regarding WordPress:
Out of the box, it's supposed to be a CPU hog, for even moderately popular sites. There are at least three decent plugins for caching that work pretty darn well--Scalzi uses one for Whatever. Jeff Atwood, of Coding Horror, had an excellent post titled Behold WordPress, Destroyer of CPUs that explores the problem in some depth. The comments there, as with MakingLight are instructive, though sadly lacking poetry and humor.
Especially worthy of note is an addendum to the article referring to Matt Mullenweg's MySQL tuning tweaks and a reference to a Google-Summer-Of-Code project designed to add caching to WP.
While I have enjoyed using WP and it's plugin ecosystem in the past, I am not a platform fanboy, and whatever you decide to do won't materially affect my ego ;)
#249 ::: Lee, 249, (and albatross, 241)
As to your assumption... I suggest following albatross' advice, before you swallow any more of that foot. :-)
NOM NOM NOM
IZ SO TASTY!
I CAN HAZ MOAR?*
*seriously, any attempt by me to explain what I was thinking when I inserted that assumption would only make matters oh so much worse. I offer my self-mockery up as an apology.
Lee, #231, asks: what books can you recommend, especially for the YA age group, which involve magic in a way that is clearly not Satanic?
Lots of luck there. If it isn't by an explicitly Christian author the concerned Christian mother's brigade* will eventually find something wrong with it.
Earl, 232,
I don't think Lee is asking about the cultists.
Lee,
I'm going to take your question at face value, and assume that you are a Christian (or similar) who is looking for depictions of magic that aren't irredeemably dark, as used by the protagonists, in YA fiction? Or do you want fiction that doesn't have baddies that use that either? The second requirement leaves almost nothing left, including Star Wars, Narnia, LOTR, etc.
More generally, I think the inability to distinguish assorted modern pagan religions** from satanism doesn't help Christian types when this kind of thing comes up.
*abbrev.: CCMB
**Xopher, would that phrase be acceptable as a category for Wicca? (To distinguish it from, say Shinto or Hinduism? Or is the distinction offensive?)
Terry Karney, 72, said:
Lee: The closest you come to the build your own model is satellite.
Since cable companies get a limited monopoly, they make a mint
regardless.
The closest you can come is Netflix + itunes video + unauthorized
streaming video + bittorrent + irc. Yes, yes, helpy, not helpful, but
there you go.
also,
I've been meaning to reply to a couple three people on the
Indistinguishable from parody thread, but I have been overtaken by
ennui. I think fond thoughts of all of you, but I am so...drained.
Kate Nepveu, 101,
I see what you're saying, but "weak ID" seems like a much too broad way of describing it--it's not any form of ID at all, but rather a way of thinking that can lead to it but *also* can lead to lots of other things. In that respect, it's not a parallel to weak/strong atheism at all and is misleading and potentially insulting.
I completely agree. In fact, I was hoping that someone here knew of a compact way to express what I was describing as weak ID - I feel fairly confident that the Jesuits had a nice Latin phrase for it, but I don't know where to look to find it. I'd really like to get away from describing it as weak-ID also, because as aforementioned it is misleading and embarrassing.
Anyway, I picked the phrase "weak ID" to draw a distinction between the folks I knew who would have described themselves as ID-ers (and some still might) who assumed that it wasn't repackaged Creationism, (and were pretty chagrined to figure out it lumped them in with the nutters.) Many of the current strong form ID types could be prodded back into the weak form pretty easily, just by pointing out the inconsistencies with Christian theology - not that you normally find these folk participating in the typical evolution-creationism flamewars.
Kate Nepveu, 41,*
Since when does this rise to the level of intelligent design, no matter how weak? It seems perfectly consistent with Deism or Roman Catholicism to me.
Yes, you are exactly right! And that's how six or twelve years ago, when ID surfaced, it got otherwise sensible people to sign on.** The way it works is a simple magic trick; a cognitive error and a logical fallacy.
