid.

[ShortNBitter]

No, it rocks.

[ShortNBitter]

my journals suck dont read them -_-" mostly thye are for the masses - only ever once in awhile do i do a true reflective piece . . .

[Chester]

Do bloggers have the right to tell folks not to link their stuff?
I don't think there's any legally-enforceable means by which a person could block other sites from linking to his site. That's just the nature of the internet...
Could a blogger claim his stuff as some sort of intellectual property right?
...but a person does have copyrights on his own written material, so a person would have legally-enforceable means by which to stop others from appropriating his content (more feasible in theory than reality).

[Faithless]

When blogging isn't fun:

Michigan State Police warn: blogging could mean jail time (http://www.blogherald.com/2005/03/19/michigan-state-police-warn-blogs-could-mean-jail-time/)

Not content to let Michigan School Officials naysay about the dangers of blogging (as reported here on Feb 11), Michigan State police have joined in the blog bashing fun warning that blogs could result in kiddies going to jail.

Lt. Tim Lee, Michigan State Police Department warns:” [Kiddies] can say horrible things about a principal or horrible things about their parents, or horrible things about the kid next door, and they feel like no one’s going to find them..But what kids often don’t realize is that saying horrible things about a person on the internet could get them into trouble with the law.”

But not content with warning off kiddies from using name calling on blogs, Lee goes one further: “That person goes out there, reads the posting and says, yeah I’m nervous about this, or I feel uncomfortable, I’m afraid for my life. They contact law enforcement, and that’s when we get involved…If we can identify those individuals, and there’s enough information to believe that person’s threat is accurate, that person could actually carry out that threat, then that is a threat that would be prosecuted.”

What’s even more bizarre, is that WLNS.com news reports that blogging is a serious problem, but authorities “are still playing catch up… State police don’t have enough resources and even psychologists are grappling with this issue.”

Yikes! Has blogging become the new platform for evil in the 21st Century? Should Michigan State Police be creating a dedicated Blogging squad to trawl for hate blogs instead of dealing with less important crimes like murder and rape?

The answer, it seems, is yes, in Lee’s words: “It’s actually become a psychological phenomenon.”

.
Pushing the "freedom of speech" envelope:

Inside the First Amendment - Blog-mob mentality punishes freedom of speech (http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=326&dept_id=449009&newsid=14175740&PAG=461&rfi=9)

By: Paul K. McMasters, First Amendment Center 03/18/2005

Take a stroll down Main Street USA and you'll find people of all ages and persuasions putting on a veritable fashion parade of freedom. We don't just practice free speech, we wear it.
T-shirts, caps, shoes, jackets, designer labels and the occasional tattoo boldly announce in word, design and color our choice, our message, our cause, our team - our Statement.

And when we take to the road, we do so in rolling billboards, vehicles festooned with bumper stickers, vanity plates and ribbons of every hue embracing every cause. We drive what we say.

Then there's the Internet, where we really speak our minds. We have e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, personal Web pages and, now, our own newspaper/radio-TV station, the Web log or "blog."

Full-throated expression is our style. We are America. Hear us roar!

Funny thing. For all of that celebration of free and fulsome speech for ourselves, many of us waste a lot of that precious commodity denying it to others. "America," we say, "shut up!"
There was a time before America when the mob spoke for the village. Anyone who thought differently was quickly driven out - or worse. America and the First Amendment were supposed to be a rebuke to that sort of churlishness.
Nevertheless, civil discourse today is in short supply, regularly savaged by talk radio and cable punditry. On the Internet, flame wars have given way to the blog-mob mentality, where a small but vocal number of vigilantes, armed with virtual pitchforks, rakes and cudgels, prowl the ether world in search of offense and offenders. Without much discrimination, they march on both rant and reason and flay both the unworthy and the brave.

