Login with username and password (forgot your password?)

One of the apparent raison d'etre of Ghost is being a simpler WordPress. I never saw WordPress as complex so I don't get that. Otherwise a simple attractive blogging platform is nice.

I don't think it's so much it's complex as that it's very easy to break.

And because of its "everything plus the kitchen sink" modular design (with plug-ins independently developed by coders of varying talent) it's not problem that will ever go completely away.

Ghost seems to be approaching this with a "less is more" philosophy. As in: address one use extremely well and call it a day. You say you want to do other stuff with Ghost? Ok, here's the source code. Go knock yourself out.

The problem I see most non-tech types having with WP is they just don't get the basic idea behind it. They can't (or won't) grok the whole concept of a CMS - which is kinda technical, even on a cursory level. HTML they get. CSS gets dicey. But when you mention pHp code plus a database and a web server, their eyes start to glaze over. "Whaddaya mean my pages don't actually exist as webpages? Whaddya mean they're created on the fly as they're requested by a browser except for static pages. And what's static pages, eh Preciousssss? Give us nice HTML files and keep your nasty CMS!"

Face it rgdot. We're all basically mutants here.

I love Markdown, and for that reason alone, I want this to succeed.

Exactly.

Probably one of the finest moments ever in American comic strip writing:

[attachthumb=#]

 

"Thus I have heard!"

(The opening line to a lot of the Old School Buddhist sutras!)

 

Yeah, but I think all of April's should begin: "Now the way it all went down was like this."

[Ghost]

This is a very interesting Kickstarter project that is now fully funded. It's called Ghost, and it promises to be an incredibly powerful but simple to use tool that is designed to be "just a blogging platform." (KS project page here.)

Ghost is a platform dedicated to one thing: Publishing. It's beautifully designed, completely customiseable and completely Open Source. Ghost allows you to write and publish your own blog, giving you the tools to make it easy and even (gasp) fun to do. It's simple, elegant, and designed so that you can spend less time messing with making your blog work - and more time blogging.

This is the part that really caught my attention

Ghost has a smart writing screen. Markdown on the left, and a live preview on the right. Write down your ideas and format them on the fly, never pausing to click on endless formatting buttons, never having to write long/painful HTML to express your ideas. You can even theme the preview pane to match your blog's formatting exactly.

[attach]

That looks to be the answer to a prayer for the average blog writer. Adding images also seems to be done with a simple drag and drop. Very nice that!

Check out their video here.

This dev team has rock solid credentials and programming experience, plus a working prototype, so this project looks very good so far. Apparently other people thought so too. Funding target was for £25,000. Actual funding is now at £87,000 with 25 days still left to go.

The public release of the software is set for September 2013. It will be released under the MIT License.

They'll also be offering a hosted package like Wordpress does if you don't want to host your own installation. It will be available to project backers in November of this year. The general public will need to wait until January 2014 to open an account.  Pricing has yet to be determined.

This looks to be very cool.

we can do Chapter and Verse from the Collected Writings of App103!

I'm all for chapter and verse. app103 will always be a guru in my book.

Hmm...how about The April Sutra? Kinda has a nice ring to it doesn't it?

Behold! ...Windows DaaStardly.

LOL!

From the sound of it, it's yet another 'thin client' solution.

Nothing much new there, as the article noted.

Funny in a way. 50 years ago, the only way to use a computer was to rent time on a fairly dumb terminal connected to a mainframe and run your programs from there. Then along came the personal computer revolution which pulled the power away from corporate behemoths like IBM and Sperry-Rand and handed it over to the users. (Microsoft and Apple should know a bit about that since they were material in bringing it to be.)

However, now it's 2013, and it looks like Apple and Microsoft (and all the other advocates of personal computing freedom like Google) are doing their best to return our computing landscape to exactly what it was in 1968. Except with better graphics, fancier games, and online shopping.

Rather ironic if you think about it. When Apple introduced the Macintosh, their historic ad said that, thanks to them, 1984 would not be like 1984.

And they were right...

But it's sure looking more and more like 2014 will be.

At least if if Microsoft and Apple have anything to say about it.

Still, i think there's some value in experimenting with them every few years to see what kind of revenue they generate, what kind of feedback they generate, if they affect the site, etc., and see what kinds of options there are.

Oh I agree 100%. When it comes to experimenting, I say bring it on. If nothing else, when something doesn't work out as hoped, it helps remind us all just how different this site is from most other places on the web. And that's largely because of the mutual respect shared between the site's operators and the membership.

