Disqus - Latest Comments for josephdunphy

Re: Movin’ On Up, Part 1: 404

Time Warp Cafe / Joseph Dunphy — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 18:10:31 -0000

"The only thing that does change is that I have to now recognize that our
media is no longer the knight of liberty. They are today a business
that is driven by politics and profit margins"

True.

"Thank you for your reply."

You're welcome.

"I will be ready for execution at dawn."

Good to hear, but really, I wasn't planning to shoot you. I don't even have a gun. As I am in a different part of the country, I probably couldn't hit you even if I did. I guess I could do that thing where I make a pretend gun out of my hand and yell "bang, bang" as I shoot at the computer screen, but people look at me funny when I do that.

Hope you'll understand. Nothing personal.

Re: Movin’ On Up, Part 1: 404

Time Warp Cafe / Joseph Dunphy — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:16:24 -0000

Mr. Franklin,

I'm not a fan of Disqus, either, as you might have guessed by looking at some of my other remarks, but what makes you think that the person who deleted those remarks was working for Disqus? How do you know that it wasn't somebody at Fox News?

Here's what you do: You set up a blog on some free blogging site that will let you edit the code for your blog - Blogger and Tumblr will both work for this - and install Disqus on that blog. Let's say you've found your remarks blocked on a blog, and you don't feel that this was reasonable. You write a brief post on your new blog, linking to the post that you were commenting on, and post the comment that was unreasonably blocked or deleted as a comment on the post on your new blog. While your comment won't appear on the Fox news blog or wherever else it was, that you were trying to post the first time, it will appear on your Disqus profile.

Continuing commenting on other posts. People tend to follow links. They don't follow them to Disqus as often as they might, because the staff has insisted on having our profiles open in small windows with the address bar disabled (for reasons known only to them), but they will get followed. Lurkers travel through, find your comments, maybe see that they really shouldn't have been blocked, and the bad word about bad moderation gets around. At least, that's the theory.

If your comments get deleted, after you've posted them to your blog, then you can be fairly sure that Disqus did it.

Re: Movin’ On Up, Part 1: 404

Time Warp Cafe / Joseph Dunphy — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:19:59 -0000

Uh, huh.

Meanwhile, I just tried ... operative word, tried ... to link my Disqus profile to my Typepad blog using the services feature. You might notice that Typepad is one of the options. Disqus' system failed to form the link, even though all of the information it was given was correct, first showing a check in the box indicating that my Typepad account had been verified but showing no link and then, a few moments later, forgetting that it had even displayed that checked box. Awesome. Your system has Alzheimer's.

A continuation of a glorious history, really. Your RSS is malformed, so you deal with the problem by removing the rss feed icon from our profiles, and pretending that we never had feeds to begin with, nohow. Your system starts failing to link properly to our Google profiles, and your staff tries to spin its decision to not fix that, either, by saying that it's all the fault of those screwups over at Google, and by pretending to not hear, when somebody asks why you won't just let the users have the option of entering the IDs for their Google accounts manually. And now this, which I'm guessing you won't fix, either. But you do have time to share pictures of your pets with us.

Tell me - do you guys ever do anything right? I mean, anything? Do you even try to do anything right? As a user, I can seriously tell you that the only reason I even use Disqus is so that I can reply to posts used by other bloggers who've made the mistake of using your system. I would not begin to dream of inflicting it on my own users, because your staff clearly doesn't care about the quality of the work it does. I'm sure you'll come back with a serious show of attitude and blathering about the long hours and dedication seen out of everybody, but actions do speak more loudly than words, and results are what they are.

Some people go to work to work. I guess you folks are just there to play and trade snapshots of your kitties and puppies, and pretend that long hours spent around the water cooler are a sign of your dedication to something other than the fine art of slacking off. Enjoy the party while it lasts, because it will probably be over before you know it. The fan boys might be impressed, but the bill collectors won't be.

----------------

Added, July 13 at 6:07 pm

I just sent this note to Support

Title: Your system failed to form a connection to my Typepad blog on my Disqus Profile

Boy of Comment: Repeatedly, in fact, and on more than one day. The system failed to work, each time. I was using the most recent release of Firefox and Windows XP. The link never formed, even though your system was given the correct login information.