The rather clear message for anyone who attracts the attention of the blog-mob: Never, ever get into a shouting match with someone who buys bytes by the giga.
The vast majority of bloggers, of course, prove the value of democratic freedoms. They produce a prodigious flow of vital information and ideas and serve as a check on traditional media.

But there are a few who are not content to disagree with or to criticize the speech. They must punish the speaker. Lynch a reputation. Lop off a job. The major media flock to the spectacle, their massive wing beats fanning the furor.
Blogging, it must be pointed out, is only the latest technique applied to an old tradition. We've seen the distrust and destruction fostered in our society by the McCarthyites, the white supremacists, the religious zealots and others who have exploited fear and ignorance for power and punishment - or a cheap thrill.

But no matter the technique or target, when controversial speakers are shouted down or denied a forum, a democratic compact is disturbed. An opportunity for the speakers to clarify, refine, put in context or even disavow their remarks is lost. So is the opportunity for the opponents to engage and rebut the disfavored speech.

A recent example is Hamilton College's bitter experience with a controversial speaker. The private New York college offered a speaking engagement to Ward Churchill, a University of Colorado professor. Critics soon latched onto the fact that Churchill had said some outrageous and hurtful things about 9/11 and its victims three years earlier. Besieged with calls to rescind the invitation or else, college officials backed down and dis-invited Churchill.

Further demonstrating that sometimes on campus freedom is academic, University of Colorado officials and political leaders launched a campaign to fire Churchill. And at Harvard University, President Lawrence Summers faces intensifying demands for his resignation after he made a remark interpreted as being sexist.

Off campus, a blog-mob targeted CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan. Questions about Eason's questionable remarks about journalists' deaths in Iraq were raised in the "blogosphere" and refused to go away until Jordan did. He resigned from CNN on Feb. 11.

Whether any of the principals in these examples deserve what they got, we must take care not to supplant the high value of free speech in America with a high cost.
Everyone has a right - indeed, a duty - to disagree, to dissent, to rise up against an affront, an injustice or an injury. But for the fragile freedom of speech to survive, we must carry out that task with a firm attachment to fairness, principle and tolerance. When we give in to hostility, self-righteousness and vengefulness, we eventually find ourselves snapping and snarling at a shrinking number of inhabitants of the public square.

Giving in to the speech mob means that discourse is diverted from the real issues to a sideshow on who is punished for uttering the "wrong" ideas or words. Dissent is dead if it can be hounded out of the marketplace so effortlessly. Democracy is no match for demagoguery if good people won't stand up to mob rule.

We must get past the idea that expression has no value unless it mirrors our own. We must learn to recognize ourselves not just in the faces but in the voices of others. We must find a way to see our own rights reflected in other people's freedom.

Paul K. McMasters is one of the nation's leading authorities on First Amendment and freedom-of-information issues. He joined the Freedom Forum in 1992 after 33 years in daily journalism.

[sinisterpanda]

I wanna be a sexyloser but blogging seems like owning a dog: Rather than be entertained by it, you're more like a slave maintaining it.


do you mean sexyloser.com?

[Emperor_Mike]

I fill my blog with paedestrian minutiae because my life is one giant exercise in extreme tedium.

[mrazntre]

I wanna be a sexyloser

That's never going to happen and we both know it. However, you can blog if you like, not blog if you don't like. Think of it as feeding fish. When you need some peace and quiet, you go feed the fish as much as you like. If you're busy, you might just feed the fish every now and again. If you're way too busy, some fish might die, but their carcass (and eventually detritis) turns into food for other fish that might survive for 3 months without any "fed" food. If it becomes a chore, it's not going to be fun - don't be a slave to it. You don't have to write in it every single day. And if you leave it alone for a long time, don't worry about it cuz it'll still be there fro you later on.

