Mishalak

I don't have cable television. I am unwilling to pay for television with commercials. I would rather wait and buy my television later without commercials. If there were some way to get just HBO by itself I might consider that, but that is a discussion for another day.

LJ is a business like any other business it has to make money. The thing is that unlike a great many other businesses it makes money by its customers generating content that interests other customers. This is not news. LJ is a written predecessor to YouTube where (in theory) the people watching the content produce the content. Though not everyone does produce content. The difference being that YouTube is paid for by advertisements and always has been. For a long time LJ was paid for by users who wanted more or just wanted to support the company. A sort of for-profit PBS model.

They are changing their model and I dislike this about as much as if I turned on PBS to find that they were now putting advertisements on for people who do not pay up. Perhaps more, because I'm one of the people doing the writing that keeps people around to keep them in business AND a customer who paid for an account. Even though I won't get served ads I find it irksome that they're doing so for new people who read my journal, as unimportant as it is. Worse, they handled the announcement of this change like we are children who cannot understand. Sure there would have been hand wringing and grumbling no matter what, after all this is a change to the way things were and that always provokes complaint and comment, but the announcement was made in a way that made me think of large corporations pissing down people's back and telling them that it is rain. We're not stupid, we can understand that the company needs to make a profit, just say so instead of hiding behind double talk of having three different kinds of accounts being too confusing to new users.

This is not the end of the world. This is a minor thing. But I'm still upset and I do not want to be. I want to be happy and enthusiastic about LJ and recommending it to everyone I know.

And the worst part is that the move probably won't make LJ profitable. Most new users already pick the ad supported accounts. Hate to say it, but LJ may be doomed for purely business reasons. You keep on unnecessarily upsetting your paying customers and pretty soon you won't have enough to keep the lights on.

So I'm on a different computer tonight. And my livejournal layout is all funky. It is all right justified rather than left. Just my journal that I've seen this way so far. If you are so inclined please check out my main page and tell me if this is just something about this computer or if I need to craw about in the guts of my layout to figure out what has gone wrong.

Edit: I think the problem is internet explorer. I do not know why internet explorer is interpreting the html different than every other browser, but it is. I wonder if there is anything I can do about it.
 

I have not been posting publicly to livejournal for a while. One part principle to avoid generating content they can advertise on (I paid for this journal, damn it!), protest against content policy changes/problems, and being worried that public posts could get me into trouble due to occasional frank postings about gay sex and literature about the same. But I've been wondering lately if it isn't silly. So a poll. Everyone loves a poll.

[Poll #1142323]

Gah. I cannot post comments anywhere. Stupid LJ. I wish to the stars that I'd never paid for a permanent account so I could dump this cursed worthless evil company. If I had money I'd use it to start a rival service for the only purpose of putting them out of business. If someone were starting a new service with half a hope I'd contribute money just to hurt LJ. I HATE THEM.

My mood is not at all helped by the fact that I'm seriously stuffed up right now. My head cold has not abated a bit, if anything it has gotten worse.
 

The best strip on livejournal yet!. No, really. You must go read this.

Today is the 1 year anniversary of my journal. I reuped last week because I felt it was the right thing to do, plus I wanted to keep all my spiffy icons. Though it was more expensive than I remember from last year it is still a comparative bargain. (I do hope that this won't be a trend. If the price is up next year by more than inflation I'm not renewing.)

To celebrate the whole one-year thing I've been getting caught up on putting journal entries into my memories. I use the feature as sort of an index and I figure this is a good time to get caught up and to tell everyone who joined since the last time I explained this.

I'll explain more tomorrow when I'm more awake. Putting in everything upto this month took more work than I thought it would. But hey one year 465 entries and over 2000 comments. I'm doing okay I think.