It's something to be proud of.

@Mouser - don't know if it's just me, but somehow allowing something to appear on your site - but then have a huge amount of text warning how this something might not be what it appears to be (along with full caveates) sends a mixed message. And in some respects I think it makes DoCo look bad because of it. To me it's almost like introducing a guest at a party you're hosting by saying "Hi folks. Meet my new acquaintance Goog. He's basically a nice guy - but watch your wallet whenever you're around him. And please don't blame me if he tries to pull a fast one on you ok? You have been warned."

(IMHO there has got to be a better way to generate ongoing revenue for the site than this. Just my anyway. )

Just read a couple of books on Django in my ongoing quest to design the next best web framework..

Maybe these guys can help!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22249490

 

^What's up with these Google AdSense robot pseudo-posts in the forums?

Something new DoCo is doing?


UPDATE:

Oops! Never mind. Just found the other thread discussing it.

I skipped reading it earlier because I personally despise most things Google.  

There ought to be a law mandating disclosure when this is done.

Should - but there probably never will be. The institution of 'ghostwriter' is too well established and understood that any attempt to characterize the practice as misleading, or a form of false advertising, would probably be dismissed as "unnecessary and excessive government regulation" by our enlightened legislatures.

Unless, of course, Amazon and/or B&N objected to the practice - since those two are rapidly becoming the gatekeepers and de facto arbiters of the 'printed' word in North America.
 

Book 3 throws all of that out. Suddenly, it's omniscient third person narration with countless points of view, few of which are familiar characters from the previous books. What started as survival horror is now a mashup of government conspiracy, tactical shooter and science fiction. Yeah, there's aliens in it now.

  Things like that make me wonder if the same author actually wrote it. Some publishers have this bad habit of convincing authors to franchise their name, and then supply a small team of writers to finish a series or write the half dozen sequels that follow the first two.

[article]

The whole idea of the internet was an exchange of idea's and thoughts, and when you start censoring what gets through, you basically cripple the whole concept.

[attach]

Amen.

Ken White over at Popehat had a nice piece on that which illustrates how even people who truly believe themselves to be advocates of free speech are somehow blind when it comes to their own demands for censorship. In this case journalist Nicholas Jackson's rant against sports commentator Chris Broussard's recent rant about homosexuality and gay marriage.

It seems Mr. Jackson wants to suppress Broussard's rambling bible invoking comments by branding them a form of "hate speech."  He then goes on to completely misinterpret US laws regarding freedom of speech, and present a totally erroneous argument that US courts have historically moved to restrict freedom of speech (and have supposedly done so) when, in fact, US courts have done the exact opposite.

And why does journalist and self proclaimed free speech supporter Nicholas Jackson want comments like Broussrd's retricted or outlawed? Look no further than Mr. Jackson's article written for the Pacific Standard, where he tells us:

...Over the years, the U.S. Supreme Court has tightened the definition of free speech over and over again. <NOTE from 40hz:This is not true according to attorney Ken White.>
 -
As a 15-year-old, that made me livid. Now, as a 25-year-old, I appreciate those restrictions, because, frankly, I don’t want to listen to your bullshit. In fact, I don’t think the existing restrictions go far enough.

Ah yes. Yet another 20-something that doesn't want to listen to any bullshit - other than his own - as Ken's Popehat article points out.


Here's an excerpt:

Chris Broussard is a dinosaur snarling at the oncoming asteroid. Even opposition to gay marriage is doomed in the long term, let alone dwindling opposition to gays and lesbians living openly. If they are angered by people like Jason Collins, Broussard and his ilk are destined for lives of increasingly marginalized bitterness and resentment.

But that's not enough for some who think Chris Broussard's views should be suppressed by force of law. For instance, over at Pacific Standard, Nicholas Jackson uses Chris Broussard as an opportunity to call for censorship and be thoroughly wrong about free speech and the First Amendment. It's typical for people to react to obnoxious speech by waving their arms and proclaiming vaguely there oughta be a law; that's banal. Jackson distinguishes himself by asserting authority and then promoting disinformation about the law, all in the service of an argument that the law should prohibit Broussard's speech.

Read the whole article here.
 

[in]

ROFLMFAO   ...But you have to admit, she is half right. Everybody in IT related fields has a FB account ... Because it is only the people that truly are in IT that know better..  

Ah Stoic! There are times when you cut through the chaff and put your finger directly on it. Bravo!

