My Friend Network

@Open Web ... just to add this one to the appropriate forum.

♲ Bob Mottram
Libertree http://www.libertreeproject.org

@open web

tolerance likes this.

Put WordPress inside a community

We all know that WordPress land is a wonderful place to express yourself... but that it can be mighty lonely, at times. Unless you're an A-blogger, you often find yourself on an island.

You post a tweet, you link to Facebook, you advertise your blog in a web forum... but comments and discussion can be as rare as stardust.

That's where Friendica comes in. This isn't the place to tell you everything about Friendica. So essentially, let's put it this way: Friendica is a free, non-commercial and highly decentralised social networking platform. You run it on your own server (every bit as easy to install as WordPress) or join a small server maintained by a friend. At a pinch, there are even public servers to sign up on. You own your own data. Private is private. You can read more here: http://friendica.com/

No, okay... that's a bit abstract. Let's try again: Imagine Facebook talking to everyone you know, members and non-members alike. People on Diaspora. Friends on Twitter. People writing blogs and even people who refuse to use anything but old-fashioned email. Imagine that you could post straight to your WordPress journal or to an identi.ca account. To your best buddies only, or to everyone at once. Imagine a place to read what your Facebook friends are saying - in between all your favourite RSS feeds. Imagine forum posts just integrating in your stream. Imagine... yes, you've got it: lots of comments from interested and interesting people for your WordPress blog. No matter where those people are.

If you feed your blog from Friendica, it becomes part of a much larger communication network with everyone you find interesting, everyone that finds you interesting. You reach them in their daily streams, in Friendica's specialist forums, by email, on other social networks... wherever they are.

@WordPress @Open Web

@wordpress @open web

14 comments show more

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

It's a secret some of us have known for a while, isn't it?

Cyberfrosch - 1 year ago

To viewers unfamiliar with Friendica: The two @mentions at the bottom of the blog article cross-posted it to two Friendica forums. This means it appears to everyone who is a member of those forums, along with everyone else the author knows and has included among the recipients. Comment frequency obviously depends on the number of contacts an author has, plus the number of members in any forum the article is also addressed to.

As a demo user, Cyberfrosch lacks personal contacts. A real user would have personal contacts from several different networks.

Axel Bruland - 1 year ago

would be interesting for non- friendica users, too ... you should put it on your blog

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Axel, it is actually on a demo blog site to show people who don't know Friendica yet: http://friendicablog.wordpress.com/

Axel Bruland - 1 year ago

aaaahhhh ... in that context it makes much more sense :)

Cyberfrosch - 1 year ago

There is an interesting change to Friendica's WordPress connector. In the settings, you can now opt to include a back link to the original article on Friendica when it is cross-posted to your WordPress blog. That means that people who visit your blog site can click to read the comments here on Friendica. Since many people's blog articles get far more comments from their Friendica contacts and forums than on their actual blog sites, it's only reasonable to give other readers access to these discussions. It makes your blog articles look rather less lonesome, too.

Axel Bruland - 1 year ago

But you are always posting from Friendica to wordpress, right ? Is there some way to do it the other way round, like the "Mirroring" function in Identica ?

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

There is a WordPress plugin for Friendica that I briefly tested and which seems to work. Here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cross-post-to-friendika/ (Friendica was still written with a k when it was coded.)

Of course, you won't get the back link that way unless you later add it manually.

Axel Bruland - 1 year ago

oh thanks Martin, found it, the webfinger profile addon is very cool, too ! keep forgetting about Friendica's FriendiKa past ;)

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

... don't forget that WordPress plugins only work for people hosting their own blogs, not for those using the wordpress.com platform. Obviously that also applies to the various Facebook plugins for WordPress - not that Facebook contacts really tend to comment on linked blogs much anyway (in my experience).

By using Friendica and its own plugin, you can circumvent both restrictions for a blog hosted by wordpress.com: You can cross-post to your blog from Friendica and thus integrate a lively comment stream from here, and you can also activate Friendica's Facebook connector and additionally send the article to your Facebook friends (and/or tweet it, send it to Diaspora contacts, identi.ca followers, email contacts etc.).

Cyberfrosch - 1 year ago

Blogs hosted on wordpress.com are automatically ready to receive posts from elsewhere, such as Friendica or a smartphone app. If you self-host your blog on a site of your own, you first need to enable this feature as the admin of your WordPress instance... easy: Settings -> Writing -> Enable Remote Publishing XML-RPC

In Friendica itself, you look for the WordPress connector settings and enter the URL of your site with /xmlrpc.php attached to it. Example:

http://www.example.com/xmlrpc.php

(Your username and password are obviously also required at this point.)

Olivier - 1 year ago

I tried to use the WordPress plugin to publish on a Dotclear platform (also using XMLRPC API) but it didn't work. Is there something really specific to WordPress in the plugin code?

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

I would imagine so, yes. There's something specific about every service that uses the API from all I can tell. The WordPress plugin works with WordPress, but you could take a look at the blogger plugin for other services like Drupal etc. You need to copy it, rename it and adapt it for the platform you're trying to work with - but that's coding work. Fortunately, you don't need to code to use WordPress with Friendica.

There's not even very much to configure.

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

I do this all the time. I've even gone as far as using multiple copies of the WordPress plugin to post to up to half a dozen blogs with one click (obviously, where relevant - you can post to one, some, or all of them). Dead easy too - it's a simple edit/replace job if you need mutliple blogs with one post.

I get infinity times more comments on Friendica than on WordPress too - I often get no comments at all on the blog, but tens of them here. Normally, a blog relies on people finding it. If you use Friendica, your blog can find it's readers for itself - all you have to do is cross post to a relevant group that already has subscribers.

You even get people resharing your blog posts if they're particularly good.

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

@Open Web

♲ Seth
Eben Moglen keynote - OpenWorld 2010
Always enjoy Mr. Moglen's speeches.

This is why I get so fired up about Friendica and admin a public node.

Special Keynote address- Eben Moglen, Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center by OpenWorldForum on YouTube

@open web

&BB5A

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

The UK government's proposal for data communications surveillance will be invasive and costly with minimal effectiveness

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2012/05/08/ccdp-surveillance-privacy-wright

@Open Web

@open web

tolerance nonviolence - 1 year ago

success! take the poor people's money (taxes) and give it to rich people (surveillance companies)

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

oh wie cool @Linux-Group @Open Web

#linux #xfce

http://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/18313/xfce-410-freigegeben.html

Das Xfce-Team hat Version 4.10 der Desktop-Umgebung freigegeben. Gegenüber Xfce 4.8 standen Verbesserungen der Benutzbarkeit im Vordergrund.

@linux-group @open web #linux #xfce

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

@Free Web Kids @Open Web #linux #schule #lehrer #schüler #opensource

via Michael Kappes / mika007 gefunden.

http://www.pamina-schultasche.de/

Die digitale Schultasche im Überblick

Die digitale Schultasche des Pamina Schulzentrums geht beim Einsatz von freier, quelloffener Software konsequent einen Schritt weiter: Bei praktisch allen digitalen Schultaschen, die in Deutschland eingesetzt werden, benötigt der Benutzer ein Wirtssystem, das üblicherweise ein Microsoft Betriebssystem ist.

Wir verwenden als Basis der Schultasche xubuntu Linux, so dass man sogar Rechner ohne eigene Festplatten zum Betrieb der Schultasche einsetzen kann.

Die digitale Schultasche ist eine weitestgehend vollständige Arbeits- und Lernumgebung für Schüler und Lehrer, die auf einem USB-Stick installiert wird.

Sie kann deshalb wie eine echte Schultasche überall hin mitgenommen werden. Der Inhalt der Tasche besteht aus den eigenen Daten und dem Betriebssystem.

Das bedeutet, das der Benutzer der Schultasche unabhängig von Ort und Ausstattung seine persönliche Arbeitsumgebung mit den eigenen Daten und Einstellungen starten kann. Dazu wird nur ein Rechner benötigt, der von USB Speichermedien starten kann. Das sind in der Regel Rechner, die höchstens fünf Jahre alt sind.

@open web #linux #schule #lehrer #schüler #opensource

4 comments show more

Martin Schmitt - 1 year ago

"Grundsätzlich frei", "Autoren fragen". Komisch. Sieht nach leichten Verständnisproblemen mit Open Source aus. Wie Leute, die fragen, ob sie einen Link setzen dürfen.

dej - 1 year ago from Diaspora

Also die Schule ist ganz in meiner Nähe und ich habe auch schon mit den Entwicklern gesprochen und das ganze auf meinem Netbook getestet. Die haben mir einfach einen USB-Stick in die Hand gedrückt von dem ich booten konnte.

Ich muss sagen, dass mich das schon überzeugt hat. Das System lief flott, und die Entwickler haben sinnvolle Anpassungen gemacht. Also nicht nur ein paar Apps vorinstalliert und das Hintergrundbild gewechselt.

Wegen den Lizenzen: Ich hatte auch gefragt, ob ich das System downloaden könne, und habe die Antwort bekommen, dass sie das eben so nicht anbieten dürfen. Aus dem gleichen Grund gibt es auch den "Ubuntu Business Remix" nur zum Download, nachdem man sich registriert und die ganzen EULA für Java und Co. akzeptiert hat, und eben nicht zum frei verfügbarem Download.

Mir wurde aber angeboten, dass ich ihnen einen USB-Stick schicken könne, auf den sie das System dann aufspielen würden.

Markus I. - 1 year ago

@Friendica Support @Open Web

Since I saw a post about Ghostery (Firefox addon) here on Friendica, I use it on all computers.
Now I am shocked to see, that it found some "Facebook Social Graph" here on Friendica!! How can this be? Is it inside a post from Facebook maybe?

@friendica support @open web

6 comments show more

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

If your friends are determined to make sure something nasty ends up in your network, then no software can mitigate it completely.

We need more education of people who enjoy being spied on, and we need to frown more prominently at people who really should know better.

And we need an alternative to YouTube.

Arto - 1 year ago

Regarding YouTube, would MediaGoblin offer an alternative platform? Could be self-hosted, kind of like the Friendica model...?

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

@Linux-Group @Open Web

does someone know something about #ArchBang ?
is it a rolling release?

@linux-group @open web #archbang

Arto - 1 year ago

I think so, it is closely related to Arch, so I think it combines Arch, with CrunchBang Linux's window manager setup.

Jeremy Pope - 1 year ago

As far as I know it is. Seems that it's basically Arch with an installer and #! style and setup. It's been years since I looked at it though. These days I prefer a proper Arch setup instead.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Stop Online Privacy Act: 'CISPA is US cyber-security loophole' by RussiaToday on YouTube

@Open Web

@open web

John Doe likes this.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Autonomy for the Data Citizen http://sluggish.dyndns.org/blog/?x=entry:entry120418-115749 @Open Web

@open web

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

You are your data http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/18/tim-berners-lee-google-facebook @Open Web

@open web

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

I agree with TBL http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/17/tim-berners-lee-monitoring-internet @Open Web

@open web

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Proprietary data is digital waste http://youtu.be/UXDt33O1_g8 @Open Web

@open web

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

@Linux-Group @Open Web

#linux #phinx #xfce

http://phinxdesktop.slyip.net/phinxdesktop/?p=268

Xfce4.10pre2 pushed to the repo!!!!

