Setting the world to rights
Mar. 4th, 2005 10:16 amFirstly, let me point everybody to this post of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
leora's about the so-called archiving service that is floating about on the meme-waves right now. Just in case it isn't completely obvious to everyone how much of a Bad Fucking Idea this is, leora spells it out very clearly.
If you want to make a local backup of your own entries, which is more of a good idea, LJArchive is very good in lots of ways. Highly usable, open source and generally yummy. However, it's Windows based. If you use a sensible operating system I'm less able to help you, but if you use a sensible OS and understand Perl, you may find this stuff helpful. Or you may not, but I think that's where to start looking.
Anyway, having got that out of the way. My last post was a bit of a rant about scientific illiteracy compounded by mystification of fairly basic science. In the comments, it kind of degenerated into a general bitchfest about the state of education. So to follow that up, my challenge for the day is this:
Can you name one thing that everybody should know but few people actually do? Because I'm feeling mean this morning, I'm restricting you to one thing. And it has to be described in 100 words or less, mainly because I'm trying to exclude cheating definitions of 'one thing' that are actually several distinct things.
Proposals for how ignorance of your chosen topic might be combatted are welcome, and can be as long as you like. Vague proposals such as 'make primary school education work properly' will be frowned upon, however. I may give prizes for the best suggestions.
leora's about the so-called archiving service that is floating about on the meme-waves right now. Just in case it isn't completely obvious to everyone how much of a Bad Fucking Idea this is, leora spells it out very clearly.If you want to make a local backup of your own entries, which is more of a good idea, LJArchive is very good in lots of ways. Highly usable, open source and generally yummy. However, it's Windows based. If you use a sensible operating system I'm less able to help you, but if you use a sensible OS and understand Perl, you may find this stuff helpful. Or you may not, but I think that's where to start looking.
Addendum 4.3.05: Apparently, it is not in fact as obvious as I thought why this archiving service is evil. Let me spell this out in so many words: giving your password to a site you know nothing about is stupid. Even if you're prepared to take that risk for yourself, letting them use that password to read and make public copies of other people's Friends Only entries is not acceptable IMO. Even if you disagree with me, please do not "archive" my Friends Only entries offsite. I have no way of enforcing this, but I would be very, very pissed off I found someone was breaching my privacy like that.
Anyway, having got that out of the way. My last post was a bit of a rant about scientific illiteracy compounded by mystification of fairly basic science. In the comments, it kind of degenerated into a general bitchfest about the state of education. So to follow that up, my challenge for the day is this:
Can you name one thing that everybody should know but few people actually do? Because I'm feeling mean this morning, I'm restricting you to one thing. And it has to be described in 100 words or less, mainly because I'm trying to exclude cheating definitions of 'one thing' that are actually several distinct things.
Proposals for how ignorance of your chosen topic might be combatted are welcome, and can be as long as you like. Vague proposals such as 'make primary school education work properly' will be frowned upon, however. I may give prizes for the best suggestions.
