Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. If you sign up to get notifications of the Writer's Block question of the day, you'll now see the daily question in the email notification, so you'll have a little extra time to ponder before you post. You can subscribe to Writers Block notifications here
3. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
4. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
5. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
6. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

Can anyone explain why he is the poster child for some conservatives right now? He calls himself a libertarian and has not been able to engage on issues beyond making goofy faces when liberals say some things. Is it just a reaction against what is considered intellectual discourse? I don't know.

( Brief Intro )

To keep this post from growing into a dense essay, I think digital multicasting is the answer. We all know terrestrial broadcasting, and their networks. One thing the HDTV conversion did was create the capacity for digital subchannels. In the analog signal days that were like so several months ago, there would be a transmitting station that created a channel 4. But now, there's channel 4.1, 4.2, and so on.

Well, the MSM doesn't have enough content to fill it. These channels might have AccuWeather, and that's it, because they don't have the supply to fill it with. Well, we've seen a similar broadcast wasteland before, AM radio. We all know what happened. If you're like me, you've read a nauseating amount of columns detailing the rise of syndicated political talk radio. So let's jump ahead to the wilderness we see now.

I'll excerpt a recent peice from TV Week:

Do you watch any of the new local digital channels?

No, neither do I.

Welcome to television’s new wasteland of local digital multicasting. Now there are seven zillion more channels and still the same complaint, “all these channels and nothing to watch.” More accurately, there’s little worth watching on these new digital channels.

In June, local stations finally made the long talked about - more like ballyhooed - transition from analog to digital. Along with the transition, stations were allocated several digital channels where they could - I emphasize could - multicast different programs using the same spectrum space it takes for one analog channel. Simply explained, a local station, say one broadcasting on Channel 4, can also program channels 4.1., 4.2., 4.3. and 4.4. Suffice it to say, whatever digital magic makes it happen, it’s pretty cool. But pretty cool to a point.

I could gush with giddiness over the absurdity of this "problem." Just like with conservative news/talk at the end of the Cold War, there's one crowd dismayed that there's no content to fill a vast desert, and there's another group bummed that they don't have anyone of their own culture breaking in.

I want in on it. I've been trying to learn all I can't about first-run syndication, how barter syndication works, and that whole business. I want to be a among the colonists that pioneer the place. I want to build everything. Anyone here recall Andrew Klaven's pinning to have a whole infrastructure to ourselves? We can't just make movies, because they'll receive nothing but derision from the establishment critics, and won't be featured on the establishment talk shows, or award ceremonies, and everything else. We have to build our own critical review infrastructure and talk shows and everything else, where it will be received.

I won't plug what I'm doing, but I'm stumbling blindly through learning how to do one part. What about you? Can I get anything beyond another condescending "good luck with that." Hello? Oh, and one last thing. Would anyone be interested in a community to talk just about that?

Can anyone explain why she is the poster child for some conservatives right now?  She is not electable and has not been able to engage on issues beyond tightly scripted platitudes.   Is it just a reaction against what is considered intellectual discourse?  I don't know.  

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

Wars. We all understand very well that it’s just somebody’s business, somebody’s money. Cruel, bloody money.
Millionaires, multi-millionaires – their money are used in arms traffic, politics. All that happens in order to earn MORE money. I address to all oligarchs whose money are concerned with politics (and it means that they are concerned with all the wars):
BUY these five paintings! Give your fucking money for them! Hang them in your room, look at them and think about death. Think about those who died for your money. Think about death which is represented on these pictures and think about life which they are washed with – these pictures are sodden with my milk, with my life. I did it as hope that HUMAN life would become more important for you than money. Buy these paintings, accept this life and remember about it always. Look at them and think about the fact that you will die too and all the world can perish if we don’t invest money in life. Everything can disappear, and what for you accumulated all these millions and billions?
Buy these pictures and show to all the people fighting for their lives that you are worth being called a HUMAN BEING. After your death the world will remember that you didn’t live here for nothing.
Please! All those who read this – add me as a friend! Help me to extend my manifest. It must find it’s addressees.
LET’S SAVE LIFE! LET’S STOP WARS!

sixwordstories
Whether you're in the mood for a creative challenge or you're short on time or attention span, this semi-addictive community is perfect for those who find flash fiction way long. Once you get the hang of it, you won't be able to stop. The prince turned into a frog. The girl ran home to mother. Tough to write. Easy to read. It's a double threesome of fun.

dailyfoodie
Delicious, ambitious, and occasionally nutritious dishes make for an eclectic, all-you-can-eat feast. Whether you're searching for recipes for your next dinner party or you're jonesing for a late-night brownie fix, your cravings are sure to be well sated. A warm and inclusive community that welcomes all orientations, from carnivores to vegans, from gourmands to junk-food junkies. Guaranteed bias-free, food-positive, and pan-epicurian.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33748707/ns/politics-health_care_reform/

Sadly, not a kidney stone (though it seems similar). I'm talking healthcare "reform."

Key points-

You can now be sent to jail for living.
2010 cannot come soon enough
It still has to go to the senate
Democrats are reforming America's economy so quickly, and almost without thought, that we may end up in a very different America. I guess President Obama really did want to change this country, on a profound level.



People are still losing jobs.

Any thoughts on these terrible events from the community?

I extend sympathies to those harmed by this scum.