OK after just a week we have the second pre release for Xfce 4.10 .... i have held back the latest panel due to a packaging error ... but everything else has been added to the repo ... away ya go

@linux-group @open web #linux #phinx #xfce

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Of genies and bottles http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/web-freedom-threat-google-brin @Open Web

@open web

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Teenagers... ideas, please!

@Free Web Kids @Friendica Day @Open Web

Though it's still in its very early stages, Kidica ( https://kakste.com/profile/kidica ) already demonstrates how Friendica can be used to keep kids off Facebook - provided you catch them young enough.

But there's a tougher nut: teenagers.

We need ideas! Who knows where that specific salt shaker might be?

@free web kids @friendica day @open web

16 comments show more

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@l23 seems to be young enough and able to think outside the geek box. So I'll nudge him.

@l23

Harry - 1 year ago

Well, I am guessing: good mobile device integration, chat, games …

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Chat is almost here...

Games? @Thomas Willingham

Mobile? Right now we can use StatusNet apps. But these have their limitations.

@thomas willingham

JC John Sese Cuneta (謝施洗) - 1 year ago

Yep games. A year or two ago, some of the popular FLOSS games were creating a mobile version or lite version or web version. I think the Battle for Wesnoth was one of those.

I wonder if Super Maryo Chronicles can fit in too?

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

@martin, The new stuff for posting profile changes is extendible. That's very promising for games. It's also trivial to embed arbitrary code in Friendica.

@JC, Wesnoth has a mobile version already. The web version is in development, but was unofficial, and not actually terribly good the last time I checked (~6 months ago).

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

... whereas, on the other hand, the one thing a former generation of teenagers would have enjoyed holds no appeal to today's youngsters: the geek aspect. It's not a majority fashion anymore.

If we challenge them to get creative with our platform, it can't be technical creativity. The entire technical infrastructure must be easy to use, yet very versatile. As far as I have observed, they work on top of technology - rather than with it. They need the scope to build their own worlds, but they won't be changing a single line of code.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

... possibilities:

Teenagers are elitist little buggers. A new type of forum account where posting is a privilege but any member can comment (like multi-author blogs) - that's the kind of thing that appeals to them. A group could set up a fan page or online magazine that way, post their articles and let mere mortals comment on them. Not very democratic. But realistic.

Harry - 1 year ago

Or they could be inspired though internet school projects, where a group sets up a social platform for theit schoolmates.

@Martin I believe that you still can rely on the geek factor also at today's youngsters. But in relation to them is the number of those who only use internet technology much higher then it was the case in the past.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@Harry:

I can't say I'm much better. I just repaired the Blogger plugin (@tony baldwin you are a hooligan

) by fixing the paths and variables. Tried to post to my hacked Drupal 7 API with it, managed to send (but not to accept) and gave up. Ten minutes of 'coding' - my dose for the entire year, most probably.

Yes, there are still a few geeks around among the kids. But 20 years ago, there was nothing else. And 35 years ago when I was a teenager, everyone was tuning little motorbikes all day long. Who does that now?

@tony baldwin

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

Martin is right in as much as the number of geeks in the computer using population has been diluted, but are there actually less of us, or does it just seem that way because back in our day everyone who used a computer for a geek?

Friendica is just so easily extensible - look at my addons (installed here: https://kakste.com/apps or more at my git here: https://github.com/beardy-unixer/KakSte-Addons ).

But look at how similar the code is for each. I'm using the same code to embed arbitrary content again and again.

Likewise, I'm using smiley_pack as a starting point for a swear filter (that's not quite so straight forward, but it's work-out-able from the smilies).

There are still geeks among the kids - even if there's not as many as there once were - and Friendica is a dead easy way in to FOSS. Perhaps we should try to reach out to them more.

In fact, I think I might write a "Simple Addon Creation" plugin to go with Kidica.

Harry - 1 year ago

One difficult aspect about teenagers is that they are in a transition phase. Things they like now they might be tired of because it suddenly looks childish or boring.
It is either because younger kids are using the same thing or they see parents using it, too. Both cases are definitely uncool

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

That's something we could use to our advantage, actually.

Kidica is based on a closed Friendica network. Teenica could be too - but a closed network dictated by the "cool kids", giving them the sense of elitism they need.

Pro-tip - even so, you can control your teens network with careful use of .htconfig.php

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Yes, but it's not a one-dimensional process, Harry.

A 16 year old might rebel against something, purely because his dad does it. A 12 year old is liable to do the opposite. But often, 21 year olds return to their 12-year-old mindsets - reviving the interests and values they experienced as children.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@Thomas Willingham That pro tip is singularly useless.

Even the most technically indifferent teenager will find the key to any locks you implement. My son knows about one thing about technology: the password to my router. He accidentally told me so last Saturday. That's why he never much cared when I threatened to time-limit WiFi.

@thomas willingham

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

I've always gone with the idea that by the time they're hacking their way past your locks, they're old enough to either just go to their mates house, or be smart enough to avoid the worst dangers (like giving their bank details to 419ers).

But .htconfig.php can be very subtle. You can give yourself admin rights then reset it without them noticing, for example.

It's not going to stop them doing something stupid, but it can help you know about them doing stupid things.

Harry - 1 year ago

@Martin Farrent Yes, your're right.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Clients... what's wrong with them?

@Open Web

A lot of persuasion work would be much easier if people weren't so negative about native clients - e.g. for Jabber/XMPP. What's actually so awful about client apps? I mean: Isn't a discreet chat window actually more practical than an entire Facebook-cluttered browser? You could watch a movie or write a document on the same screen without moving windows around or clicking things into the background.

@open web

41 comments show more

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

Pidgin has like 100mb of dependencies and Kopete is just ugly.

I'm prepared to pay that much for Pidgin (or wait that long, depending on your particular ISP), but it takes me days to get round to it if I ever clean install. Popular clients like YIM, MSN and Skype are steaming piles of fermented dingo's kidneys, and they're the ones most people have tried.

What we need is a small messenger with a nice UI. As soon as you've got that (or if it already exists, as soon as you tell people about it) I think we could (slowly) convince people to use it.

Arto - 1 year ago

what about Jitsi?

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

It's very Web 2.0

It's hideous, but in a way people like these days. That might be the one.

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

gajim?

Arto - 1 year ago

Wasn't there an ncruses-based version of pidgin? That might be less of a pain to have on a system.

Arto - 1 year ago

Thanks, Paul, I've been seeking a cli xmpp client and mcabber looks great.

Michael Johnston - 1 year ago

I like client apps. I think the average Facebook user is not compelled to use them because they're already on FB, and so are their friends, so they use the built-in chat. One-stop shopping.

123 - 1 year ago

You're mobile if you dont need a client. You could go to every browser just login and chat.

foonetic (nternetx) - 1 year ago

I gave up on webmail because it was just too much hassle to go to the site and log in for multiple accounts. With a mail client (I like Claws-Mail and Thunderbird, but I also use Kmail), I can launch it, background it, and do what I need to do. When something comes in, it'll let me know.

And, I don't have to have so many browser tabs open, so I'm not forced to reboot every day or two (Chrome/Chromium forces this at 20-25+ tabs).

Years ago, I wanted everything in the browser, now I want almost everything outside the browser.

Markus Döbele - 1 year ago

Thats exactely why it should work in the browser as well as outside the browser. With xmpp no problem at all.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Browser XMPP is our problem at Friendica, Markus.

On a distributed network and given our ambition to keep all servers equal, not every admin will be able to install an XMPP server with Bosh (few shared hosting deals will go that far).

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@Thomas Willingham Jitsi is really versatile - doing both SIP and Jabber (and other stuff). If Thunderbird/Lightning weren't such a mess, it could slot in there the way Bria3 does with Outlook in the commercial sphere. But that's not Jitsi's fault. You could click an address and decide which way you wanted to contact it - phone, video phone, IM, mail...

@thomas willingham

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

Yeah, it sounds good, it just looks too Web 2.0 for me (especially since I've already got Pidgin, despite it's dependencies). But as I said, people like Web 2.0 - it looks like a good candidate to promote.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@Markus Döbele @l23

The thing is that I'm seeing the most resistance to client apps in my son's generation - though they rarely seem to need the mobility you refer to. They're either on their own PCs or using their own mobile devices - so only two clients would need to be installed anyway. By contrast, using a client like Jitsi instead of a full browser Window for Facebook chat should actually be more convenient for them - since they would then keep more of the screen for other purposes (like watching YouTube or doing homework).

@markus döbele @l23

Vincent Metalhead - 1 year ago

Another aspect of using a native client is security. OTR and PGP/GPG become meaningless if the user is not the only one with access to the private key.
So if somebody really cares about his/her privacy, that's the killer argument. All he/she needs then is a foolproof installation guide.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

If Jitsi has both the features and the sex appeal that's needed, we should be pushing the project - and perhaps they could be pushing ours.

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

the cool thing with jitsi: OTR is directly in it and very easy to use in contrast to pidgin

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

irc - #jitsi

#jitsi

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@David Sugar @Haakon Meland Eriksen What's the view of GNU Telephony towards Jitsi?

@david sugar @haakon meland eriksen

Vincent Metalhead - 1 year ago

Sounds like I've gt to give it a try... thx4info

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

I'm thinking along the lines of culture change here: There's probably a complex technological solution to the problem of putting browser XMPP in Friendica. But alternatively, there's a cultural solution - pushing the use of 'sexy' clients. The latter has an additional attraction: If we push them, they might push us.

David Sugar - 1 year ago

@Martin Farrent we distribute #ZRTP4J, which is our java port of the GNU #ZRTP stack, and that is part of #Jitsi. So we actually do participate in Jitsi development, even if in a rather minor way. It does potentially meet the need of a universally platform ubiquitous secure voice and video client.

@martin farrent #zrtp4j #zrtp #jitsi

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@David Sugar Do you see any potential for an alliance between GNU Telephony, Jitsi and Friendica - possibly just a banner alliance for starters?

@david sugar

Haakon Meland Eriksen - 1 year ago

@Martin I like Jitsi, but I have trouble with the Java dependencies on Debian 6.x that I didn't have on Kubuntu.

Haakon Meland Eriksen - 1 year ago

Jitsi uses GNU ZRTP for privacy, written by David.

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

oh the discussion is not public? wanted to share the link in the jitsi-irc

David Sugar - 1 year ago

@Martin Farrent Perhaps we could suggest it as a cross-platform secure (zrtp) client. However we don't "do" banners or other such things.

I had shied away from suggesting it in the past because it required JMF, which is the Java Media Framework, and that was proprietary. Jitsi now uses a free software replacement for JMF, so any issues with proprietary dependencies now seem to be gone.

Some don't like Java for other entirely valid reasons and issues. If we want to reach Microsoft Windows and OS/X desktop users, though, at least with something we can suggest, I see no issues there.

