Vice Comparison

Posted by Daniel Lyons Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:48:00 GMT

Reasons to consider switching to masturbation for your new vice instead of a MMORPG:

  • It’s free
  • It’s more fun
  • When you’re done, you have something to show for it
  • It requires less time. With this extra time you can (but don’t have to):
    • Hold down a job (how about that drinking vice!)
    • Spend more with non-imaginary friends
    • Accomplish more than one task in a given 24-hour period

I’m having trouble coming up with good catch phrases for this new campaign, but I have a few ideas:

  • “Be your own whore—not someone else’s!”
  • “Human Contact: it’s not just for those who bathe!”
  • “Aren’t you neglecting some of your other needs?”
  • “You remember that part in the Matrix where they show the tanks with the people inside that are being used as batteries…?”

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Planet Erlang

Posted by Daniel Lyons Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:50:00 GMT

Planet Erlang used to be in my list of aggregated sites. It’s not anymore, and because I don’t see a good place on the site to leave feedback, I’m leaving it here.

  • Planet Erlang is the only RSS feed that spams me. There’s no excuse. Planet Io doesn’t, Planet Haskell doesn’t, Planet Lisp doesn’t, Planet Erlang had better figure out how that’s happening and make it stop. Killing the item after it gets posted isn’t good enough if it still winds up in my RSS reader, which it does.
  • Planet Erlang’s RSS feed is one point shy of completely useless to begin with. The whole point of an RSS feed is to bring me the content without me having to ask. Planet Erlang brings me a one sentence description of the content—in the title and the body. Who thought this was a good idea?
  • Finally, when I do click on the title of the story, I wind up not at the story, but at Planet Erlang’s web page with Planet Erlang’s one-sentence summary of the story. Then I have to click again to get to the site.

Here’s a refresher on how RSS is supposed to work:

  1. I sit on my ass, reading news.

Here’s what actually happens with Planet Erlang:

  1. I sit on my ass, getting spam.
  2. Once in a while I see an interesting article’s title.
  3. I click on it to read it, because it isn’t already there in my news reader where it should be.
  4. I click on it again to get away from PE’s site and read it.

All this so I can see comments from someone about the site being linked to. Invariably, there are none for me to see. I’m invited to vote on the story. Invariably, the story has one vote.

I don’t know what you guys think running a Planet-style aggregator is all about, but you’re failing it, and you’re being an obstacle to the information I’m there to get.

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