[kasia]

I think of it as owning turtles.
my turtles require a lot of maintenance.

i think blogging is fun and practical, if you're sometimes looking for feedback. some people look for vindication - i don't know if xanga is the healtiest place for that. you may get it there, but then that may be the *only* place that you get it - hence, the birth of xanga whores. following those same lines, i do think that xanga is a useful place for people with anger management problems, though. rather than following and honking after another car that cut you off, you may instead find yourself happy that you have something to complain about in your xanga. rather than telling off your co-worker to her face and creating tension in your office, you may instead talk smack about her in your blog and even get eprops for it.

[mrazntre]

Plus, you can feel comforted that sometimes stangers will come across your blog and laugh at your miserable existence.

[Fireblade]

Plus, you can feel comforted that sometimes stangers will come across your blog and laugh at your miserable existence.

Or various teens from across the states go "random propz" on your site. Then you wonder how the hell they got there in the first place.

[DaMuo]

Apparently this girl blogged her way to a t-shirt endorsement.

from http://buzz.blogger.com/
Wendy Cheng aka the award winning blogger XiaXue (Are you worshipping the ground she walks on?) scored an endorsement deal from a t-shirt company called LocalBrand because of her blog.

SINGAPORE BLOGGER SCORES A HIT
This Singaporean was signed on in December by a local T-shirt brand, aptly named LocalBrand, to endorse its products.

This could make the 20-year-old freelance writer the first blogger to receive a commercial endorsement deal, which has been the domain of celebrities.
http://buzz.blogger.com/media/xiaxue.jpg
http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/

[Faithless]

I fill my blog with paedestrian minutiae because my life is one giant exercise in extreme tedium.
But when you're secretly somebody famous, everybody wants to read your blog.

The supposed blog of Maya Keyes (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Xmisled0youthX)

[mrazntre]

I'm 100% sure that it wasn't her journalistic skills that got her the endorsement. It's more like the "feeling in my chonies."

[loserbutt]

blogs are, in the words of NYTIMES editor Bill Keller, "One man circle jerks"

I really don't find them enlightening in the least bit.

[pablohoney]

I don't find blogs particularly interesting. If I read a friend's blog I'm usually just skimming it to see if I'm mentioned anywhere, but of course, if it's a public blog that means they usually won't be writing anything too juicy...it's a catch-22. I don't have the patience to read a stranger's blog.

That said, I started a blog recently (haha). I already keep a hand-written journal but I can't write in it nearly as fast as I can type on a computer, so a blog is a nice way for me to ramble on about stuff and practice my writing. It's definitely more for myself (I'm not planning on telling any of my friends about it). Would never give up my journal, either. It's so much more convenient and personal than typing on a computer.

[myself808]

Do bloggers have the right to tell folks not to link their stuff?

Say, I wanted to link Chester's blog (don't know what it is, actually), then criticize the shit out of it (not saying that I would).

Could a blogger claim his stuff as some sort of intellectual property right?

you can tell someone not to but they don't have to listen. Political-type blogs link to the opposition and tear them to shreds all the time. From what myself has seen, its pretty much anything goes because most blogs are not copyrighted, and myself doesn't think there's any DMCA violation, then again myself is not an attorney, but if you start lifting material from a well known blogger who has tens of thousands of readers, your comment box will be aflame, and the blogger who you copied from will be most displeased that you did not acknowledge your source, and you probaaly do not want to piss off someone who has the 101st keyboard brigade behind them, but if you plagarize decide to Chester... well that may be another story

[Faithless]

Good thing I don't blog, then, because I do like to lift things off of well-known bloggers' web sites. :biggrin:

[Chester]

...you probaaly do not want to piss off someone who has the 101st keyboard brigade behind them, but if you plagarize decide to Chester... well that may be another story
Huh?

[myself808]

nothing personal Big C, myself made an reference to the 101st Keyboard Brigade (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=101st+keyboard+brigade) and used you only to contrast the fact that it would make a difference whom one lifted material from. A well known blogger vs. someone less so. unless of course Chester is a pseudonym and you are really Atrios, Instapundit or Margaret Cho in disguise :biggrin:

[SunWuKong]

Apparently this girl blogged her way to a t-shirt endorsement.

from http://buzz.blogger.com/
Wendy Cheng aka the award winning blogger XiaXue (Are you worshipping the ground she walks on?) scored an endorsement deal from a t-shirt company called LocalBrand because of her blog.