I don't think it can be a foundation for a true GFC client, in part because it tries to do so many different things, where we want to do one thing very well, and there are other Java issues. However, as a ZRTP enabled SIP client, it could potentially connect happily with a sipwitch server/gfc sipwitch service and offer secure communications too. We should spend time researching that issue.

@martin farrent

David Sugar - 1 year ago

@Haakon Meland Eriksen The history and origins of GNU ZRTP is actually rarther long. I initially wrote ccrtp, back ~2001 I think, for use with GNU Bayonne, and this a few years later was also maintained by Federico Puozols, who turned it into a templated stack to do different RTP profiles easily. We got together in 2006 with Werner Dittman to add SRTP to ccrtp and do a reference ZRTP extension (libzrtpcpp in GNU), which Werner now principally maintains. He also ported it to ZRTP4J, and now has adapted it to use with gstreamer as well. Lots of interesting things are constantly happening with this codebase...

@haakon meland eriksen

Haakon Meland Eriksen - 1 year ago

Many users don't want an array of choices, until they have made one that over time turns out to be suboptimal enough to encourage a change.

This means we who encourage software freedom, interoperability and vendor-independent standards like SIP can do more to show people how something like GNU SIP Witch can be used together with Jitsi, CSipSimple, Linphone, Sipdroid and other clients, because that is what is most important - you can use the app that's best for you in your environment.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

I was thinking along the lines of some extremely effortless and possibly very effective cross promotion.

GNU Telephony, Friendica and Jitis (and some others) are all unincorporated and share the same goals: liberate yourself from platforms that could be mining your data, like Facebook and Skype - while not burning the bridges to the users of those platforms (that's if GNU Telephony endorses things like Siptosis - I don't know). Even more: They don't cannibalise each other's user bases, but complement each other very well.

So we could set easily up a single-page alliance site somewhere and all simply link to it. On that page, the allied projects could describe themselves in a few sentences each.

Time to nudge @Mike here.

@mike

123 - 1 year ago

@Martin Farrent Yop, your completely right at that point. But, you won't get them to change their habits. At least not both, switching from facebook and installing a client at the same time.
Sure, there are some "techy" people that will, but most of the people I know would defenitely not

And therefore, if we want to get Friendica out there, we will need a web-xmpp ui.

@martin farrent

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@l23 But that was 'the beauty' of the idea...

I'm not trying to get my son to leave Facebook (yet). I'm trying to get him to use Pidgin or Jitsi for his Facebook chats. Friendica would be the next destination in that journey, not the first.

@l23

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

step by step

123 - 1 year ago

@Martin Farrent hm, I'm (probably) the age of your son, you may/hopefully will succeed, but the point is, that since your son got you as a father, he has this "techy" background to be able to install and use the client. Its completely utopic to believe that even the half of the people of this/my generation will bother with installing such a client.
Sure, there are good arguments, but they wont do it/wont be able to do it.
And the task of convincing people of using Friendica would be so much easier if there'd be a web-chat. Believe me, I got some friends of mine using Diaspora, and they mostly complained about the missing chat..

@martin farrent

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

He rejects the techy background, I'm afraid.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Incidentally, I was playing around with Gwibber (Friendica) and Jitsi (XMPP) on a Linux machine a few minutes ago. Two neat little windows for social networking and IM while you work with something else. And then there's Pidgin's StatusNet plugin. It currently doesn't work with Friendica, but @Michael Vogel is working on the API - so that could change. That would give you a single little box with everything-notification on your desktop at work or play (again: watch a movie or work on a document, but miss nothing).

@michael vogel

Michael Vogel - 1 year ago

@Martin Farrent Adium - thats using the pidgin-library - is working with statusnet. (Since I did some changes)

@martin farrent

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@Michael Vogel You mean with Friendica (in its capacity as a StatusNet instance), right?

@michael vogel

Markus Döbele - 1 year ago

I tried jitsi and I think its not yet in a state that most people can simply use. I expected it to ask me if I have an account yet and if not I create one. Like skype does that. Instead I get a list of loads of other im's. I just wanted to use it as a skype replacement. But here I first have to understand whats sip, whats xmpp and whatelse. Maybe its good for people that like to study every piece of software they want to use. But for normal people this will just not work :(

Beni Keller - 1 year ago

I use tabbed window managers to solve the moving windows around problem.

Michael Vogel - 1 year ago

BTW: today I did a pull request that should enable all statusnet compatible clients that I tested. (Seesmic, Mustard, Adium, Statusnet mobile app)

The pull request isn't accepted by now. I hope it will be soon.

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

@Open Web @Linux-Group

Calligra 2.4 released

http://www.calligra.org/news/calligra-2-4-released/

#calligra #office #koffice #odf

@open web @linux-group #calligra #office #koffice #odf

31 comments show more

Tim Schlotfeldt - 1 year ago

Hast du etwas mehr Erfahrung mit Calligra als nur einmal ausprobiert? Deine Meinung würde mich sehr interessieren.

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

ehrlich gesagt leider nein, hatte nur die news dazu entdeckt. aber es würde mich unheimlich reizen.

hatte bisher nur #openoffice bzw. seit dem es verfügbar ist #libreoffice

#openoffice #libreoffice

Tim Schlotfeldt - 1 year ago

Mmh, mit KOffice bin ich früher nicht weit gekommen. Da fehlte noch einiges, um mit OpenOffice mithalten zu können.

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

stimmt koffice habe ich früher zu meinen kdezeiten auch mal reingeschaut. aber eben auch nicht wirklich begeistert.

Klaus Weidenbach - 1 year ago

Die aktuelle Version habe ich noch nicht getestet. Man muss sich erst mal an die etwas andere Struktur und Bedienung gewöhnen. Wenn ich etwas schnell erledigt haben wollte bin ich meist doch wieder auf LibreOffice zurück gefallen, aber ich finde die Idee hinter KDE und wie sich alles zusammenfügt einfach zu überzeugend. Daher mache ich auch immer mehr mit Calligra. Ich bin auch mal sehr auf Calligra für das Plasma Active Tablet gespannt.

Tim Schlotfeldt - 1 year ago

Ich bin ja mit #LaTeX groß geworden. Wenn ich nicht kompatibel zu anderen sein muss baue ich damit sogar meine Präsentationen.

Aber ich muss sagen, LibreOffice gefällt mir immer besser. Die Aufräumaktionen nach dem Fork tun der Software sichtbar gut.

#latex

Benjamin Neff - 1 year ago from Diaspora

Ich bin mit OpenOffice gross geworden, benutze aber seit einem Jahr LaTeX für Dokumente, Briefe und Präsentationen :) Und es gefällt mir immer mehr. :)

Nur für Tabellen benutze ich noch LibreOffice.

Thorsten Schmidt - 1 year ago

LaTex ... das waren noch Zeiten.

Marco - 1 year ago

Keine Ahnung ob Bug oder Feature, aber: Gebe ich in Calligra Sheets den Wert "16.04.12" ein, wird mir "16.04.0012" angezeigt - nicht was ich jetzt erwartet hätte...

Werde in den nächsten Tagen mal ein wenig damit arbeiten und dann nochmal berichten :)

Kai-Martin Knaak - 1 year ago

Was das Ergebnis angeht, ist Latex weiterhin allen anderen frei zugänglichen Satzprogrammen so weit voraus, dass es uneinholbar erscheint. Das gilt ganz besonders für Formeln.
Für die Eingabe nutze ich seit gut zehn Jahren LyX ( http://lyx.org ). Dessen GUI präsentiert eine für den Bildschirm angepasste Darstellung. Für die Papier-Version ist dann pdflatex zuständig.
---<)kaimartin(>---

Faldrian - 1 year ago

Also einfache Briefe kann man ja mal in WYSIWYG-Wordprozessoren schreiben... aber für Bachelorarbeit / Masterarbeit und auch für Vorträge nehme ich LaTeX ... da weiß ich wie der Hase läuft und man hat direkt sein Grundgerüst, wo man nur noch den Inhalt einpflegt und alles fügt sich super zusammen.
Ich finde es immer prima, wenn Inhalt und Style voneinander getrennt sind.

Marco - 1 year ago

LaTeX ist sicher eine feine Sache. Aber in der Wirtschaft im Mittelstand und aufwärts selbst als Nischenanwendung fast nicht zu gebrauchen :(

Markus Döbele - 1 year ago

Das kann du so auf garkeinen Fall sagen. Latex ist ein Textsatzsystem. Das darf man nicht mit LibreOffice/Word verwechseln.

Marco - 1 year ago

Da scheine ich aber nicht der Erste zu sein der die Trennung nicht so genau sieht. Wieso sonst gibts Vorlagen für Briefe und dergleichen?

Mir geht es auch um technische Dokumentation, die einigermaßen gut aussehen müssen weil sie dem Kunden zur Verfügung gestellt werden. Leider ist Latex nicht verbreitet genug und Word "einfacher" weil nicht abstrakt ("WYSIWYG"). Also ist es bedauerlicherweise nicht für die breite Masse geeignet.

Zurück zum eigentlichen Thema - Calligra:
Habe gestern noch versucht ein paar kleinere Aufgaben mit Words und Sheets zu erledigen.

Die Bedienung ist sicher an vielen Stellen anders, man gewöhnt sich aber schnell daran und kommt dann auch ganz gut damit klar.

Insgesamt wirken die beiden Tools auf mich aber eher rudimentär und weniger für den "professionellen" Einsatz, als mehr für den Quick & Dirty Einsatz.

Was wirklich nervig war: Auf meinem Kubuntu sind beide Programme alle Nase lang mit Signal 11 abgesoffen. Kann an Kubuntu gelegen haben - werde heute nochmal mit openSuSE testen.

Flow habe ich nur kurz getestet - sieht ganz gut aus, schnell zusammengeklickte Netzwerkpläne waren auch brauchbar.

Braindump ist mir für einen Mind Mapper zu umständlich. Da will ich schnell Gedanken hinrotzen - das ist mir nicht gelungen. Aber auch das habe ich nur 5 Minuten getestet.

Noch ein Minuspunkt unter Kubuntu: Nach der Installation öffnen sich alle text/plain Files standardmäßig in Words, statt kwrite/kate/whatever. Unter openSuSE ist das nicht so.

Markus Döbele - 1 year ago

Noch was zu Latex. Du kannst damit sehr schön z.B. Massenverabeitung machen. Du definierst quasi wie ein Dokument aussieht und fütterst es nachher von deinem Programm aus mit Daten. Was dabei herauskommt kannst du später festlegen. Kann z.B. ein pdf Dokument sein. Ist also quasi wie html aber um Dokumente zu erstellen. Es hängt eben davon ab was du machen willst. Das hat nix mit Verbreitung zu tun sondern ist ein ganz anderer Ansatz. Diese Programme sind per Maus sehr komfortabel zu bedienen. Und auch weiter verbreitet. Aber man muss erkennen das Latex eben was ganz anderes ist. Das ist nicht gedacht das du einen einzigen Brief im Büro damit schreibst.

