Jan 9: I *hate* chain letters ...
1. My dad was in the Royal Air Force which meant a new house, new friends and a new school every two or three years. I still find it hard to stay in one situation for too long, so contracting is a blessing.
2. I was a big hit in one of my Primary School plays (aged 7 or 8), playing one of the Ugly Sisters. Brought the house down, I'm told.
3. Although I narrowly failed to be accepted for an exclusive Flight Systems Engineer apprenticeship in the RAF, my first job was working on a YOP scheme (Youth Opportunities Program) as an office junior in the smallest carpet shop in Edinburgh. I lasted a month. My second was another YOP position in the Department of Building at Edinburgh University, where I helped mix concrete cubes and crush them before cleaning up the mess afterwards. Fortunately there were more interesting sides to building so I had the opportunity to work on a DEC PDP 11 running Bell Labs Unix that some architects were using to write a CAD system. I liked the anechoic chamber, too. Everyone should take the opportunity to experience an anechoic chamber at least once.
4. I love watching sport - almost all sports, although I struggle with Baseball.
5. In 1989 I worked as what was referred to as a Light Jockey at The Amphitheatre which was probably Edinburgh's premier nightclub at the time. This involved pushing buttons to control the intelligent lighting, smoke machines and lasers and, at around midnight on Friday and Saturday nights, 'performing' a 5 minute light-show to instrumental music. In fact, the job largely consisted of being paid £35 per night, cash-in-hand, for having a few pints of lager and people-watching. Unfortunately, I was also the only incumbent who managed to avoid any romantic pay-off from the undoubted status attached to the role.
6. Early public speaking engagements included a reading in York Minster when I was 13 and a contribution to a debate at the Banking, Insurance and Finance Union's national conference when I was 26. Couldn't shut me up, even then. I remember wearing a 'Free Tommy Sheridan' t-shirt at the union conference.
7. I pretend I can play guitar, but I can't really. I know more chords than most accomplished guitarists do but I just can't play them very well.
8. I'm obsessive about sound engineering, even though I've never had a job doing it. I had quite a lot of recording gear in my house in the mid-90s, but don't any more. No-one is likely to have to listen to the results again.
I'm sure I could have come up with another eight, but that's what springs to mind at the moment.
I'll try to avoid those who have already participated or I've noticed have been asked, so time to pass the baton on to Paul Vallee, Peter K, Dominic Delmolino, Jeff Moss, William Robertson, Lisa Dobson, Frits Hoogland and Nuno Souto.
#1 - Jake said:
2008-01-09 21:58 - (Reply)
Thanks for playing along, you join David Haimes and Dan Norris in the used-to-have-a-production-support-job category.
We have a few ex-musicians too. Should start an Oracle band.
Jake
#2 - Howard Rogers said:
2008-01-10 02:33 - (Reply)
Doug: since you hate chain letters, perhaps you could do the decent thing and write to your 8 nominees asking them NOT to play this stupid, time-wasting and information-destroying "game".
Try finding anything sensible on OraNA at the moment. You will be lucky: the place is flooded with complete rubbish of the '8 things you never really wanted to know about me but I'm going to inflict them on you anyway' sort.
Please: share what you like, but don't encourage blog spam like this.
Jake: you're an idiot.
#2.1 - Doug Burns said:
2008-01-10 07:00 - (Reply)
As someone who has written at length on the activities of cuddly toys, you don't really expect me to encourage only 'sensible' content, do you?
What I hate about chain letters is the sense that passing them on will somehow spare you from a terrible fate or bring you special luck. There's no sense of superstition or blind faith here.
Personally, I think it's slightly more interesting to hear a few things about people that I don't know yet (some I might care about and some I won't) than it is about something I've already heard about a few times now (rlwrap, for example, as you point out in your recent blog).
There are only so many related blogs and I expect it will blow over in a couple of days, with those who don't want to participate refusing to do so, and good on them.
What's most important is that the titles of the various posts makes it completely obvious to me what I can ignore if I'm not interested in them.
To coin a cliche, it's just a bit of fun which appeals to some people's taste, but not all.
#2.1.1 - Doug Burns said:
2008-01-10 07:24 - (Reply)
the titles of the various posts makes it completely obvious to me what I can ignore if I'm not interested in them.
Although I note, in retrospect, that my post does not have an obvious 'ignore me' title!
#2.1.1.1 - Marco Gralike said:
2008-01-10 10:24 - (Reply)
LOL.
Apologies accepted
#2.1.1.2 - Howard Rogers said:
2008-01-10 11:37 - (Reply)
Oh, and by the way, it's got nothing to do with choosing to ignore this stuff or not. With a blog aggregator like OraNA, if there is one good post about something juicy, it will quickly not be on the front or second page because the '8 things' stuff (which I do ignore) pushes it downwards.