SINGAPORE BLOGGER SCORES A HIT
This Singaporean was signed on in December by a local T-shirt brand, aptly named LocalBrand, to endorse its products.

This could make the 20-year-old freelance writer the first blogger to receive a commercial endorsement deal, which has been the domain of celebrities.
http://buzz.blogger.com/media/xiaxue.jpg
http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/


Xia Xue? as in "snowing" or "snow falling"? but she lives in Singapore... she can probably wear a tanktop 10 months out of a year and not get cold.

[Faithless]

One of the more interesting things to come-out of blogging are these people that seem to cover news (and even report real stories) that it seems the mainstream media take a while to touch.

I heard someone complain that we're in trouble when bloggers start report news. I appreciate it. Sometimes that's how stories catch-on with the mainstream media.

[robotic]

One of the more interesting things to come-out of blogging are these people that seem to cover news (and even report real stories) that it seems the mainstream media take a while to touch.

http://pakpositive.blogspot.com

:D

[Faithless]

http://pakpositive.blogspot.com

:D
Whoa!

So, the regular .PK news websites wouldn't normally carry those stories?

I mean, everybody wants to when Ms. Pk joins the Miss China contest. :eek:

[robotic]

So, the regular .PK news websites wouldn't normally carry those stories?

I mean, everybody wants to when Ms. Pk joins the Miss China contest. :eek:

not too safe to report beauty pageant participants and competitions.... due to all that religious opposition ;-;

[Beat180]

Xia Xue? as in "snowing" or "snow falling"? but she lives in Singapore... she can probably wear a tanktop 10 months out of a year and not get cold.

but wouldn't it be cool if she did wear a tank and the weather was a bit cold? Pictures please!

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Apparently this girl blogged her way to a t-shirt endorsement.
her blog has very little content or thinking, apparently ...

[Anaestacia]

I don't blog religiously but I do have an online journal I update about once a week. I don't expect anyone to read it. I only know one friend who does indepth updates every few days but apparently that's because it's the most convenient way for her friends to "keep intouch". Frankly, I still prefer the phone.

Here's a recent article I stumbled on yesterday.


One blog created 'every second'
Image of a woman at a laptop
The blogosphere is varied and growing at a steady rate
The blogosphere is continuing to grow, with a weblog created every second, according to blog trackers Technorati.

In its latest State of the Blogosphere report, it said the number of blogs it was tracking now stood at more than 14.2m blogs, up from 7.8m in March.

It suggests, on average, the number of blogs is doubling every five months.

Blogs, the homepages of the 21st Century, are free and easy to set up and use. They are popular with people who want to share thoughts online.

They allow for the instant publication of ideas and for interactive conversations, through comments, with friends or strangers.

Global voices

Technorati is like a search engine that keeps track of what is happening in the blogosphere, the name given to the universe of weblogs.

It relies on people tagging - giving keywords to - their blogs or blog posts so that its search engine can find them.

Free blogging services such as those provided by MSN Spaces, Blogger, LiveJournal, AOL Journals, WordPress and Movable Type were also growing quickly, said the report.

Image of a man at a laptop
Blogs are easy to use and can be subscribed to
Thirteen percent of all blogs that Technorati tracks are updated weekly or more, said the report, and 55% of all new bloggers are still posting three months after they started.

It also pointed to the growth in moblogs, blogs to which people with camera phones automatically send pictures and text.

Other services, such as the Google toolbar and the Flickr photo sharing website, have implemented "blog this" buttons, which also make it easier for people to post content they like on the web straight to their blogs.