The cognitive error is simple: people really suck at seeing the world from other people's perspectives. Frex, generic Christian, hears about ID, can't imagine not believing in God, and BOOM! flips the premise without thinking (God is) and the conclusion (the stuff He made is cool).
Diagram:
Correct: Premise [God is] -> Conclusion [stuff shows how cool He is]
Incorrect: Conclusion [Universe is cool] -> Premise [God is]
(It's the hat trick of bad theology too! The incorrect model also substitutes works for faith.)
don
*btw, I'm a fan of the book log. Hi!
**and provolked great suspicion amongst the mainline denomination I belong to. I mean, people said it was a trojan horse for Creationism and fundamentalism. (Others said it was a trojan horse for Unitarianism and Catholicism, so your milage may vary. Anyway, not uncontroversial.) The folks I know who first signed on have retreated into embarrassed silence.
Does anyone know if that weird anti-Semitism argument a common one among ID people? Because that was the point at which I started boggling.
Well, it depends on who you count as ID people. I know some folk who thought weak-version ID* philosophy was just fine...about six years ago.** Like anything else that lends itself to obsessive nerdiness, it attracted the usual suspects pretty fast, nutters, paranoid conspiracists, and leaving the main sequence for thered-giantGodwin phase, having consumed all thehydrogenrational intellect of it's earlier followers.
*weak version ID in a nutshell: If you already believe in God, then it is reasonable, and even "obvious" to conclude that the cool/nifty/orderly phenomena that you encounter by doing science illustrates how cool He is. Pretty simple Premise -> Conclusion stuff. The less logical types reverse the equation leading to Conclusion -> Premise, because it's soooo 'obvious.' It's not too far to classical Creationism and nuttiness from here. And yes, I am aware of examples that completely demolish even the reversed logic.
**now, it is the theology-which-must-not-speak-it's-name.
Lee @ 661, can you give me some google-able terms for:
albatross, #467: I remember the landmark case that established a woman's legal right to retain her birth name after marriage in Tennessee. The woman in question was a lawyer of some reputation, and chose not to change her name for professional reasons. Then came the next election, and she was informed by the polling-place supervisor that she COULD NOT vote, because the name on her voter registration card was no longer her real name since she was now married, and that she would have to change it. This was IIRC sometime in the early 80s.albatross, #467: I remember the landmark case that established a woman's legal right to retain her birth name after marriage in Tennessee. The woman in question was a lawyer of some reputation, and chose not to change her name for professional reasons. Then came the next election, and she was informed by the polling-place supervisor that she COULD NOT vote, because the name on her voter registration card was no longer her real name since she was now married, and that she would have to change it. This was IIRC sometime in the early 80s.
Kate Nepveu, 497, repsponding to albatross, said:
Our planned compromise is to give FutureBaby my last name as a middle name, just there's some obvious-upon-looking-at-IDs link between me & FutureBaby.
Kate Nepveu, albatross, and miriam beetle (503),
I am pleased to report that we chose that precise solution for our kid: FirstName MiddleName Lastname Lastname. We didn't get any pushback from the nice lady from the birth certificate office either; a little whiteout was sufficient to make room enough for "two middle names".
Oh, and this is because we both kept our names. (Many reasons, not the least of which is that a last name contains reputation power in academia, so it seemed ill advised to change it.) We also considered it prudent to have our child marked as both of ours ;)
#505 ::: abi,
Oh dear, the Welsh are at it* again.
It's actually the fairly bland tone with which the Beeb reports these facts that I love.
I especially liked this last bit:Defending, Frances Jones said alcohol was "ruining his life" and he had no idea where he got the crutch from.That last phrase encompasses an entire story: "...you see, I have no idea where I got the crutch from..." Hum. I wonder what Neil Gaiman would do with that, or perhaps...*
*this is just to say
I have drunk
the wine
that was in
the icebox
and taken the bag
you were probably
saving
for trash
Forgive me
the crutch was metal
so shiny
and so odd
PNH at 227 wrote:
Right, and this is why I wonder at people who complain that the criticisms of capitalism being batted around here are "abstract." When hundreds of millions of Americans increasingly suspect that the game is rigged in favor of a tiny elite, that's not abstract, that's a clear and present problem.