Bad drivel is actively driving out good information. That's the point. It's got nothing to do with distinctive blog titles or choosing to ignore something: the flood is actively taking my choice *away* because of the way Blog aggregators work.
#2.1.1.2.1 - Doug Burns said:
2008-01-11 07:29 - (Reply)
Bad drivel is actively driving out good information. That's the point. It's got nothing to do with distinctive blog titles or choosing to ignore something: the flood is actively taking my choice *away* because of the way Blog aggregators work.
I agree. I've started to notice this about OraNA anyway. Because there are so many Apps blogs on there, which I have no interest in personally, I'm finding it more difficult to find the stuff I'm interested in these days (although it's still far easier than the manual alternative). Of course, blog-tagging has made that worse for a few days.
But it's a problem with the aggregators (or a feature, depending on your perspective). Asking people to change their behaviour (in any direction) for the benefit of aggregators is likely to be a losing battle ....
#2.1.2 - Howard Rogers said:
2008-01-10 11:34 - (Reply)
To coin a cliche, it's just a bit of fun which appeals to some people's taste, but not all.
That was rather my point. It's NOT just a piece of harmless fun. OraNA has had a flood of these posts. Pamela Anderson is currently top of the content there.
Actually, I suppose she is just a bit of harmless fun... but anyway, I digress...
The flood of these posts is ridiculous. Passing this stuff on to one or two might have been fine (though 2^8 is still a flood).
Why otherwise intelligent people have been lulled into thinking this is harmless fun, I have no idea.
It's like all those people who sign up to Facebook and simply hand over all their personal information that the CIA would have spent billions trying to acquire... and failing to do so as effectively! Everyone of the people who have participated in this charade would hit the delete button immediately if a 'Bill Gates will send a dollar to poor kids if you send this to 5 other people' email hit their inboxes. But 'the Oracle community will know more about you if you pass this on to 8 other people' somehow doesn't count.
It's bizarre.
Meanwhile, OraNA and its ilk remain offlimits to me for just a "couple of days" until it all "blows over", so that's all right then. Not.
#2.1.2.1 - Doug Burns said:
2008-01-11 07:26 - (Reply)
Passing this stuff on to one or two might have been fine (though 2^8 is still a flood).
Yes, that might have been better but I'd still argue that there simply aren't that many Oracle-related bloggers for this to be a massive problem. Slower would have been better and if it gets much worse, I'm sure I'll say that you were right and start moaning about it.
Why otherwise intelligent people have been lulled into thinking this is harmless fun, I have no idea.
Because *they* think it is mostly harmless, because *they* don't see a big problem in wading through some cr*p in aggregators. You do, which is fair enough too. I think it's slightly dull and over-the-top, but I don't think it's something I'm too concerned by, to be honest. Think of all the rubbish that forum participators wade through on a regular basis!
But 'the Oracle community will know more about you if you pass this on to 8 other people' somehow doesn't count.
Maybe it's because there's actually something in this for people. They *want* to know some trivial details about people they know only vaguely. Those people might not normally venture these trivial details in passing, as you or I would.
Meanwhile, OraNA and its ilk remain offlimits to me for just a "couple of days" until it all "blows over", so that's all right then. Not.
Well, yes, it is. Because, let's face it , we're talking about a blog aggregator here and in the general scheme of things it's just not that important to me. So it's annoying for a few days? So what? Life's like that sometimes and people make mistakes, or have different tastes and outlooks.
My apologies for the sluggish replies, by the way. Blogging is completely out during the working day so if I happen to be out in the evening (as I was last night), it leaves very little time for this stuff.
In aummary, I'm not asking you to 'chill out' but I am asking you to accept that other people might just not care about this stuff as much as you because they're, well, different, not because they're idiots.
You know fine well how crazy I am about this Web 2.0 stuff myself, but I didn't and still don't see this as a big problem personally.
#2.1.2.1.1 - Howard Rogers said:
2008-01-11 12:56 - (Reply)
other people might just not care about this stuff as much as you because they're, well, different,
The analogy that keeps springing to my mind is ipod users on the train of a morning. Every day, I have to put up with at least 8 lots of white noise because 8 individuals care more for their right to be different and individual (and to listen to their music at whatever volume seems right for them) than my right to not have their music choices foisted on me vicariously.
I've used OraNA for a long time. It's my main mechanism for finding out what people are blogging about. From it, just a week or two ago, I realised I shouldn't be setting db_file_multiblock_read_count any more. I like it. It works. It has a high utility value for me.
People are absolutely entitled not to use OraNA, not to deem it important -and even to see it, as Tim Hall seems to do, as some sort of parasitical entity that has 'skimmed' his work for Eddie's own personal advantage. But none of that gives those people a right to make OraNA useless for me.