The voices in the blogosphere are also sounding less US-centric, with blog growth spotted in Japan, Korea, China, UK, France, and Brazil.

Varied sphere

What is clear is that the blogosphere is highly varied, with blogs coming in many shapes and forms, whether they be professional or for personal use.

Blogs have been used as campaign sites, as personal diaries, as art projects, online magazines and as places for community networking.

Much of their appeal has been boosted because readers can subscribe to them, for free, to stay updated of any new posts automatically.

Blogs have played a part in highlighting issues that journalists have not covered. They have also proved to be a valuable communication channel for journalists in repressed countries who have no other publishing means.

They have recently shown how they can also complement and enhance mainstream press in coverage of events, such as the recent London terror attacks.

The Technorati report did not, however, break down the blogosphere in terms of gender use.

Over the weekend, the BlogHer conference took place in the US, which saw a gathering of almost 300 bloggers talk over blogging issues which are pertinent to women, and to men.
Aug. 2, 2005 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4737671.stm)

[hooligan]

Xia Xue? as in "snowing" or "snow falling"? but she lives in Singapore... she can probably wear a tanktop 10 months out of a year and not get cold.

"snowing" would probably be my guess.

[I'm a Robot]

An online journal of any kind seems pointless to me unless you have some kind of audience to read it. To non-bloggers, the reason that blogging comes across as presumptuous is that bloggers necessarily need to presume that SOMEONE is reading. This is a bigger idea to wrap your head around in practice than it might seem.

I happen to like LiveJournal because of its strong social networking components.

[Faithless]

Is there a certain naivete that goes along with blogging?

I mean should you expect that you have complete anonymity? Or trust that even with people who know your blogs they won't say anything?

Bad news blogs? (http://www.tdn.com/articles/2005/09/05/this_day/news02.txt)

By Associated Press * Sep 04, 2005 - 11:41:43 pm PDT

CHICAGO -- Blogs are everywhere -- increasingly, the place where young people go to bare their souls, to vent, to gossip. And often they do so with unabashed fervor and little self-editing, posting their innermost thoughts for any number of Web surfers to see.

There is a freedom in it, as 23-year-old Allison Martin attests: "Since the people who read my blog are friends or acquaintances of mine, my philosophy is to be totally honest -- whether it's about how uncomfortable my panty hose are or my opinions about First Amendment law," says Martin, who lives in suburban Chicago and has been blogging for four years.

Some are, however, finding that putting one's life online can have a price. A few bloggers, for instance, have been fired for writing about work on personal online journals. And Maya Marcel-Keyes, daughter of conservative politician Alan Keyes, discovered the trickiness of providing personal details online when her discussions on her blog about being a lesbian became an issue during her father's recent run for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois (he made anti-gay statements during the campaign).

Experts say such incidents belong to a growing trend in which frank outpourings online are causing personal and public dramas. Some speculate that scandalous blog entries about partying and dating exploits could have ramifications down the road.

"I would bet that in the 2016 election, somebody's Facebook entry will come back to bite them," Steve Jones, head of the communications department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says, referring to thefacebook.com, a networking site for college students and alumni.

More traditional blog sites -- which allow easy creation of a Web site with text, photos and often music -- include Xanga, LiveJournal and MySpace.

Surveys completed in recent months by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that nearly a fifth of teens who have access to the Web have their own blogs. And 38 percent of teens say they read other people's blogs.

By comparison, about a tenth of adults have their own blogs and a quarter say they read other people's online journals.

Amanda Lenhart, a researcher at Pew who tracks young people's Internet habits, says she's increasingly hearing stories about the perils of posting diary entries online. She heard from one man whose niece was a college student looking for a job. Out of curiosity, he typed his niece's name into a search engine and quickly found her blog, with a title that began "The Drunken Musings of ...."

"He wrote to her and said, 'You may want to think about taking this down,"' said Lenhart, chuckling.

