Dept. of Signal Boost

[kaffy_r]

I Have a Dreamwidth Account, But LJ Is Home, and So ...

Originally posted by deathpixie at Signal Boost: Return of the DDoS

For those wanting to know more about the recent DDoS attacks, yes, it looks like it was the Russian government trying to shut down the dissidents again.

As I said last time, while it's frustrating not to have access, LJ is a lot more than a social network platform. From the article:

"LiveJournal isn’t just a social network. It’s also a platform for organizing civic action. Dozens of network projects and groups mobilize people to solve specific problems — from defending the rights of political prisoners to saving endangered historic architecture in Moscow."

So while I know many are considering the move over to Dreamwidth and other such sites, supporting LJ is a way we can help support those who use it for more than a writing/roleplaying/social venue.


Also, as a FYI, LJ is giving paid users effected by the outage two weeks of paid time as compensation.

Comments

[penguin2.livejournal.com]

Still supporting LJ via my paid accounts. As mentioned. Boo sucks to the Putin Gang!

[kaffy_r]

Yup; the one thing I'll say for the Russian thugs is that they aren't nearly as inventive in preventing their people from having Internet freedom as, say, the Chinese, who saw the "dangers" of the Internet early on and physically created an in-country system that they could more or less control, and make it the only system in which people could access the aether. That doesn't mean that millions of Chinese citizens aren't accessing the wider world; it just means that tens of millions can't do it because they lack the tech-oriented know-how to deke out the safeguards and come out into the world. At least the Russians haven't been able to do that.

[penguin2.livejournal.com]

Filing this info, thx! And I continue to hope that the Bamboo Curtain will ultimately be defeated by the internet and iPods, just as the Iron Curtain was defeated by the Beatles and Levis...

[kaffy_r]

That makes two of us.

[yamx]

I have no intention of leaving LJ, but I also see no harm in using DW as well. Since DW allows crossposting even if you have a free account, it really takes no extra effort to mirror my journal there.

The very fact that the DDoSs are political and very likely funded by the government tells me that there'll be more. Knowing that, I'd rather have a way I'll be able to access my stuff when that happens.

I do worry how long LJ will be able to withstand this. The government can afford to throw a LOT of resources at this. I fear that at some point, keeping LJ running will be too expensive to keep it a profitable business. So that's another reason I want my stuff backed-up.

But I won't leave LJ as long as it's here.

[kaffy_r]

You're absolutely right about the need to keep an alternative at hand; that's why I decided I'd start putting things up on my Dreamwidth Account and making more use of it, expanding my circle of whateverthehelltheycallthemoverthere, and exploring some of the DW communities, too.

The one bright spot in the DDoS saga is, as the Moscow Times article notes, each attack actually undermines the Kremlin's ultimate goal. Bloggers in Russia are now doing exactly what you and I are doing — looking to alternate blogging platforms to mirror what they have. Who knows? DW may become their mirror site of choice!

[yamx]

I hope it will be more dispersed than that. If it's any one service, the Russian government will just attack that next; but if they spread out all over the net - well, they can't take down everything. :)

[kaffy_r]

Your suggestion makes sense, but people tend to want to cluster in one place to do their talking — it's probably an unconscious attempt to replicate in-person conversation, which one can't do easily if half the party are in the kitchen, and the other half in the upstairs study, as it were.

Wow. I just used 'as it were' in a sentence. Someone slap me and bring me to my senses.

[penguin2.livejournal.com]

Bwuh? No, I'll shake your hand and beam at you, though. I've used as it were since foreverty. I also, unconsciously and unforcedly***, use one and one's in conversation. And sometimes they and their, with an equal amount of forethought, for the same purpose. Likewise for parallel constructions (yes, even in casual conversation) and the subjunctive tense (ditto). And likewise-likewise for lolcatspeak (spoken and written) and a vast panoply of pointedly wonky 'internet orthography' (though not 'wierd'. Never 'wierd'. Or 'alot', or 'everyday' when I mean 'every day', or, well... you being a paid writer know all too well what the worst of the Iggernce Based Phonetic Spelling Nightmares are).

Protect and preserve the old, if it still works. Embrace the new, when it works and isn't just a memeified result of poor education. I haz spoken :D

[kaffy_r]

I am a fan, if not a fanatic, of formal speech, and have been ever since I was a youngster growing up in an old-fashioned household. Even now, I have to fight my way past habits that would make my AP-trained editors break out in hives.

And yet I also love lolcat speak and other signs of how fast our language changes and how fecund it is. In some ways I imagine language being several things, all at once. To horribly misuse some botanical imagery, I see it as something that grows as slowly as oaks and redwoods, something that explodes into growth with the speed rain-watered toadstools or elephant ears, and something that has the tenacity of arctic lichen. No matter what it is, it will survive in some form - and that form will always be loved and loathed in equal measure by all of us.

[penguin2.livejournal.com]

~applauds~

That would be a yes to all of it :-)

[penguin2.livejournal.com]

Whoops, forgot the footnote as usual...

*** Which, if it wasn't a legal word before I typed it here, I now declare to be one :P