(And lest I be thought ego-maniacal about this, it is obviously my belief that I am not the only person on the planet that regards OraNA as a high-utility site).
Tim tells me to stop using a browser and use an RSS reader instead... so yeah, I just have to install new software, do things different, change my behaviour because someone else wants to behave in their 'individual' and 'different' way.
I did once ask, perfectly politely, one lady to turn down her music, and was spat at and told to get a life and some earplugs for my trouble. She, of course, was just being "different" in your lexicon, I suppose?!
So it's annoying for a few days? So what?
It's already been three days, and the posts are still coming in thick and fast. And you're fooling yourself if you really think it will be just a few days. Jake's original stated instructions were that the game was free to expand to any blog you liked, not just Oracle blogs. So the virus will be passed outside the Oracle community, and as you know from the common cold and flu, once some other community is infected, you can confidently expect to get re-infected, over and over again, for a very long time to come.
All I will say is that I am pleased to read that Pete Finnegan thinks the thing isn't right. I notice one or two very high profile bloggers, too, who haven't (yet?) participated. If their non-participation is as a result of their choosing not to do so, and I haven't asked so I really am just making assumptions, that should tell you something about whether this really is a "so what?" you can dismiss lightly.
The word "idiot", by the way, does not mean stupid or ill-educated. It means either (a) foolish or senseless or (b) (archaically) someone with a mental retardation to about the mental age of 3. I assume we can agree that no-one capable of writing a blog is suffering from a mental retardation to the mental age of 3, so that leaves meaning (a), which is precisely the meaning I had in mind when I used the word.
#2.1.2.1.1.1 - Doug Burns said:
2008-01-12 11:57 - (Reply)
I think I'm getting to the end of having anything useful to add to this debate, not least because I agree with most of your points in this comment.
I did once ask, perfectly politely, one lady to turn down her music, and was spat at and told to get a life and some earplugs for my trouble. She, of course, was just being "different" in your lexicon, I suppose?!
No, not at all, and I firmly believe that people should have some sense of community responsibility and any individuals freedom has to pay heed to the effect on others.
However, any community consists of such a disparate bunch of individuals that there's bound to be disagreement on what that means. I, for one, don't mind that noise that comes from other people's headphones too much, but it depends how loud it is and what situation I'm in, so how can we possibly come up with a definition of what's acceptable? Sound meters? In the absence of a definition, we each take our own individual stance and if the majority can agree a stance, so much the better. Not ideal, but inevitable, I reckon.
That's why I've never had any argument with your point that this has cluttered up OraNA. It has, but it just doesn't bother me as much as it does you. That's all there is to this argument to me.
Now, does that mean your view should be ignored? Absolutely not. Does that mean that a minority view should dictate the behaviour of others? No, I don't think so, but it's not so absolute this time. It depends on the degree of harm.
And you're fooling yourself if you really think it will be just a few days.
Quite possibly true and, if that happens, I'll join the queue of complaint and admit my error, but I still don't think it would matter too much to me - I'd simply vote with my feet (as I don't bother too much with forums) or someone would come up with a filtering solution.
All I will say is that I am pleased to read that Pete Finnegan thinks the thing isn't right. I notice one or two very high profile bloggers, too, who haven't (yet?) participated. If their non-participation is as a result of their choosing not to do so, and I haven't asked so I really am just making assumptions, that should tell you something about whether this really is a "so what?" you can dismiss lightly.
From the outset, I assumed that there would be a significant minority who wouldn't like this. I would have bet money on Pete Finnigan and Jonathan Lewis refusing to participate and taken a flyer at Tom Kyte and others, too, while I was at it. Now, whilst that does suggest that your position is not as unusual as some people are painting it, it also doesn't mean that you or any of those others are necessarily right - just that you all don't like it. Which is fine and why I said in one of my first comments
"with those who don't want to participate refusing to do so, and good on them."
I respect people enough to leave that decision to them.
However, I must admit that when Pete Finnigan suggested in a comment elsewhere that this was some type of mysterious scam, I had to stop myself falling off the chair, I laughed so much. I was going to reply, but don't think it deserved a response. What a bizarre suggestion which only indicates how out of control this whole debate has become.
The word "idiot", by the way, does not mean stupid or ill-educated.
Yes, but there are many words that I understand carry more emotional weight for people than their bald dictionary definition, which is why I'd personally be circumspect about who I call an idiot. But that's personal preference and my language in other areas precludes me from labouring the point!
#2.1.2.1.1.1.1 - Howard Rogers said:
2008-01-12 21:56 - (Reply)
A couple of small points and then I'll stop cluttering up your blog.