Tobias - 1 year ago

Wobei man schon auch einen einzelnen Brief schreiben kann - und meiner Erfahrung nach wird der auch ernster genommen als der mit Word dahin getippte Brief. LaTeX sieht halt wesentlich Professioneller aus...

Faldrian - 1 year ago

Es kommt halt auch drauf an, ob man das öfter macht. Meist ist man in dem Tool erstmal am schnellsten, an das man gewöhnt ist - wobei ich schon empfehlen würde, soch an LaTeX zu gewöhnen.
Gibt es eigentlich irgendwelche Alternativen, Rewrites oder sowas - da das System ja nun schon echt alt ist? (Ist zwar immer noch gut für das, was es tut... aber oft gibt es Evolutionsschritte in Software)

sasiflo - 1 year ago

@Faldrian LaTeX ist doch schon die Alternative zu Tex

Es gibt wohl auf der Welt wenig Software, die so gut abgehangen, ausgereift und fehlerfrei ist, wie TeX/LaTeX. Höchstens noch dump/restore

Viel Innovation wird es da wohl nicht mehr geben, denn was es tun soll, tut es bereits perfekt. Sozusagen der Gipfel der Evolution.

@faldrian

Marco - 1 year ago

Ich stimme euch allen ja völlig zu: LaTeX ist ne feine Sache und flexibler als Klickibunti. Aber es ist halt auch ziemlich nerdig

Ich meine ja nur: In einer Umgebung von Nicht-Nerds ist die Verwendung einfach schwierig bis unmöglich. Man denke nur an die Chefsekretärin oder die M$ Verfechter...

Faldrian - 1 year ago

@sasiflo Stimmt auch wieder. :)
@Marco Ja schon... aber es gibt ja immer Bestrebungen wie z.B. Lyx, die das ganze einfacher einzugeben machen. Letztendlich sind es aber auch die "Nerd", die Unterschiede im Zeichensatz und in der Handhabung von Formeln zu schätzen wissen, alle Klickibunti-Verfechter geben sich vermutlich mit Word zufrieden. #gewagteThese

@sasiflo #gewagtethese

Kai-Martin Knaak - 1 year ago

@Marco: Schau Dir mal die Screenshots von LyX an ( http://www.lyx.org/Screenshots )
Zitat: "It looks like any other modern application with menus, toolbars, work area and status line."
Man sieht sofort, was man gerade schreibt, einschließlich der Formeln. Überschriften sehen wie Überschriften aus, Aufzählungen wie Aufzählungen und die Bilder sind auch als Vorschau eingebunden. Irgendwelche Backslash-Befehle muss man nicht eintippen (kann man aber).

Für eine kleine Entwicklungsfirma habe ich vor ein paar Jahren versucht, die Manuals mit MS-Word einheitlich und "vernünftig" zu gestalten. Es stellte sich als unmöglich heraus, den Stil automatisiert nachträglich zu ändern, wenn die Corporate Identity mal wieder unter einem Lifting unterzogen werden soll. Ja, die Dokumente waren vorbildlich ausschließlich mit "Vorlagen" formatiert. Es ging trotzdem nicht. Die Erstellung eines Index und der diversen Verzeichnisse war vorsichtig gesagt, hakelig.
IMHO, sind das beides für professionelle technische Dokumentation veritable Show-Stopper. Das Unternehmen bezahlte für die Fehlentscheidung letztlich in Form von Stundenlohn für Hilfskräfte, die die Umstellung der Formatierung für jedes Dokument von Hand vornahmen.

Mit Latex ist der gleiche Job fast schon trivial. Man binde eine andere style-Datei ein und gut ist.

---<)kaimartin(>---

Tim Schlotfeldt - 1 year ago

Marco: Nerdig mag es vom Image her sein, aber in den TeX-Newsgroups wurde gerne immer auf eine Studie von DEC hingewiesen, nach der Laien mit LaTeX schneller zurecht kommen als mit einer WYSIWSG-Textverarbeitung. Bedingung war allerdings, dass die Probanden keine Vorbildung in den jeweiligen Systemen hatten.

Faldrian: LuaTeX ist der designierte Nachfolger von dem klassischen TeX. Unter anderem ist dort ein Lua-Interpreter eingebaut und OpenType-Schriften werden nativ unterstützt (Wikipedia).

Faldrian - 1 year ago

@Tim Ah, danke :) Mal schauen, irgendwie wurde das Paket bei mir schon vom System mit reingezogen... vorerst benutze ich mal LaTeX weiter - never change a Ding, das ja funktioniert. Weiß man ja. Aber vielleicht in Zukunft.

Harry Schirrmeister - 1 year ago

Ich meine, dass sich TeX / LaTeX ohne Weiteres auch in Unternehmen einsetzen ließe.
Meine Erfahrung bisher ist, dass gerade in mittleren und kleinen Unternehmen unheimlich viel Aufwand bei der Dokumentenpflege in der - typischer Weise - MS Office-Umgebung verbrannt wird, weil zu viele Leute zu oft stundenlang vor sich hin fummeln.
Ich bin der festen Überzeugung, dass man durch LaTeX ein Unternehmen effizienter machen kann.

sasiflo - 1 year ago

@harry Macht Technik ein Unternehmen effizienter oder Menschen, die die Technik effizient einsetzen?

Man könnte auch mit dem Einsatz von Office-Paketen (egal welches) ein Unternehmen effizienter machen. Wenn es denn richtig eingesetzt würde.

Meiner Erfahrung nach kommen die meisten Anwender schon nicht mit normalen Vorlagen und schon gar nicht mit Dingen wie Seiten- oder Absatzformatvorlagen klar. Selbst der Serienbrief gehört für viele schon zu den höheren Weihen.

Die meisten Menschen denken nicht in Workflows und Strukturen. Das findet sich bei den EDV-affinen Leuten viel eher. Und die könnten aus LaTeX eventuell wirklich mehr herausholen, als aus einem Office-Paket. Wobei ich das eigentlich bezweifele, denn mit den XML-basierten Formaten lassen sich hervorragend generierte Inhalte mit manuell bearbeiteten mischen.

Weil ich das Problem hatte, dass nur ein Kollege und ich LaTeX kannten und der Rest sich etwas anderes, als ein grafisches Office schlicht nicht vorstellen konnte, habe ich über Skripte aus unserer Kunden- und Auftragsdatenbank Daten extrahiert und anschließend in sauber formatierte Rechnungsdokumente verwurstet. Alles per OpenOffice. Mit MS Office wäre es wegen des fehlenden XML-Formates etwas komplexer geworden, aber auch gegangen.

Faldrian - 1 year ago

@sasiflo Ach super, gibt es irgendwo dazu mal genauere Blogartikel oder Dokumentation, wie man z.B. OpenOffice-Dokumente mit Daten befüllt? Also gibt es für etwas irgendwelche Tools, oder darf ichs mir selber entzippen, im XML nach den Strings suchen und da was ersetzen?

@sasiflo

Simon L'nu - 1 year ago

so they re-did koffice? 'bout time, heh.

more seriously, that's a good thing i think. they've integrated libreoffice too, i think. maybe. it looks like it anyway, to me

sasiflo - 1 year ago

Das war im Jahre des Herrn 1999 noch mit StarOffice

Aber grundsätzlich: Damals durftest Du Dir das Dokument (den ZIP-Container) selbst entpacken und an der content.xml basteln. XML-Bibliotheken gab es aber schon, so dass Du auf die Elemente ziemlich problemlos zugreifen konntest. Eigentlich sehr simpel das ganze, zumal sehr ähnlich zu XO/FOP.

Tim Schlotfeldt - 1 year ago

@Simon L'nu LWN.net as some background informations about the fork: Behind the KOffice split.

@simon l'nu

Simon L'nu - 1 year ago

ah thank you Tim

Simon L'nu - 1 year ago

very informative, the comments too

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

The super-public http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/04/a-new-kind-of-public/index.htm @Open Web

@open web

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

@Linux-Group @Lazy Admin @Open Web #windows #gates #msn #office

♲ Martin

Gerade in der Ibash- Warteschlange gefunden:

Vater Bill Gates,
der du überwachst meine Festplatte,
geheiligt sei Dein Windows,
dein Update komme,
dein Bugfix geschehe,
wie in Windows so auch in Office.

Unser täglich MSN gib uns heute,
und vergib uns unsere Raubkopie,
so wie wir vergeben unserer Telekom.

Und führe uns nicht zu IBM,
sondern erlöse uns von OS /2.

Denn dein ist das DOS und das Windows und das NT in Ewigkeit.

Strg-Alt-Entf.

@linux-group @lazy admin @open web #windows #gates #msn #office

kosma likes this.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

001 Cilantro - visión general rápida by DudeOfX on YouTube

@Open Web

@open web

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Digital sharing as a fundamental right - Philippe Aigrain by visionontv on YouTube

@Open Web

@open web

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

hat jemand erfahrungen mit der software???

@Linux-Group @Open Web

Jitsi 1.0 mit Cross-Protokoll-Unterstützung und FMJ

http://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/18236/jitsi-10-mit-cross-protokoll-unterstuetzung-und-fmj.html

Die freie Videotelefonie- und Chat-Software Jitsi ist in der Version 1.0 erschienen.

#prolinux #linux #chat #video #jitsi

@linux-group @open web #prolinux #linux #chat #video #jitsi

30 comments show more

Fabian Dost - 1 year ago

viel einfacher als bei #pidgin finde ich bei #jitsi die #otr bedienung. das geht schnell von der hand.

#pidgin #jitsi #otr

Markus Döbele - 1 year ago

Lade ich doch gleich mal runter. Wir benutzen immernoch Skype. Mal sehen ob das eine Alternative ist.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Wall2.0: Dead Drops | English subtitles by mediaworks30 on YouTube

@Open Web

@open web

Jeroen Praat - 1 year ago

OwnCloud and hosting

This is a fork of @Martin Farrent's thread The age of the personal server?

Do you people recommend OwnCloud? And what is a good/cheap/reliable hosting provider to host ownCloud. Actually it would even be great if it can host OwnCloud (incl e.g. 20GB space) plus Friendica.

7 comments show more

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

I don't use OwnCloud, because I want a few open standards like CalDav and CardDav. So I assembled something of my own. But it's slightly complex, and a lot of people seem very happy with OwnCloud.

Jeroen Praat - 1 year ago

Thanks. Well actually I only need CalDav and WebDav (for backup) with 20GB, so ownCloud is maybe overkill. Installing Friendica and later maybe WordPress would also be great. Although I have the technical knowhow to install and maintain a server, I don't have the time. So I think a shared host would be a good solution.

So question remains: What is a good/cheap/reliable hosting provider to host the things I mentioned?

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Thing is you could host Friendica on a shared host, but you wouldn't get that amount of backup space for WebDav and I'm not sure you would get CalDav to work. I used Strato in Germany for a VPS (starts at around 7 euros a month, 25 GB).

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Sorry: use, not used. I still use Strato for VPS.

I also use Uberspace (shared host) for my Friendica forum sites. You can pay as little as one euro per month, there (you just say how much you can afford - so five might be a fair deal for many people). That gets Friendica up and running in about 15 minutes. If you do without your own domain, you can hitch an SSL lift on Uberspace's certificate and don't need to configure anything.