Other times, the ease of posting unedited thoughts on the Web can be uglier, in part because of the speed with which the postings spread and multiply.

That's what happened at a middle school in Michigan last fall, when principals started receiving complaints from parents about some students' blog postings on Xanga. When the students found out they were being monitored, a few posted threatening comments aimed at an assistant principal -- and that led to suspensions.

"It was just a spiraling of downward emotions," says the school's principal. "It's a negative power -- but it's still a power."

Lenhart, the Pew researcher, said the Web has "increased the scope" of young people's communication. "We're talking about behaviors middle-schoolers have engaged in through the millennia. The march of technology forward is hard, and it has consequences that we don't always see."

She says parents would be wise to familiarize themselves with online blogging sites and to pose questions to their children such as, "What is appropriate?" and "What is fair?" to post.

It's also important to discuss the dangers of giving out personal information online.

One Pew survey released this spring found that 79 percent of teens agreed that people their age aren't careful enough when giving out information about themselves online. And increasingly, Lenhart says, this applies to blogs.

Caitlin Hoistion, a 15-year-old in Neptune, N.J., says she knows people who go as far as posting their cell phone numbers on their blogs -- something she doesn't do. She also often shows her postings to her mom, which has helped her mom give her some space and privacy online.

"That's not to say if I thought something dangerous was going on, I wouldn't ever spy on her," says her mother, Melissa Hoistion. "But she has given me no need to do so."

Many college students say they're learning to take precautions on their own.

John Malloy, a 19-year-old student at Centre College in Danville, Ky., has put a "friends lock" on his LiveJournal site so only people with a password he supplies can view it.

"A lot of times, my blog is among the first places I turn when I am angry or frustrated, and I am often quite unfair in my assessment of my situation in these posts," Malloy says. "Do I wish I hadn't posted? Of course. But I haven't actually gone as far to take posts down."

Martin, the 23-year-old blogger in suburban Chicago, agrees that blogs can "provide just one more avenue for a person to embarrass him or herself."

"They also make it easier for people to tell everyone what a jerk you are," says Martin, who'll be heading to graduate school in Virginia this fall.

[pablohoney]

I know a guy at work who maintains a blog on his own personal web site, with his name plastered all over it, where he frequently talks about how dumb some of his co-workers are. I doubt he expects any of these people to read his blog, but I don't think he's naive enough to believe it couldn't happen. I think that is part of the thrill, that you can speak your mind freely and someone you know may find out. Maybe it's some kind of passive-aggressive way of venting, as he is cantankerous but definitely not confrontational in person.

[rice cracker]

Arrrgh, you know what's not fun? Trying to get crappy quiz results to show up in xanga. I suppose this is the internet god's way of preventing me from making lame xanga posts *pout*

But damnit! People must know which Harry Potter character I am!!

[Faithless]

Arrrgh, you know what's not fun? Trying to get crappy quiz results to show up in xanga. I suppose this is the internet god's way of preventing me from making lame xanga posts *pout*

But damnit! People must know which Harry Potter character I am!!
I don't JK has invented your character, yet. Can she conceive of one nastier than the "unmentionable name"? :frown:

[nonamerasian]

Arrrgh, you know what's not fun? Trying to get crappy quiz results to show up in xanga. I suppose this is the internet god's way of preventing me from making lame xanga posts *pout*

But damnit! People must know which Harry Potter character I am!!

Copy the address of the image.

Then go to your Xanga entry and click the PIC icon.

Paste the address into the pop-up.

And that should do it.

[rice cracker]

Copy the address of the image.

Then go to your Xanga entry and click the PIC icon.

Paste the address into the pop-up.

And that should do it.

I did that, and I got the dreaded red X. It's ok now, I took the image link from the paste information and posted that up, and a friend of mine suggested clicking the "edit html" option before pasting the link for the whole kit and kaboodle.

I'm Lord Voldemorte, btw.

