Monday, April 29, 2002

Besides commenting here (yes, I noticed from work today that Radio's commentCount seemed back up for a few hours, but it seems back down again), Shelley writes eloquently (as always) about the convenience of a hosted Weblog versus the increased control and decreased downtime of a self-hosted one, and the dream of a diarist's content-management system versus the grisly reality of HTML and the Web. I'll just say that after 20 years working on computer magazines, mastering DOS commands, making fun of AOL users, even writing tutorials and appearing as a tech pundit on TV, it's half mortifying and half refreshing to be a poster boy for newbies who need hand-holding, in the camp whose page-layout expertise stops at flush-right headlines.  First glance at the first page of the Movable Type installation instructions?  "Unpack the .tar.gz archive" ... no.  I appreciate your words about asking friends for help, Shelley, but no, dammit.  I refuse.  I'm too old.  Life's too short.  It's not 1985, computing isn't about gurus and user groups anymore, and if that's what it takes to Weblog, neither I nor millions like me will ever turn this tiny, insular, link-swapping, know-who-Dave-Winer-and-Wil-Wheaton-are hobby into the huge, new-medium, 21st-century-Gutenberg phenomenon we're all hyping. Update Tuesday morning: And, in a cosmic ironic touch, UserLand's servers were down when I wrote and tried to post this last night. 9:20:23 PM    commentplace ()

Not a Democratic issue, a national-survival issue: Cursor.org uses the quote, "The most brutal fact of American life," for its must-read link to this Observer (U.K.) story about how the U.S. is simply "the most unequal society in the industrialized West." The richest 1 percent of Americans hold 38 percent of our nation's wealth, writes author Will Hutton, and the American dream of upward mobility for all has become a lie: "The sumptuousness and bleakness of the respective lifestyles of rich and poor represent a scale of difference in opportunity and wealth that is almost medieval — and a standing offense to the American expectation that everyone has the opportunity for life, liberty and happiness." The cost of a college education has never been higher, and college financial aid and job training programs have never been scarcer, effectively leaving the poor "locked into their status."  Compared with three Scandinavian and the four largest European economies, America ranked first in the percentage of workers unable to get and keep full-time employment, last in the percentage able to rise from the bottom fifth into the ranks above. "America is developing an aristocracy of the rich and serfdom of the poor," Hutton concludes, "and, in so doing, threatening its own economic vitality."  Will some brave politician address this threat to the Republic's health and superpower status?  No; America's conservative leadership will shout him or her down, haughtily outraged that anyone raise the bogeyman of "class warfare" — at least until class warfare actually starts in our streets, as I've quoted my affluent Greenwich, Conn., doctor as confessing he half expects. 8:47:56 PM    commentplace ()

Any Radio users out there know why the "commentCount" function hasn't worked in many days, leaving () instead of (0) or (2) or whatever to indicate the number of comments made to posts on UserLand's server?  I thought it was just me, but saw the same glitch on Jonathon's site — until today, when I notice that J.'s followed Burningbird over to Movable Type.  Hmmm.  And the other day I tried typing a bunch of random numbers into the radio.weblogs.com/010xxxx URL, seeing that the number of copies sold is now in the 7,000s, but hit two or three one-line test posts or "It worked!  Your Weblog is installed" placeholders for every actual Weblog with content.  Is the Radio fad already fading, with "real" Webloggers deciding they need to get a domain and learn at least a little HTML and FTP?  (Not that tech experts like B. and J. didn't already know HTML and FTP, but you know what I mean.) Certainly I need to decide if I'm going to pursue this, find time to restart writing regularly for my infinitesimally small audience, or let it fizzle — although it looks like I'll have to rewipe and reinstall everything on this new PC again, in the aftermath of the cool but complex ATI All-in-Wonder video card I just installed.  I can turn my Windows desktop into a TV set, or record or pause and continue live TV like in the TiVo commercials, or work with The Weather Channel in a nifty, ghostly translucent window in a corner of the screen; even successfully installed a splitter on my cable modem line to get the cable feed.  Arrr!  I be a pirate! 7:22:25 AM    commentplace ()