Jeroen Praat - 1 year ago

I will take a look at Uberspace. Unfortunately it's in German, not English, so Google translate can hopefully help me.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

If that doesn't suffice, there's an Uberspace forum here. You can find it on @Let's Talk

@let's talk

Jeroen Praat - 1 year ago

Thanks Martin, I just talked using twitter with the Uberspace folks. Looks good. Going to compare this with similar services tomorrow.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

The age of the personal server?

The growing popularity of projects like ownCloud indicates that we may finally be entering an era of personal servers - but will it be a geek-only trend or might there be a repeat performance of the world-changing personal computer revolution?

Given an increasing need to keep multiple devices from desktops to smartphones in sync, the answer ought to be a no-brainer. But that doesn't seem to be the case yet. There is still something daunting about the very word server that arouses awe (and actual fear) in the hearts of average users.

Visions of mainframes or Solaris powerhouses run by humourless tech zoo keepers linger to convince 'normals' that servers weren't invented to promote equality of humankind (and to be fair, they weren't - but that was quite a long time ago). There's a suspicion that any self-respecting server will break instantly when accessed by a person without thick glasess and an unkempt beard. It's also well known that servers invariably crash at three in the morning ahead of a crucial day - and then stubbornly stay down until they consider your real life sufficiently cocked up.

Today, the false prejudice of server management being an imperatively superhuman task gets in the way of people's genuine desire to re-privatise communication. That's why it's important, but also insufficient to stress ease of installation and maintenance for decentralised social network platforms like Friendica. It's important for those who read that far, but insufficient for those who panic and run away the moment they encounter the s-word. This may even be a simple issue of semantics. But it's perceived reality on the ground - which means that fundamental culture change is hampered by deeply emotional inhibitions.

The bright side of that statement is that culture change very rarely comes without that caveat.

@Open Web

@open web

57 comments show more

herzmeister - 1 year ago from Diaspora

i'm afraid that won't happen. It's against the interest of the industry and above the average user's abilities and/or beyond their care.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@herzmeister Neither WordPress nor - for that matter - Friendica are beyond the average user's true ability. Beyond their care? Not so sure. I think a whole lot more would care if they weren't scared.

As for the interests of the industry: yes. And not even the industry in a corporate sense. I ought to have added that there are a great many elitists in the entire tech scene that work to perpetuate the myth of inherent server complexity - and actually mistrust solutions that are simple enough for normal human beings to master.

@herzmeister

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

Opera Unite. Freedom Box.

There's still a little way to go on the UI front, and still a little bit of progress needed, but personal servers for the masses are surely nearly here.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

And let's not forget: The personal computer revolution started pre-Windows. The complexity of word processing with Word Perfect 4.x and no hard disk was far, far greater than the challenge of installing WordPress on a server today. Yet applications like Word Perfect won the masses.

tolerance nonviolence - 1 year ago

sorry not adding anything of value, average user here.

completely agree with this sentence in the original start post!

There is still something daunting about the very word server that arouses awe (and actual fear) in the hearts of average users.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago from latwit

@tolerance nonviolence ... and yet the same average user will rise to the considerable challenges of Photoshop on a desktop.

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

I suppose it doesn't help that users can see the problems we have on larger servers.

We had issues this week, and so did Friendica.eu, both resulted in data loss as we restored our respective backups. This wouldn't have been an issue for normal users (it's the number of users we have made our problems much worse), but adds to the perception of servers being scary.

It's far from just us - there have been some very well reported problems over the last year; Sony springs to mind. These are all issues that don't affect normal people - nobody is interested in harming your site catering for 6 people and your pet cat - but add to the perception.

I'm not sure what we can do to make this distinction clear though.

tolerance nonviolence - 1 year ago

in my case gimp on windows! (learning - one youtube tutorial video a day)

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@Thomas Willingham There's actually hard proof of what you say. The bug that caused real problems for two large servers a few days ago also hit one or two smaller ones - but merely slowed them down for a few hours until it was fixed.

I've been running my Friendica VPS for nearly seven months with no glitches. I never had any trouble with my Dyndns Friendica site, either. And there have been no problems with the sites I run on shared hosts for forums.

In a nutshell: A small server isn't just easy to run. It's probably also the safest place for your data.

@thomas willingham

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

Yeah - the first few people to confirm the problem we had were all single users who only had a slowed down network tab. My other server has never had an issue either (other than when I use it as a test bed). All the issues we've had have been caused by too much needing to be polled.

Also, worth mentioning that Michael Vogel has ensured that this particular issue can never happen again.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

It's worth adding that we have 11 comments from five people on this post to date... but it also went to my blog and Facebook, with no comments in either place (a much smaller audience on FB anyway).

Only one of the people who have joined this thread had the courage to say that he's scared of servers. The others either run servers or wouldn't be daunted by the task (@herzmeister ). But I would like to hear more from people who don't have their own sites. No desire or lack of self-confidence?

@herzmeister

J. Randal Matheny - 1 year ago

A bit of both, Martin. It does seem a daunting task for a plodder like me. And it means also more work to keep another item up and running.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@J. Randal Matheny And if you realised your server was going to give you about as much trouble as your blog platform?

@j. randal matheny

J. Randal Matheny - 1 year ago

That might be a bit of a relieving thought. Though one of our WP installations had quite a beast of malware. If I'd not had a webmaster doing the heavy lifting, I might have chunked it all. :)

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Get some malware in a WP installation and you're on your own (though it's fairly rare). But even if you do have trouble with Friendica, which is unlikely, you've got dozens of people ready to help - because it's a project that focuses on community.

If you need a safety net to feel reassured, there's a very simple one. Join identi.ca and get yourself hooked up with the Friendica group on StatusNet. Takes all of two minutes - and then you'll be able to contact people in emergencies. Or get yourself an XMPP (Jabber) account and look at our profiles. Some of us have XMPP addresses there. So you can buddy us, and we'll be there if you need us. There you go: TWO safety nets in one post.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Or: Your server crashes irredeemably (highly unlikely). So you join a public server and contact @Friendica Support to call for help.

Three safety nets.

@friendica support

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

This post: https://kakste.com/display/bouldrake/108763 was supposed to be useful for people with a lack of confidence.

They can host with me for a while, so they have the safety net that if they mess up, I can fix it for them, then when they've gained confidence, move on to their own server. Nobody has taken me up on it so far though, and it's not a long term solution (centralisation is bad, even if you have an admin panel)

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Worth noting if you take up @Thomas Willingham 's offer: By the time you move on, we'll probably have easy server migration on Friendica.

@thomas willingham

J. Randal Matheny - 1 year ago

You guys are pretty convincing. Just when I was getting comfy here on Arto's service. Was having access problems on my first one, and wanted also to open some community forums. I'm already on SN at http://identi.ca/jrandal.

J. Randal Matheny - 1 year ago

Oh, when is that import option going to be ready?

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

There's no time frame, unfortunately. It'll be part of Zot2.

Michelle Fink - 1 year ago

Another average user here who hasn't been able to check in much due to RL issues, so sorry for the delay in joining in.

I'm not sure "fear" is the right word so much as "confusion". You see, I don't even know if, when you say "my own server", you are talking about a machine in your house or something virtual that you are renting from someone else.

I would *love* to run my own server from my house, but my ISP forbids it & I don't really know where to start anyway. I've used Linux for years at home, but I'm in no way a developer or programmer. I ain't dumb, but I need explicit instructions.

If you are talking renting server space from a company, well in addition to being just as obtuse as the first option, it doesn't seem to address the problem of privacy & owning your own data in the way that a home server does, so I'm reluctant to get into it (and invest scarce funds) from that angle.

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

While theoretically your host has access to your VPS and could, in theory, get into the database and get everything in there, there's simply no profit in it.

What's the point in harvesting data for a single user? Who is going to pay for it? The only potential is in blackmail, and there are far easier ways to do that than to setup a hosting company and hope somebody one day shares something incriminating.

Michelle Fink - 1 year ago

But it isn't a single person's data, it's the thousands of people that rent from the same host, isn't it?

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

But it's disparate, in different formats, of different types, different datasets, with no easy way to aggregate it all into a useful bundle that can be sold to anyone.

Even if they did manage it, it's still largely useless. What are you going to do with it? Sell it to advertisers? How are they going to sell to anyone with it? They could mailshot, but it's nowhere near as easy, and probably more expensive than just using a platform that encourages privacy erosion.

There is a risk. I acknowledge and accept that, but I don't think it's very much larger than the risk involved with dealing with your ISP, who can potentially know much more about you.

Michelle Fink - 1 year ago

You lack imagination with what can be done with people's data, Thomas

but I grasp your point.

My concern is largely more in tracking and tagging oppressed minorities and others who are troublesome to those in power rather than targeted advertisement.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

One thing we ought to be aware of is this: If we're hiding something and they make an effort to find it, they probably will (on any social networking platform). But forcing them to make the individual effort is a blow against global default surveillance - the scenario we might be approaching otherwise.

If you were in a country like China and wanted real secrecy, you would start out with Tor and GPG as the very minimum.

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

Oh, I know what can be done with people's data, but there's got to be something in it for the middle man too. Why would your hosting company share your data if they're not going to make money off it, or under legal challenge?

It's easier for three letter agencies and the like to just go to the ISPs, and the really big sites than it is to try to wrangle data out of thousands of hosting suppliers over a couple of hundred countries.

Hosting via a hosting company is the difference between Facebook and Diaspora. Hosting on your own server is the difference between Facebook and Friendica.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

So ISP TOS could be an obstacle to people running their own servers from their own homes. Presumably they block port 80/443.

David Benfell - 1 year ago

I would caution that there are still many people who are still poorly adapted even to having their own desktop systems.

One person I know recently had her email hacked. You won't be surprised when I say why: her password was three characters long.

My mother can barely manage her Windows system. I had to show her a number of Word tricks--and I haven't used Word myself in years.

We have to consider the Aunt Nellie problem (with apologies to all the Aunt Nellie's--please do speak up--who are actually quite competent) as magnified when we speak of telling people they should host their own servers.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Probably the best that can be hoped for in the short term is that more people like me start running independent servers, and then allow the Aunt Nellies to use them.

That a story which is basically about privacy on the internet was the second highest on the BBC news site today demonstrates that there is probably some awareness of the issues, even amongst folk who don't understand the technical aspects.

David Benfell - 1 year ago

I agree there's awareness of the issues. But, for instance, my mother was concerned that she should remove her credit card information from Amazon because of a recent credit card processor hack. I had to explain to her, very patiently, that Amazon was separate from this credit card processor, that if a hacker had obtained her information from the processor, it would make no difference whether it was on Amazon or not.

I'm probably being a bit presumptuous here, but I'm guessing I might not be far off in suggesting that for her, there is a certain fog in her understanding that thickens with the distance from her keyboard and screen. She's in her 70s and frankly is doing well to be able to use a PC at all (but, as a newspaper reporter, she had to learn how to use a word processor, which was some preparation).