Please fix this. Please do not waste my time with the usual form letter about how to set up a site on Disqus, something that has nothing to do with anything that you've just been asked. Please do not tell me how to set my homepage link to my site on Tumblr, and then tell me that you "sensed" that this is what I really wanted. Note that I already have a homepage link, and so I obviously do know how to set those. Please just do your job.

OK?

-----------

(end of post)

Re: Testing the installation of Disqus

Time Warp Cafe / Joseph Dunphy — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 13:16:59 -0000

I am testing an installation of the Disqus system on a new blog.

Re: Disqus version 3: Introducing Disqus Comments and Disqus Profile

Time Warp Cafe / Joseph Dunphy — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:16:04 -0000

A few comments from a user who had been considering installing Disqus on one of his blogs, until recently - and I think you'll find that I speak for many who stay quiet because they don't want to be bothered with the usual flamewars that arise when fanboys hear what they don't want to hear ...

1. I notice that the link to my homepage has vanished from my Disqus profile. Is this a change in Disqus policy, or just a temporary malfunction? If we're looking at the former, and Disqus isn't going to be providing commenters with the chance to get that homepage link, then I would consider this to be a deal breaker.

As a commenter, I am not going to agree to link to a service that isn't willing to link back to me, nor am I going to spend my time writing comments for a blog configured to force me to use such a service. As a blogger, I'm not going to ask my visitors to make use of such a service, themselves. I appreciate the time and trouble that goes into crafting a well thought out response, some of which (on some blogs) have almost become posts in their own right, and see the link I give back to somebody who has positively contributed to the content on my blog as being the very least that I should even think of offering in return.

2. I notice that the buttons have failed to work in some places in our account managers, including, in an almost amusing way, the button on the form for contacting support. Trying to report a problem, and finding oneself stopped by yet another problem, is not an experience that is going to build much confidence in the service.

So far, so bad. I think the staff is slowly destroying what was once an excellent service offering intriguing possibilities, under what I take to be the theory that any attempt to combat spam is, by definition, good, whether it works or not, and whether or not the collateral damage it causes could have been reasonably avoided. I think we've all seen spammers continue to post urls where homepage links have been absent; this isn't going to slow them down one bit. But the honest site owner who wants to build up a web presence by doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing - by posting content that others want to see - stands to get really hurt by this nonsense, and I see little evidence that Disqus cares about that problem at all.

Re: Chicago O’Hare Airport UFO Art

Time Warp Cafe / Joseph Dunphy — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:57:26 -0000

They fly into O'Hare instead of Midway at midweek, and we're supposed to believe that they're intelligent?

Re: Paul Addis Arrested, Planned To Set Fire To Grace Cathedral

Time Warp Cafe / Joseph Dunphy — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 05:51:02 -0000

Addis clearly needs to be put away. The criminal code hands us two obvious charges:

The premature burning of the man - reckless endangerment. What if somebody had been in the base of the man when it was set on fire?

The rifle incident - assault (a man in the clerk's position could be put in reasonable fear of imminent bodily harm)

I'm sure that there are more, but given that he has threatened to put bullets in the backs of the heads of the students at that school, I would think that one has the basis for a psychiatric commitment: "poses a threat to himself or others". Of course, the local authorities can always wait until he actually shoots up a school, and then try to explain to the national media why they ignored the danger signs.

Yes, that would do wonderful things for San Francisco's reputation.

Re: LOLburn

Time Warp Cafe / Joseph Dunphy — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:02:47 -0000

"Hopefully it wonâ€™t be neccesary. Its fairly ridiculous that Paul would be charged with felony arson for burning â€œpropertyâ€ that was intended to be burnt anyway, albeit a few days later."

When those who came to see that fire and had helped bankroll it through their ticket purchases would know to be there; igniting it early cheated them out of the enjoyment of their purchase. Another point that you seem to be missing is that the Man does not exist in isolation. There were booths at the pedestal and, I am told, damage to the exhibits there. Those exhibits has not been intended for the fire. By acting as he did, Addis deprived the exhibitors of the opportunity to move their items out of harm's way before the (very premature) burn.