"words ...carry more emotional weight for people than their bald dictionary definition"
Absolutely. But when you hear people saying. "She's an idiot if she goes out with him" or "She looks idiotic in that dress", I suspect people aren't using the word with any bald, dictionary definition in mind. They mean 'utterly moronic','foolish', 'senseless', 'rather silly'... a whole raft of meanings, few of which have anything to do with bald, dictionary definitions. It is idiomatically used to be curtly dismissive of the silliness of something or someone, and it's therefore a word that I still maintain applies to Jake in spades, and several others too.
If you ever see kids spray painting bus shelters or walls in your neighbourhood, what do you call them?
Moving on...
The very nub of the problem here is the assymetrical nature of it. The chain mail is just one itsy-bitsy post for any given blog owner. All over and done with and put out of mind almost immediately. Nice and easy, and besides the blog owner probably doesn't use OraNA, doesn't therefore think screwing it up is as important as someone that uses it, likes it and values it. It's so easy, isn't it, to toss just one bit of litter on the street: after all, it's just a tiny, wafer-thin piece of litter. Isn't it?!
There's a guy over on Jake's blog commenting, "Oh, I don't know what all the fuss is about. It's not an exponential growth of traffic at all! It's only 20% of the posts on OraNA that are '8 things' posts". So that's alright then?! No, of course it's not alright, but it's this complete indifference to the effect of "only" 20% litter that I can't fathom.
You've said it in passing, and I see William Robertson has also said it below: "I don't use OraNA, I don't find it useful. Too many undifferentiated posts about things I don't find of interest".
If that was a valid argument for therefore shrugging your shoulders when OraNA gets flooded by crapola (and I'm not suggesting you or William have gone on to argue that), then these arguments would also be equally valid: "I don't have kids, so I don't care what happens to the education system" or "I don't drive a car, so let the roads crumble" or "I don't personally find the park useful, so fine: let the developers bulldoze it for an office block".
It's again because these things are so asymmetric that we don't leave school- or road-building programs to the decisions of individuals, however much we respect them. We don't hypothecate taxes and say, 'Oh well, if you don't have use for a school, feel free not to pay your money'. There are social goods we all pay for, because they have wide community benefit, even if you personally don't benefit from them.
#2.1.2.1.1.1.1.1 - Doug Burns said:
2008-01-12 23:10 - (Reply)
For what it's worth, I actualy use OraNA quite a lot, as you do, because it's good for picking up blogs I might not know about yet. And, yes, it's value has diminished with all the '8' posts and it's value has also diminished (for me at least) with all of the Apps posts. At some point it might become so diminished that I won't use it, but it hasn't reached that point yet for me.
#2.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.1 - Howard Rogers said:
2008-01-13 06:51 - (Reply)
Again, it's irrelevant whether it affects you personally or significantly. The fact is, it's affected it. End of story.
To try to draw some sort of equivalence between a pyramid scheme of personal trivia and posts about some aspect of Oracle that you happen not to be interested in is really pretty feeble. The real-world equivalent is to call spray-paint graffiti "art" and say it deserves funding from the Arts Council accordingly. And yes, there are people that do that, but I'm kind of hoping you're not really one of them.
The fact is, people writing technical posts about Apps don't hold contests to see if they can flood an aggregator with hundreds of posts, for a start. Furthermore, selective reading of an aggregator to filter out the (say) ten posts on any given day you're not interested in is rather a different matter from not being able to read any meaningful content on the front page at all because a dozen or more '8' posts have just come in the past 15 minutes, with more to come.
I really would like to know what you would say to a couple of vandals you caught spray-painting a bus stop near your home (assuming you drive a car and don't often catch buses).
Do you really say "It's all a bit of harmless fun"? "Just a game"? "Never mind, my car's safe in the garage"? "Oh well, bus passengers will just have to catch a train instead"? "I never asked the council to put a bus stop there in the first place"?
You probably don't say anything to them directly, if you're sensible, because they'll turn on you and beat you to a pulp if you do. Rather as sections of the Oracle community will turn on anyone that points out their "fun" is only achieved at someone else's detriment. But I bet you say something under your breath or to yourself in your head. And I bet it's not any of the above.
#3 - William Robertson said:
2008-01-12 16:25 - (Reply)
Thanks for the invitation. Unfortunately I don't have a personal blog on which to post 8 facts of potential use to identity fraudsters. Also I can't think of 8 bloggers who haven't already been tagged, so it would have had to stop with me anyway. I have been trying to come up with a WTF angle, so far without success.
I completely agree that the existing blog aggregators have long been made useless to me by the sheer volume of undifferentiated posts about stuff I'm not interested in, like Java. Time was when I could check OraBlogs every day or two and keep up. Currently Thunderbird tells me there are 820 unread posts and I'm not even going to look.