So I think, @Bob Mottram , that your suggestion that the "Aunt Nellies" (and I'm still waiting to get smacked hard across the face for using a stereotype term) is right, but not just for the short term.

I think we all have our particular combinations of talents. Some of us can be quite good at running servers. Some of us, like me, might be able to get by, at least for some things (though it remains to be seen whether I will ever attempt even Friendica again). But others of us, whose talents lie in other arenas, will never be able to. This is the beauty and the necessity of a cooperative society; we can each develop in the way that our talents lead, relying on others where needed.

@bob mottram

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

The ultimate goal is for everyone to have their own server, but that needs the Freedom Box.

I can only speak for myself, but when I say "everyone", I assume my audience is largely geek (since Friendica is still mostly activists and geeks right now), and it's shorthand for "everyone with the ability".

There's a gap between "everyone with the ability", and "everybody who knows they have the ability". It's a lot easier than a lot of people think, they do have the ability, they just don't know they do.

It's this gap we're trying to fill, not your proverbial Aunty Maude who would probably be better on her nephew's server.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@David Benfell Don't forget that you were running Friendica on a VPS with a host of other things. The alternative is to install Friendica Wordpress-style on a shared host. The functionality is roughly the same, but there's a huge difference in complexity. Part of the VPS complexity is getting all the prerequisites up there yourself. Another part is configuring Apache, getting SSL, mail services etc. The reward is that you can do a lot of additional things on the side, not just Friendica.

None of that applies when you're only putting some files up via FTP and running the web installer.

@david benfell

Michelle Fink - 1 year ago

Perhaps if it were all explained, step-by-step, without skipping all the stuff that's really obvious to you, in one place where we knew where to look, us Uncle Freds

would get it?

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@Michelle:

1) VPS/home server: Build the car (from a kit) and drive it.
2) Shared server: Drive the car.
3) Account on someone else's server: Co-driver.

Everyone gets to the same place. But it strikes me that #2 would be the preferable option for most people, if they felt up to it. Perhaps you're right: They might feel up to it if some of the information we take for granted were spelt out for them - and yes, in one place.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

@David Benfell In the longer term I expect that this stuff, like a lot of technology, will just become completely routine such that anyone can buy a box, plug it into their router (or replace their router with it), enter a few details in a similar way that they would with a router and then go from there. I expect the amount of maintenance required to be the same as the amount of maintenance for a wireless router - i.e. very little.

For the present the way that I've done it is very hacky and does require someone with technical aptitude, or at least the willingness to learn command line foo. Longer term I don't expect anyone to need to install and configure the operating system and software manually. It'll just be there ready to begin with.

@david benfell

David Benfell - 1 year ago

I have a hard time imagining that servers can ever be made so simple you never have to tinker with them. But you always have to remember, I've been wrong before.

I remember, in the late 1980's, thinking networking would never amount to much, that data rates would never be fast enough to make it worthwhile. Every once in a while, I need to remember this. It keeps me humble.

Mike - 1 year ago

Once we get to

apt-get install friendica

we'll be halfway there.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

In terms of maintenance, after I'd installed Friendica and set up a script to pull from the git repository I didn't have to do anything further. There was one issue with the twitter/statusnet plugin, and another with the poller script, but I thing those arose because I'm using the latest development code.

When I started running my own server I did wonder how much maintenance it would take. As it turns out it requires next to no attention, and most of the maintenance I've done has been as a result of me experimentally fiddling about with stuff.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

apt-get would be the geek-light easy way.

I'm thinking of something far more basic, but I'm not telling quite yet. Time for another

Mike - 1 year ago

An auto-run dvd or usb stick would also be nice.

But this starts to infringe on traditional geekery. Do you have a domain name you want to use? An IP address? What about an SSL cert? What do you want to call the database, and do you want to share the mysql account with other applications or have a separate account for it?

Each one of these choices that you handle "automatically" restricts the number of people who can or will use it automatically.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

You need several ways of installing things geared to various user types. The easiest way won't appeal to people who have additional geek concerns (like hosting other things on the same machine). But the easiest way would work for total beginners... ideally.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@Michelle Fink: Something like this?

http://friendica.com/node/27

Michelle Fink - 1 year ago

Thanks @Martin_Farrent !

I'll read it over & let you know if there's stuff I don't get.

foonetic (nternetx) - 1 year ago

I think that servers run by the family (or neighborhood) tech person are where we want to go. Eventually, I think the best thing for computer users (but this is very bad for highly-paid technical specialists and government "security" operatives, so the industry will join with governments to fight it desperately) is some kind of encrypted P2P system. But that's a long way away.

zottel - 1 year ago

The point is: People press return twenty times in Word because they don't know they can insert a page break.

Throw anything at them that requires a command shell or even remote knowledge of how computers or networks work, and it just won't work.

If there's anything more to it than answering "yes" to all questions in a Windows installer, people won't use it. Not because they're lazy, but because they can't.

People like us tend to think "In old days, there was not much more but the shell, but everyone learned to use it, so can people today". But that's not true. Not "everyone" learned it, just the few geeks who were using computers at all at that time.

Today, it seems so easy to us to get a shared host. It probably is, but to most people having their own website might be an achievable goal (though hard and complicated), but having their own social network server is something like having their own TV channel.

If you have to type commands into a shell at any point, you have lost more than 90% of all users. If you have to know basics about networking to answer installation questions, you have lost 95%. If acquiring and installing an SSL cert is vital, you have lost 99%.

Unless all of that is just a click away, there won't ever be a mass movement to private servers.

Michelle Fink - 1 year ago

If 10% can manage it, they just each have to invite 9 friends, yah?

Which does bring me to a question. I read the guide, @Martin_Farrent (am I not doing these mentions right?), thanks so much for putting it up. As stated, it does in fact seem doable. It would be great if I could invite a few friends & family to use my (as yet hypothetical) Friendica installation. For a totally basic install on a Dreamhost shared server, what do people think would be a reasonable number of accounts?

I realize there's no concrete answer to that, as I'm sure it would depend on how much data each person has and continues to accrue in the database. But on average/ballpark/yatta yatta, what would you say? 5 people? 10?

zottel - 1 year ago

I think you should be able to at least host about 100 users without running into problems.

But you won't get that number. When I still was on Facebook, I tried to move as much people as I could over to G+ when it was new and Google seemed to be not really evil. Note that G+ has a really great UI and is much more easy to use than Friendica or Diaspora (or Facebook, for that matter).

Now that Google revealed its evil nature, I won't try to get people to join there, of course, but from the simple user's point, G+ is MUCH easier to use and understand than Friendica or Diaspora are, and the UI is near perfect, IMHO.

But still, from my around 130 Facebook contacts or so, less than twenty even TRIED G+, though I advertised as hell at at that time.

And that's G+, and their UI admittedly is a LOT better than Friendica's or Diaspora's. As sad as it is, I predict that you won't ever reach a number of users on your Friendica server that will push it to its limits.

Michelle Fink - 1 year ago

Thanks zottel!

I really don't have more than maybe 30 tops I could think to invite anyway (I'm one of those anti-social social networkers), but I know what you mean about getting people interested in something less than mainstream.

I guess we could always hope that one day FB will really really piss a lot of people off. Could happen.

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

I'm also one of those anti-social social networkers - I had 23 Facebook contacts, and none of them like my anymore.

I managed to get 80 odd users anyway (though that includes 20 odd groups). Even then, we're using just short of 250mb RAM when the poller runs, and the poller runs for about 7 minutes on average.

The only ones you even really notice are those that have like 400 Facebook contacts. I'm not sure how well shared hosting would compare to a VPS though...I think Zottel might be a bit optimistic, but it's a very hard number to pick.

David Benfell - 1 year ago

@foonetic , have you looked at I2P?

foonetic (nternetx) - 1 year ago

@david

I looked at the site, but I have not actually tried it out.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

@zottel On shellphobia, I'm not entirely convinced by this. Using many web based systems today, like Gmail or Facebook, is pretty cognitively complex and most people seem to be able to handle this.

But anyway, I don't think that running servers necessarily requires command line intervention. My wireless router could be thought of as a server doing a particular job, and it requires virtually no maintenance. I think it will be possible to devise a system which either plugs into a router, or replaces it, and which doesn't require much more than initial configuration.

@zottel

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

@zottel On Friendica vs G+, I'm using both and at least in my case having used them in parallel for a similar amount of time I have more friends on Friendica than on G+.

On the UI I suppose that it's a matter of personal taste. The editing ability of Friendica (for italics, colors, etc) seems better than you find in G+. I havn't even attempted to write anything in italics in G+, and it's not immediately obvious how you would go about doing that.

@zottel

David Benfell - 1 year ago

The difference in communication style between visual (GUI) and literate (shell) should not be minimized. It's very apparent to me that many young people respond to icons but would be baffled by a command line. (Historically, I've been somewhat befuddled by both.)

As to Google Plus, I can't say I'm all that enamored with the interface. Some of this is simply buggy rather than inherent: I ran into trouble when I was trying to classify my contacts into circles. But it seems to me like it requires two steps to do anything, where one should suffice.

Michael Vogel - 1 year ago

I'm using google+ as well as friendica. I like the UI of g+ and most of all I like the mobile client. I have many followers in g+ and there are really good discussions there.

I don't want to lose that. So I wrote an importer for g+ posts.

Concerning the performance: I hope that soon I will have several users on my machine (and a faster machine as well) so that I can test several things to improve the performance.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

XMPP - the way out!

@Free Web Kids @Open Web

Reviving the XMPP discusssion I started a few days ago, I'm currently wondering about a remark that kids don't want native clients any more...

... and disagreeing with it.

Right now? No, they don't. But that's because people aren't telling them about the possible advantages. Have an unobtrusive Jitsi or Pidgin window open while you watch a movie, and you can chat with Facebook friends (and others) without switching to full screen Facebook and missing the action in the film. Stop jumping to and fro between full-screen Facebook and your homework... you get the drift.

Rather than mourning the demise of XMPP clients as the end of an era that never got started, we should be stressing their practical advantages to our kids - not least because when they have divorced Facebook chat from Facebook-everything-else, it will be easier to widen that little rift and persuade them to use ~friendica

, if only (initially) as a Facebook proxy.

@free web kids @open web

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Introduction to the #FreedomBox http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck @Open Web

#freedombox @open web

7 comments show more

Arto - 1 year ago

Cool!

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

I'm an existence proof that all of these services - blog, wiki, social network, email, etc - can be hosted on one of these small low power computers.

Arto - 1 year ago

the fact that it is Debian-based will make the learning curve that much more level. A few years ago, there were limited options to run GNU/Linux on the ARM. Angstrom Linux, was it called?

Arto - 1 year ago

Could you recommend some plug computers that are available today? My raspberry pi seems to be delayed once again for shipment.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Raspberry Pi seems like a promising future prospect, due to its low cost and low power consumption. Currently I know of Sheevaplug, Guruplug and Dreamplug. There might be others. I'm using the original ARM5 Sheevaplug running Debian Squeeze.