Right. I happen to gain some ancillary privileges as the result of that elite, though. I think that it might be more accurate to say that there are multiplenestedstacked (?) layers of elite, each smaller than the one supporting it (or parasitizing itself on it). This is why it's hard to disassemble the system: anyone with power enough to break off a piece usually has some assets tied up in it.*
For example, regular middle class and blue collar suburban folk ordinarily wouldn't touch the idea of 'leverage' with a ten foot pole. Buying something you can't afford to pay for isn't really the regular folk way to do things. However there is a class of property that can't be bought without leverage - houses. This is really, really convenient for those 'above' who are pushing paper. (And it's self-inflicted on multiple levels, since the folk selling the mortgages are in the same social class as those buying them.) Meanwhile, the lure of easy money, poorly understood tax write-offs, etc., keep people playing.
I suppose someone could object, and say that buying cars is the same kind of thing, but those can be had outright. (Though it was a neat trick that the oil & car companies pulled, getting municipalities to get rid of streetcars. That worked out really, really well for the financing divisions of the car companies.)
*or in my case, I know how to game the system**, but if I successfully convince everyone to do the same, it stops working. This is a moral quandry for me.
**okay, only parts of the system. And like everything else, it's easier to game if you already have some resources. So, it's totally not fair.
169, James Killus,
I will say that any person who self-labels as "libertarian" has no business having any opinions about economics and personal liberty until they know precisely the issues involved in limiting-liability and granting corporations "rights" under the 14th Amendment.
I will say that I will consider your foolish ultimatum when you phrase it clearly. If you have something to say, or a point to make, then make it. Otherwise don't waste your time posturing about what kinds of opinions I or anyone else should have.
The current housing crisis is a pretty good example of how unregulated free markets create crises: it was in large part due to simple interactions of supply and demand forces.
Cheap credit led to a moderate oversupply of buyers, so the sellers sold their houses at a moderate profit. Unlike other commodities that get used up, lose value, or are hard to sell, almost every single one of those sellers then turned buyer, who were willing to pay a slight premium compared to previous years sales, since they had a tidy profit, and access more cheap credit, partly based on the increased value of the asset they were buying.
So far, not much monkey business, and a fairly linear system. However, as you iterate this scenario, you notice that housing prices continue to inflate in a way that isn't connected to the other supply-demand cycles in the economy. Then it became obvious that the only way to stay in the game (where winning = getting to live where you want) was to keep playing, and keep making bigger gambles. People worried that they couldn't afford to live in SF, or the Valley, or NYC, so they were willing to take bigger risks. "Gee, I think I can stretch to afford this."
If the mortgage industry had toed the line, and stuck with 30% down, and 30 or 15 year loans, then housing prices would have hit a ceiling much sooner, and the differential would have been small enough that mostgamblershomeowners wouldn't be automatically underwater.* I'm guessing the reason why they didn't was they were caught in their own supply-demand cycle, and the ridiculously low rates being set by the Fed weren't giving the banks the return they wanted? I recall a 3.75% ARM offer from the height of the mania. Can you even make money on that without a secondary market trading mortgages like poker chips?
Anyway I think the whole thing was doomed to go nonlinear once you had those two (mostly) linear supply-demand systems interacting. Could one of you math minded types confirm that this is so? (Bruce, Greg, Abi?)
*e.g.: if you bought a 100k house, with 30k down, and the market tops out at 120k, you can "afford" to drop the price on your house to 90k in order to move somewhere else for a better job. Yes, you lost 10k, but you don't have to pony up cash you don't have in order to move. If you placed a bet on buying a 200k house, with 20k down, and you can only sell for 175k, you are hosed. Part of it is the law of large numbers thing: a 15% loss on a very expensive house is a huge amount of dollars in absolute terms.