(Wish I thought of that comeback when I was talking to her. Oh well. It's cataloged for next time!)

It's probably worth a read. As I said, I'm still not sure - and I haven't read the subsequent installments which fans have told me are better once you have the background in the first book to fall back on. It's not so much the erotic aspects (which I have no problem with if they're well written and have a good plot or storyline behind them) as I am with the fallen angel motif and (to me) the heavy lifting of societal concepts found in Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith.

I guess I'm saying I can't decide if it's actually good - or highly derivative.

re: 50 Shades of Gray

Read it and I'm not impressed. I found it rather predictable and juvenile. Other novelists have handled the subject far better, so I don't see what the big deal was for so many. Of course, there were people who thought 9-1/2 Weeks was a masterpiece, so no surprise there I suppose.

IMHO if you're going to write an erotic story - write a good erotic story. (It's a lot more difficult than it sounds.) 50 Shades never gets beyond kinky. And like Terry Pratchett observed: 'Erotic' uses a feather - 'kinky,' the entire chicken.

I'll have to get back to you on my final opinion of Kushiel's Dart. What did you think of it?

"Purple prose" aside? (I have a large vocabulary and I very much like James Joyce and Henry James so I don't have a problem with dense writing styles.) Truth be told, I haven't decided if it's actually a clever fantasy story; or yet another example of an exercise in "grad school eroticism" masquerading as a scifi/fantasy novel.
 

@kyrathababa - out of curiosity...what did you think of Kushiel's Dart?

I've had trouble making up my mind about that one. Even after a second read.

+1 w/Stephen earlier - If you've ever 'slept' on one you'll know...

[attachthumb=#]

^Nice one Tao! That opens up a whole new can of legal worms for these legislators!

Do you comply with the law that allows your employer to demand access. (I never joined a social site because I was expecting this btw.*) Or do you comply with laws governing contracts for the TOS  you agreed to when you opened your social site account.

Hmmm...bullshit new law of doubtful constitutionality and legality vs long established contract and tort laws plus numerous cases involving online TOS which now have legal precedent following judicial resolution...

Dunno. It could still go either way.

-----------

[attach]

*Of course it may be a challenge getting an employer to accept being told you don't tweet or have a FB or Google account. I did a sales presentation not too long ago, and a twenty-something contract administrator for the company we were pitching oh-so-casually asked for my FB or G+ account so her department could "communicate informally" with me. When I told her I had neither and preferred to use secure e-mail for all my business electronic communications, she wasn't happy - stopped just short of calling me a liar - and informed me that everybody under the age of 80 has a Facebook or Google+ account. Especially if they're people in "computer and IT related" fields. (Note: this is the second time I've run into this btw.)

I told her: "I've got news for you..."

We learned first thing next day that we wouldn't be getting the contract. She sent us a fax.

[here]

^Exactly right. Most people don't know that. Give the lady a star!

But it gets even worse. What about intimidation and expectations of private speech when it comes to your employers? Lookee here. Scary!
 

(see attachment in previous post)

[attach]

[here]

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

There's a very interesting (and vaguely alarming) article by Jeffrey Rosen over at New Republic that reports on a recent meeting hosted at Stanford Law School where a very small number of people working for some of the largest Internet businesses got together to formulate policies that will have a far reaching effect on what "content" actually makes it onto the web.

Read it here.

A year ago this month, Stanford Law School hosted a little-noticed meeting that may help decide the future of free speech online. It took place in the faculty lounge, where participants were sustained in their deliberations by bagels and fruit platters. Among the roughly two-dozen attendees, the most important were a group of fresh-faced tech executives, some of them in t-shirts and unusual footwear, who are in charge of their companies’ content policies. Their positions give these young people more power over who gets heard around the globe than any politician or bureaucrat—more power, in fact, than any president or judge.

 

Maybe not to everyone's taste. But this performance always makes me smile. Two biggies if you're into busking and traditional Irish: this is 'Mundy' (aka Edmund Enright) and Sharon Shannon performing Steve Earle's hit song Galway Girl.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3V-oXwCWL4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3V-oXwCWL4</a>
 

The problem with Libre is that it basically loads as a suite. So there's a base memory footprint of about 28 megs for the main bin which always gets loaded - plus an additional 7 to 16 megs for each app in the suite you open. It's an approach that has provoked much debate over the years.

Back when machines were slower there might have been some rationale for loading all the common code needed by the suite up front to save time when opening and closing apps. But with the speed of today's systems I don't think that justification (if it is still the justification) makes sense any more.