Arto - 1 year ago

Ok, I'll check it out, see if I can start playing with some of those devices. Does your device experience heating issues - there was some discussion of one of the designs being plagued occasionally by over-heating issues - but this was a while ago.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

It gets warm, but I've not experienced any overheating issues. I live in a relatively cold area though, so if you lived closer to the equator cooling might become a problem (they have no fan).

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Introduction to the Free Network Foundation by isocny on YouTube

@Open Web

@open web

2 people like this

5 comments show more

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

There are some interesting possibilities, such as using error correcting codes to reconstruct missing data (one of my previous jobs was in datamatrix reading). So if a few nodes get damaged in an earthquake or other calamity the missing data could be reconstructed from the surrounding nodes. It's also similar to the way that information is stored in certain types of neural nets.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

The problem with blimps is that they're easy to shoot down, but they would be inexpensive to build. Multi-rotor drones are harder to bring down in that way.

Charles Roth - 1 year ago

Im trying to reconstruct this thread using only these 2 datapoints:

"There are some interesting possibilities, such as using error correcting codes to reconstruct missing data (one of my previous jobs was in datamatrix reading). So if a few nodes get damaged in an earthquake or other calamity the missing data could be reconstructed from the surrounding nodes. It's also similar to the way that information is stored in certain types of neural nets."

and

"The problem with blimps is that they're easy to shoot down, but they would be inexpensive to build. Multi-rotor drones are harder to bring down in that way."

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Later on he talks about possibly using either blimps or multi-rotor drones con construct mesh networks. He thinks the most practical will be lighter than air blimps or balloons. I think I agree, although they are vulnerable to kids with air pistols.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

There are also rotating designs for tethered balloons which could both support a radio aerial and generate the electricity to run the node.

Arto - 1 year ago

@Open Web

♲ Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Auctioning Patent Weapons That Attack the Publi...
Auctioning Patent Weapons That Attack the Public and Are Funded by the Public
http://techrights.org/2012/04/02/public-patents-sold-by-nasa/
#nasa #swpats #facebook

@open web #nasa #swpats #facebook

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Discovery, Identity, and Trust http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s @Open Web

@open web

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

It would also be useful if the FreedomBox Foundation could recruit a "red team" of people who are thinking about ways in which the proposed communications systems could be attacked or censored.

Klaus Weidenbach - 1 year ago

Haven't seen these videos from the #FreedomBox hackfest before. Thanks for posting them!

#freedombox

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Do not allow the government to back-door our entire communications infrastructure

http://www.sroc.eu/2012/04/do-not-allow-government-to-back-door.html

@Open Web

@open web

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Personally I don't think this is about criminals. Combating crime may be an element of it, but only a minor one. Mostly I think this is about obtaining the traffic graph, then using that to influence online communities. If you have an persona management system then the traffic graph tells you were those bots should be deployed to achieve your objectives.

David Sugar - 1 year ago

And when backdoors exist (including "procedural" as happening in the pinging scandal), they will be exploited. This will become every stalkers wet dream and every mobsters source of blackmail material...

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Presentation of the FreedomBox from James Vasile by macbroadcast on YouTube

@Open Web

@open web

10 comments show more

Arto - 1 year ago

This is great. Amazing how much progress this project has made from the initial proposal by Moglen not so long ago!

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

They're making progress, although far more slowly than was originally hoped by Moglen. Development seems to have been stalled by proprietary drivers and license issues.

Personally I'd be far more in favour of a "release early and often" approach. They seem to be waiting for the cathedral of perfect security to be constructed before launch.

Arto - 1 year ago

I agree, release early, let us use it, while ironing out the kinks in the process...

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

If they can get feedback from the wider (technical) community by putting stuff out there often and having people test it, then I think they'd find that they make progress more rapidly and that the security is better (more eyeballs).

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

It's the sort of thing we all want, and we all want now.

But given the involvement of Debian people, did anybody really expect anything different?

Sure, it'll be slower than desirable, but once it works, that's it, it'll keep working forever, and never break.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

It's on the right sort of track though. I think the issues around privacy, net neutrality and censorship are only going to grow over time. It looks as if China's national internet is the model which governments all over the world are wanting to head towards.

Arto - 1 year ago

And if these governments succeed, then the web will become the next manifestation of cable TV.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Yes I think they want to be able to control the new media in the same way that they controlled the old. This was particularly apparent during Google's testimony at the Leveson inquiry, in which it became clear that judges or politicians want the ability to say "remove X from the internet" and for that to then happen, with ISPs or search companies acting as a kind of national police force and/or censorship mechanism.

Arto - 1 year ago

Indeed, illustrated by Twitter's announcement of how they'll "voluntarily" begin removing posts that might be deemed inappropriate by authorities.

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

And pastebin: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/02/pastebin_content_policing/

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

It's been just over 19 hours since I deleted all communication models that spy on me, from Skype to (incoming) Gmail. (See this post: http://kakste.com/display/bouldrake/58381 )
It's like taking a weight off your shoulders, but there's also a little remorse knowing there are certain people I'll never hear from again. True, they're not actual friends (the ones that are, if all else fails, will come to my house), but there were still some close acquaintances.
I'm not sure if I'd recommend such drastic action to anybody else just yet...but on the other hand, we need a lot of people to do the same if we're going to have an impact. Though, of course, I don't really expect my actions to have any impact - I just don't want to give them any of my money, so to speak.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

This is what I call "digital survivalism", and it's something which I've been experimenting with for over a year. As it turns out, running your own server isn't very labour intensive and the value proposition which sites like Facebook are providing is very low. I havn't gone to the extreme of getting rid of Gmail yet, but I have been reducing my use of that and increasing use of my own email server in a phased fashion.

There is the satisfaction of being master of your own digital destiny, but also there is the practical aspect of saving money and being able to back stuff up easily. If I were to rent equivalent storage space and services from other companies then I'd probably be paying a fair amount in subscriptions per month.

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

There is indeed, the cost aspect. I'm somewhat privileged in this regard since I own my own business which has very high demands on it's own mail and storage systems (in fact, this public Friendica server relies heavily on my Meat Space business for storing it's backups too). Adding my personal needs to my business needs is essentially free.

I'm not sure I would have been able to do this were it not, somewhat ironically, backed by a company.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

They can see you - but is this the point?

@Open Web

Seen just a moment ago in a comment from Diaspora and heard many times a week if you bring the topic up in normal conversation: The government can see whatever you do anyway, if they want to.

Two thoughts:

Yes, they probably can. But not always. I doubt they find it easy to read my GPG mail.

If we make it difficult for them, they at least can't see and mine our data by default and by finding everyone in the same place. We force them to make an effort. We force the data-mining companies they (and commercial others!) employ to invest substantial resources - rendering the business model unprofitable, eventually perhaps even obsolete.

@open web

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

Do people seriously say that?

A criminal can break into my house even if I lock the door - but I still make sure it's lock, and the alarms turned on when I go out.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

Indeed it's about the amount of effort exerted - especially financial effort. The current obsessions with mass surveillance are largely due to information collection, storage and processing having become far cheaper over the last couple of decades. In the past it just wasn't practical or economical to stockpile video tapes or floppy disks, and even less practical to try to analyze them.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

I see the problem of keeping the web open as one of the major challenges in the years ahead. Issues around net neutrality, censorship, certain commercial practices (walled gardens) and copyright enforcement all seem to be arranged in a way which is pointing in a more closed direction. If the political situation becomes more dicey the ability of people to communicate freely without intermediaries will also become more critical.

So it's up to those citizens of the web who have more technical knowhow to find ways around these things and hopefully reverse the trend towards isolationism and balkanization, and spread that knowledge to others.

@Open Web

@open web

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

It's almost the mother of all challenges, to employ a rather over-used phrase in a literal way. If we can't retain this communications channel for ourselves, we may one day be effectively unable to promote any other causes and meet any other challenges.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Junior Facebook?

@Free Web Kids @Open Web

This is almost two months old, but I have only just seen it. The implications of this article are horrific, and the hair-raising irresponsibility of the author beats almost anything I have read on the topic yet. But perhaps the idea needs kidnapping by people with the children's interests in mind - instead of corporate opportunities.

And then, Emma Barnett, Digital Media Editor of the Telegraph, will very accidentally have written something that did some good. Probably for the first time ever.

An excerpt:

More than half (53 per cent) of the children interviewed said that they would like a 'junior' Facebook to be created, so they could access the site legitimately.
Ian Douthwaite, chief executive of Dubit, said: "This research should be welcome news to Facebook who have a great opportunity to widen their audience and legitimise these kids' membership... "

http://jpub.de/13

@free web kids @open web

16 comments show more

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

In future no childhood indiscretion will go unnoticed or be forgotten. Imagine if everything that you did as a kid had been documented and was available to your parents, teachers and potentially future universities or employers.

tony baldwin - 1 year ago

damn frightening...

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

It's an idiotic newspaper anyway... but idiotic publications tend to promote dangerous ideas quite successfully.

Mike - 1 year ago

We know from experience that 53% of the users of such a site would be police and pedophiles - all pretending to be kids.

tony baldwin - 1 year ago

Maybe I could meet a hot police chick that way.
There are some pretty cute ladies on the NHPD, and I keep trying to figure out how to meet them without getting arrested. Something about a woman in uniform.

Image/photo

Ooh...arrest me!

Mike - 1 year ago

shit torture me...

tony baldwin - 1 year ago

Hmmm...the above, and discussion on another thread, have me questioning where our liability lies if/when children are on our sites and if/when n.s.f.w materials are displayed.
I mean, unless we force users to add a birthdate and swear to it's veracity, and then disable all n.s.f.w materials for underaged users, what?
What kind of trouble could that cause?
Should we have one of these deals where parents must approve membership and assume responsiblity for their children's activities, plus expressly promise to hold us harmless for what said children see here? Can we?
What are our responsibilities and liabilities?
Should we have an attorney address these matters?
I've run wikis and forums without giving these matters much thought, since users were, in general, adults (mostly foss hackers and the like), but they are matters to which we might be wise to give some thought.
If we allow children on, are we bound to protect them?
How can we ensure that we do?
Certainly, we can't be held liable for those who falsify their age data.
At this juncture, we could conceivably already have 15 y/o kids on friendica, posting and viewing pr0n, and not even know it, though.
We don't, at this juncture, even require age data (it's optional on profiles, and not part of registration).

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

If you accept users under the age of 13, you have to abide by COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection). I'm not in the US, so I don't really know what's in COPPA, but most sites just get people to agree they're 13 or over. Even porn sites just ask for one additional click to confirm you're old enough to access the content.

tony baldwin - 1 year ago

It seems in my best interest, at this time, to only allow users of the age of majority. Of course, I can not verify registrants' age, but include, now, in my ToS, that the user certifies, by use and registration, that they are of such an age. I don't suppose there's much more I can do, really.

Bob Mottram - 1 year ago

nsfw - Click to open/close

Mike - 1 year ago

COPA indeed may have relevance here. I had forgotten about it as I'm no longer in the U.S. But in a nutshell, you can't store any "personal details" for anybody under 13, such as real name or address. If they supply it voluntarily you MUST remove it.