Worst of all, though, with Addis' unsanctioned burning of that which did not belong to him, is the issue of what happens if somebody is inside the Man when some yahoo decides to reschedule the Burn in that way. One should know not to be inside the Man on the night of the burn, but for some time now, the base of the Man has been a structure intended for entry by visitors, who would have no reason to expect that it might become a flaming death trap so many days before the scheduled burn. Addis ran the risk of roasting one or more of his fellow burners alive, and then snickered about it on tape.

To call him a "selfish asshole" would be to praise him too highly. He's a sociopath and needs to be put where society will be kept safe from him, albeit not for as long as one might sensibly wish.

Re: People-Powered Customer Service Via Satisfaction

Time Warp Cafe / Joseph Dunphy — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 05:57:40 -0000

To read this, one would think that nobody had ever tried to start up an alternative Burning Man forum until recently.

I took a look at the site and saw what I expected - just a small handful of posts, no real energy. Chicken and egg - nobody's posting, so the place feels dead, so nobody feels like posting.

Re: http://laughingsquid.com/burning-man-2006-photos/

Time Warp Cafe / Joseph Dunphy — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:40:39 -0000

I don't know ... the waffle looks interesting, I can't deny that, BUT ... am I the only one who sees an unhappy irony in the fact that the most iconic image to come out of a supposedly noncommercial event is a $400,000 corporate sponsored timber burn that I'm now hearing was used in a TV commercial?

Doesn't this kind of thing tend to move those who aren't in a position to hook up to that kind of cash more back in the direction of becoming spectators? If the residents of a community gather around while a commercial is being shot, does the fact that they gathered transform the shooting into folk art, or does it just remain a spectacle that distracts the man on the street without really engaging him?

Re: Burning Man Set on Fire Early Due To Arson | Laughing Squid

Time Warp Cafe / Joseph Dunphy — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 14:50:57 -0000

"wow. this is fucking HIGH-LARIOUS. high comedy from the inestimable mike tattoo. your impression, whether you know it as an impression or not, of a sanctimonious douchenozzle is top â€˜o the pops. bravo."

Oh, yes, I've heard from our Mike Bolger before and he can be a very *ahem* interesting person. However, on this one he has you nailed dead to rights.

"but, you know, even if you make it, art is not yours. the only way to control your â€œartâ€ is to keep it in your basement and never show it to anyone, ever. once you make it in any way public, it belongs to the world, to reinterpret, to malign, to praise, and to destroy. "

Really. To destroy? Try walking into a gallery when security is on duty and acting on that belief and see what happens. This is bizarre, maybe even beyond satire.

Re: Burning Man Set on Fire Early Due To Arson | Laughing Squid

Time Warp Cafe / Joseph Dunphy — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 13:15:59 -0000

How much of that were we expected to keep a straight face through?

OK, let's cut straight to the point. Let's say that a large bonfire was being set up for an event. Let's say that somebody torched it in advance. This would be punished as vandalism, at the very least, even though the wood was going to be burned eventually, because in triggering an early fire, the person burning it would deny the owner of the wood the full use and enjoyment of his own property. If we were to accept Addis' argument, we would be left with the absurdity of having to legalize the act of sneaking into a restaurant kitchen and gulping food down on the sly, because what one ate would have been eaten and digested eventually, even were one to have not acted.

Yes, it would have been, but not by the intruder. The same concept applies here - a fire that is set off while one is away, and has no reason to expect that one shouldn't be away, is a fire that one doesn't get to enjoy, just as the meal our hypothetical restaurant thief gulped down is a meal that those who owned the food or those who would have purchased it wouldn't get to eat. Property, in being ephermal, does not cease to be property.

As for the comments about the war, this is the most transparent attempt to change the subject imaginable. While I'm no fan of BMORG, on this I'd have to go along with them - throw the book at this creep. He has acted lawlessly and with something so far from remorse as to render forgiveness a bad joke.