Speaking of adjustments to our captital-ist system AND being a tester, do check out today's patch notes for the World application.
Yes, this really is on topic.
Mostly.
Neil Gaiman has put his tuppence in. He also points to the Guardian column, here.
I won't speak for him, but I think he's implying that there's no cosmic conspiracy at HC.
I'm actually a little disappointed. Maybe we can still blame the Illuminati?
in #60, Alice Bentley quotes me*, and says:
While many (almost all?) webcomics do indeed self-finance the
printed versions of their work to sell directly to their fans, I don't
think it's by choice. Especially if they've been doing it for a while.
Both Penny Arcade and MegaTokyo signed up with major publishers, and
Girl Genius *is* available through Ingram and B&T even though it's
small press.
Thank you for clarifying my comment. You are absolutely right about the publishing deals you mentioned.
I might quibble with the "by choice" bit. For webcomics with smaller
audiences, or niche topics, there's little point in sharing revenue
with a publisher who won't be able to market the book effectively to
the corporate book buyers.** I'd have to say the Foglio's are lucky (in
the sense that 30+ years
of hard work is luck) to have been a self-publishing small press before
webcomics were invented. ³ Likewise with Megatokyo & Penny Arcade:
those fellows have such a huge audience that it should be impossible
for a publisher to not make money on them †. Likewise, since they have
such huge audiences, they have a lot of bargaining power, and are able
to get pretty good deals. ‡
As a counter example, the brother Brudlos self-financed, printed and
ship the Alpha-Shade books, but they also both hold down full time
jobs. Or Greg Dean's Real Life Comics, which has languished with only
volume one printed up until recently, when he released acliffnotes type version via Lulu.
I didn't exactly choose the best possible examples, did I?
*thank you!
**though there was the interesting case of Kurt Hassler, who worked as
the graphic novel buyer for Borders, who also co-authored a webcomic
that was subsequently published by Tokyopop.
³ probably not strictly true, but close.
†not that people haven't screwed it up. Megatokyo couldn't keep Studio
Ironcat afloat, and the first guy who the Penny Arcade guys signed on
with took their print rights and fled the country.
‡ interesting news for Penny Arcade: they have a partnership with a
newly formed gaming distribution company to distribute their first
video game "On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness" which seemingly
will be filled with squamous goodness. Oh, and the company will also be
distributing games hand-picked by the guys.
meta:
I'm noticing that icerocket and technorati* are weak sauce for keeping
track of this discussion. Thus far the fruits of my searching: NZ
blogger Beattie reprints the Timespress releasearticle and the Publisher's Lunch more detailed report. Useful for those of us who don't have a sub for that listserv.
Second fruit: Daily Pundit quotes Roger L. Simon (mystery author? original here, anyway) and comments on it.
Andrew Wheeler, 31,
I have to agree with your assessment: it's a press release saying that
he intends to target a really specific niche with a pre-existing
audience with extruded non-ficition product, branded and marketed a
specific way at a set price.
It's almost as though he's woken up to the direct sales model that
the webcomics/cartoonist types** are exploiting. Briefly: self-financed
printing/manufacturing of pre-ordered objects for a dedicated fanbase,
with limited to no distribution through Ingrahm/B&T, leaving the
vast majority of cash inflow untouched byparasitesmiddlemen.
In the case of Mr. Miller, authors are the superfluous
middlemen in the cash flow diagram, mucking up the nice clean equation
with messy reserves against returns and royalties that fluctuate all
over the place. It's no accident that C.E.Peit is talking about
work-for-hire clauses: that would be the ultimate solution for
maximizing the amount of coin that lands in his pockets.
*sux, btw. No filter for articles only appearing in the last x number of days.
**e.g. The Foglio's Girl Genius, The Gallagher's Megatokyo, Penny Arcade, & Alpha-Shade.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 18 |
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