[Faithless]

Blogging is now on the NSA's radar. :frown:

New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming "semantic web" championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.

Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites (http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19025556.200-pentagon-sets-its-sights-on-social-networking-websites.html)


09 June 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Paul Marks

"I AM continually shocked and appalled at the details people voluntarily post online about themselves." So says Jon Callas, chief security officer at PGP, a Silicon Valley-based maker of encryption software. He is far from alone in noticing that fast-growing social networking websites such as MySpace and Friendster are a snoop's dream.

New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming "semantic web" championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.

Americans are still reeling from last month's revelations that the NSA has been logging phone calls since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The Congressional Research Service, which advises the US legislature, says phone companies that surrendered call records may have acted illegally. However, the White House insists that the terrorist threat makes existing wire-tapping legislation out of date and is urging Congress not to investigate the NSA's action.

Meanwhile, the NSA is pursuing its plans to tap the web, since phone logs have limited scope. They can only be used to build a very basic picture of someone's contact network, a process sometimes called "connecting the dots". Clusters of people in highly connected groups become apparent, as do people with few connections who appear to be the intermediaries between such groups. The idea is to see by how many links or "degrees" separate people from, say, a member of a blacklisted organisation.

By adding online social networking data to its phone analyses, the NSA could connect people at deeper levels, through shared activities, such as taking flying lessons. Typically, online social networking sites ask members to enter details of their immediate and extended circles of friends, whose blogs they might follow. People often list other facets of their personality including political, sexual, entertainment, media and sporting preferences too. Some go much further, and a few have lost their jobs by publicly describing drinking and drug-taking exploits. Young people have even been barred from the orthodox religious colleges that they are enrolled in for revealing online that they are gay.

"You should always assume anything you write online is stapled to your resumé. People don't realise you get Googled just to get a job interview these days," says Callas.

Other data the NSA could combine with social networking details includes information on purchases, where we go (available from cellphone records, which cite the base station a call came from) and what major financial transactions we make, such as buying a house.

Right now this is difficult to do because today's web is stuffed with data in incompatible formats. Enter the semantic web, which aims to iron out these incompatibilities over the next few years via a common data structure called the Resource Description Framework (RDF). W3C hopes that one day every website will use RDF to give each type of data a unique, predefined, unambiguous tag.

"RDF turns the web into a kind of universal spreadsheet that is readable by computers as well as people," says David de Roure at the University of Southampton in the UK, who is an adviser to W3C. "It means that you will be able to ask a website questions you couldn't ask before, or perform calculations on the data it contains." In a health record, for instance, a heart attack will have the same semantic tag as its more technical description, a myocardial infarction. Previously, they would have looked like separate medical conditions. Each piece of numerical data, such as the rate of inflation or the number of people killed on the roads, will also get a tag.

The advantages for scientists, for instance, could be huge: they will have unprecedented access to each other's experimental datasets and will be able to perform their own analyses on them. Searching for products such as holidays will become easier as price and availability dates will have smart tags, allowing powerful searches across hundreds of sites.

On the downside, this ease of use will also make prying into people's lives a breeze. No plan to mine social networks via the semantic web has been announced by the NSA, but its interest in the technology is evident in a funding footnote to a research paper delivered at the W3C's WWW2006 conference in Edinburgh, UK, in late May.

That paper, entitled Semantic Analytics on Social Networks (http://www2006.org/programme/files/pdf/4068.pdf), by a research team led by Amit Sheth of the University of Georgia in Athens and Anupam Joshi of the University of Maryland in Baltimore reveals how data from online social networks and other databases can be combined to uncover facts about people. The footnote said the work was part-funded by an organisation called ARDA.

What is ARDA? It stands for Advanced Research Development Activity (http://web.archive.org/web/www.ic-arda.org/main.htm). According to a report entitled Data Mining and Homeland Security, published by the Congressional Research Service in January, ARDA's role is to spend NSA money on research that can "solve some of the most critical problems facing the US intelligence community". Chief among ARDA's aims is to make sense of the massive amounts of data the NSA collects - some of its sources grow by around 4 million gigabytes a month.

The ever-growing online social networks are part of the flood of internet information that could be mined: some of the top sites like MySpace now have more than 80 million members (see Graph).

The research ARDA funded was designed to see if the semantic web could be easily used to connect people. The research team chose to address a subject close to their academic hearts: detecting conflicts of interest in scientific peer review. Friends cannot peer review each other's research papers, nor can people who have previously co-authored work together.

So the team developed software that combined data from the RDF tags of online social network Friend of a Friend (www.foaf-project.org (http://www.foaf-project.org/)), where people simply outline who is in their circle of friends, and a semantically tagged commercial bibliographic database called DBLP, which lists the authors of computer science papers.

Joshi says their system found conflicts between potential reviewers and authors pitching papers for an internet conference. "It certainly made relationship finding between people much easier," Joshi says. "It picked up softer [non-obvious] conflicts we would not have seen before."

The technology will work in exactly the same way for intelligence and national security agencies and for financial dealings, such as detecting insider trading, the authors say. Linking "who knows who" with purchasing or bank records could highlight groups of terrorists, money launderers or blacklisted groups, says Sheth.

The NSA recently changed ARDA's name to the Disruptive Technology Office. The DTO's interest in online social network analysis echoes the Pentagon's controversial post 9/11 Total Information Awareness (TIA) initiative. That programme, designed to collect, track and analyse online data trails, was suspended after a public furore over privacy in 2002. But elements of the TIA were incorporated into the Pentagon's classified programme in the September 2003 Defense Appropriations Act.

Privacy groups worry that "automated intelligence profiling" could sully people's reputations or even lead to miscarriages of justice - especially since the data from social networking sites may often be inaccurate, untrue or incomplete, De Roure warns.

But Tim Finin, a colleague of Joshi's, thinks the spread of such technology is unstoppable. "Information is getting easier to merge, fuse and draw inferences from. There is money to be made and control to be gained in doing so. And I don't see much that will stop it," he says.

Callas thinks people have to wise up to how much information about themselves they should divulge on public websites. It may sound obvious, he says, but being discreet is a big part of maintaining privacy. Time, perhaps, to hit the delete button.

[eos]

this is why i have stopped blogging and gone back to my trusty old journal. now the only problem is where do i hide it......:confused:

[tommyhtown]

blogging seems to be a lot of work even for a guy like me who makes a living do IT work. Actually, may be that's why I don't want to do it as if I don't deal with code all day already.

I like keeping journal on thoughts and such. My current diary started in 2000. Going back to read it tends to give me a new perspective on life at the present.

[eos]

whenever i go back and read what i wrote in my journals i think, wtf was wrong with me?

[tommyhtown]

whenever i go back and read what i wrote in my journals i think, wtf was wrong with me?

ain't that fun though?

[Faithless]

whenever i go back and read what i wrote in my journals i think, wtf was wrong with me?
Just long as anyone reading along for all those years doesn't ask the same question of you! :frown:

[tommyhtown]

I just saw my lil' cousin's profile on my space. Poetry, jazz, and art were listed as his interests. Gimme a break! HA!

[Meancoldglare]

whenever i go back and read what i wrote in my journals i think, wtf was wrong with me?

I feel so immature and stupid when I look back at my writing......

[Anaestacia]

Go ahead. It's an extensive log on my plants. Though I admit, it's quite private what temperature basil seeds love best.

[Faithless]

I think I made a mistake in setting a blog at the root of a web site. Rather, it should have been a folder called "blog" or something.

Is it possible to move a blog from one folder to another?

[thaite]

I suppose you could just FTP in and move it to another directory. What content management system are you using?

[Faithless]

I suppose you could just FTP in and move it to another directory. What content management system are you using?
Wordpress?