The quandary is that there can exist a friendica site for 9-year olds which does not connect to other Friendica sites and is not under US jurisdiction.

We may need a COPA plugin in the US just as we need an Impressum plugin in Germany.

JC John Sese Cuneta (謝施洗) - 1 year ago

Forum software do just that. If a user enters a birthday that is <13 yrs old, their accounts are put on-hold until their parents sends an approval letter as per COPPA. Once received, the admin will approve the account.

Any <13 yr old know how to circumvent that, just fake your birth year, which makes it pretty useless. But that's not the point, the point is protecting the site administrators, the site owners, and their hosting provider.

If I am not mistaken, if a user under whatever 'allowed' age fakes his birth year, the moderators, admins, and owners are protected. But don't take my word for it, for one I don't live in the US, never did, and two, I only pull from previous reports and third-party information about such cases.

Yep, US-based servers need COPPA activated even though you're not accepting US-based users. I don't know why, but my previous host providers required us to do that regardless.

David Sugar - 1 year ago

There are actually many good reasons to just do a worldwide blanket boycott of the United States ;).

In a practical sense, though, there are probably other regions that have other kinds of "special needs" also. If this can be done with a plugin, it seems a simple and prudent thing to add.

Mike - 1 year ago

I've added a couple of hooks that I think we might require to support COPA.

register_form
register_post

to ask if somebody is 13 or over

We already had

profile_edit
profile_post

which can nuke any COPA required data fields on your profiles if you are less than 13.

JC John Sese Cuneta (謝施洗) - 1 year ago

And maybe there should be an option to allow admins to re-issue a "agree with the new policies" instance-wide. This way we can avoid the fb-like cases where there's a new TOS, Privacy Policy, etc. w/o the end-users knowing or re-agreeing to it.

Paul Taylor - 1 year ago

@tony baldwin Absolutely the wrong thread to be putting that picture in. Imagine the scenario:

"Here, I like to show you friendica. I think it's a better option than letting your kids have a Facebook account. We even have a group discussing it... oh." #lackingingorm

@tony baldwin #lackingingorm

Open Web - 1 year ago

All languages welcome

Please feel free to use the languages you are comfortable with in this forum. There's room for everyone.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

GPG / openPGP

@elmussol+545
Part of enjoying an open Web is being able to determine and fully control your privacy options when you need to. So I'm resharing this for Open Web.

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

♲ Paul Taylor
GPG -- what I do
We've had a lot of discussion about #GPG over the last few days and the first thing I want to say is "Don't sign anything until you've read this". The second thing to say is that these are my thoughts on how GPG works for me, this is not the official 'line'.
It's all about trust and build a web of that trust. But I think we have to be really careful about what we mean about the word trust here. Is it "I trust $person with my kids, to water my plants, look after my vinyl collection &/or my personal data", or it "I trust $person is who they say they are". Sorry for the leading question, but I think it needs stating.
So I have no GPG data on Thomas who runs #KakSte for example, but I trust him with my data. There are others who I have had extensive, wide-ranging and meaningful conversations with and won't sign their GPG keys. Why?
Whenever I get new GPG information from someone I try and verify that information. There are keyservers that you can reference. GPG keys are tied to email addresses, I often send a signed email and ask for a signed reply. I can check their #friendica profile. When this all checks out to my satisfaction, I raise my trust level of that key to marginal and say I trust their signature on other keys. I then publish that to my keyserver.
Now to get a key signed by me, I preferably meet you in person and I see some ID and some proof that the key is yours. The only non face-to-face key signings I've done have been with new keys for old contacts. A telephone call where we share only stuff we would know has worked for me.
I may be more hardcore than many on this, but me signing your key means that I trust 100% that you are who you say you are and you have control of that key. It does not mean that I trust you with my record collection.

#gpg #kakste #friendica

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

What's up with XMPP?

@Open Web

I see a lot of talk, but surprisingly little use of XMPP (Jabber). This rather baffles me - because it's dead simple to install a client and get an account on an open server. In fact, installing your own server is a breeze, too. eJabberd is configured within minutes and has never given me a spot of bother. I wonder why XMPP isn't more popular.

@open web

Ciara Vero likes this.

26 comments show more

Klaus Weidenbach - 1 year ago

#XMMPP is widely used, but the biggest networks are not federating, that's the problem I think.

#xmmpp

Klaus Weidenbach - 1 year ago

Ah damn... you cannot edit comments?
I meant #XMPP for course.

#xmpp

Tobias - 1 year ago

Because all my friends are at ICQ/MSN/Yahoo/Facebook what do I need geeky Jabber for?

Myrddin Lailoken - 1 year ago

And I think the instand messaging is dead. Even in ICQ I had last only a few contacts. Either the people are not chatting or they use Facebook. Classic IM is out of the Mainstream.

Emmanuel Revah - 1 year ago

I use ejabberd and communicate regularly with users who have their own XMPP server AND with any google user. Indeed Gtalk uses XMPP and is open to communicating with other XMPP servers (just like email, yay). This is not true with facebook which uses XMPP but on a closed network.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@Myrddin Lailoken I'm of the opposite opinion, really... though you do make an exception for FB. What the kids do on Facebook is almost non-stop instant messaging. To me, XMPP seems like a key tool in luring them away from the place - especially because it will interact with FB via Facebook XMPP, just as ~friendica

integrates Facebook in social streams.

@myrddin lailoken

Myrddin Lailoken - 1 year ago

Correction:Client Instand-Messanging is dead!

Why install extra software? I need not on Facebook yet. Add extra contacts? Why, who are already all on Facebook?

Privacy interested few. And even fewer are willing to pursue this a little bit of effort. And client to client expense means.

l23 - 1 year ago

@Myrddin Lailoken completely right. Therefore we need such a dead simple (chat) solution too..

@myrddin lailoken

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

It's very difficult in a distributed network that has the ambition to be truly decentralised - i.e. installable on shared hosts, like Wordpress. Running an XMPP server is easy on a VPS, getting it to do Web XMPP is possible, though a little trickier (I've got it up and running). But it can't yet be done on a shared host, and I don't think Friendica wants two classes of sites.

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

Remember in the mid-90's when chat really started to get popular (vary the date for your particular region/demograph).

We didn't know anybody then...yet by now I consider my early chat friends Meat Space friends because I met (almost) all of them before long, and now they really are Meat Space friends.

We don't necessarily need to bring your friends here, we just need to recreate the early 90's. Perhaps we should be selling the IRC plugin more than we have been.

zottel - 1 year ago

@Thomas Willingham Yes, exactly. Actually, Friendica and Diaspora have always felt like my early days in IRC to me.

I didn't want to use social networks altogether for a long time, then was talked into creating a Facebook account and found it was fun. Then I started using Diaspora when the Alpha was first opened to the public (haha), not really knowing what to do with a network where I didn't know anybody.

And it was like IRC when I first started using it: Seeing discussions, taking part, slowly getting to know complete strangers. And today, Friendica becomes more and more what IRC became later: I know the "regulars", trust starts building up, some contacts more and more feel like friends.

I'm sure we'll have channel and relay parties soon and start getting to know each other in real life.

@thomas willingham

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

The real-life component almost always emerges when there's a real community, @zottel . Over the years, I've met many people from all over the world who I originally talked to on Usenet or web forums. I have even met some by coincidence, but knew them from photos.

Still, it's a pity that Friendica and XMPP aren't more easily married. The really enticing thing from my point of view is the integration of Facebook chat contacts with XMPP (as I said earlier, it mirrors what Friendica itself does). I feel that's part of the key to winning the young generation.

@zottel

zottel - 1 year ago

@Martin Farrent Yes. And even apart from connecting to Facebook users, having a chat box thingy in a social network is something nice-to-have (though I admittedly never used that much on Facebook or Google).

@martin farrent

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@zottel I often keep Jitsi open while using Friendica. I've got eight Friendica XMPP contacts - and sometimes, chats will emerge from a thread. We've got a how-to on friendica.com http://friendica.com/node/20#overlay-context=node/20 When it first appeared, a few people added XMPP addresses to their profiles. I was hoping to semi-integrate XMPP via weblinks that would talk to native clients, but that was unreliable. But you probably followed all that.

@zottel

Mike - 1 year ago

We could really use 3 more good developers, and one of them knowing their way around XMPP - which has a bit of a learning curve at the protocol level.

The folks at movim.eu have an xmpp to web project under php which has all the technology we need to tie this all together. I haven't unpacked their tarball yet to study it - just hope it isn't in French.

But basically it's just a bosh gateway with offline storage. Conceptually it's easy.

The devil of course is in the details.

RequeteChe - 1 year ago

"Chat" looks as a kind of essential communication standard to me.

If XAMPP is the free standard (ICQ is limited isn't it?), it should be considered as basic established provider for federated networking.
Image/photo

Thomas Willingham - 1 year ago

This sounds like a sponsored bug..?

RequeteChe - 1 year ago

wondering - Image/photo

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

@Mike I took a very quick look at movim. It wants the XMPP server specified at admin level - all users on one server.

@mike

Mike - 1 year ago

I just want to study the interface between the web profiles and bosh. We can't use any of their code anyway because it has a somewhat incompatible license.

There are only a couple of projects that have done web-to-xmpp and vice versa, and I'd rather learn from those that have gone before rather than reverse-engineer everything as was necessary with Diaspora.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

The one I've used for my web office is jwChat - but it uses Tomcat behind Apache for a plugin. Probably too complex.

I was thinking along these lines, though: If the server admin doesn't want to run an XMPP server himself (and he probably either can't or doesn't want to, because the server load for XMPP is unpredictable), you've got users required to set up their XMPP accounts elsewhere and then enter the details. That's only marginally more convenient than running a native client. But the native client will let you integrate Facebook contacts.

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Like: Perhaps make it more of a cultural thing, as @zottel and @Thomas Willingham have suggested.

First step: Make more prominent and flexible use of Tony's IRC plugin.

Second step: Establish a culture of parallel XMPP use for more private IM.

@zottel @thomas willingham

l23 - 1 year ago

@Thomas Willingham, +1
@Martin Farrent I don't think, that its just a little bit more convenient to use, imho its critically important. Most younger people wont install any client program, if they could use facebook web chat instead.. + all have got bad memories of icq's crappy client etc
Having a little web chat, even if the server isn't run on the same server as your friendica node, its a great win. Admins could specify there XMPP server of trust, if they dont set up their own?

@thomas willingham @martin farrent

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

I think the reason they won't set up their own is simple: If they're on shared hosting, they won't be able to install one with Bosh. But if they're on a virtual host, they will be worried about the protocol's potential. All the functionality is on the client side - so you can stop people having long, multi-party video conferences if their client supports them one day. (And some people will discover that they've got a full XMPP account on that server.

Haakon Meland Eriksen - 1 year ago

(Off-topic) In the Norwegian Healthnet there is XMPP-service named SNOW, after the father of epidemiology, John Snow. My friend Johan Gustav Bellika wrote it back in 2005-7, and we initially used jabberd, if I remember correctly. A software agent at the local doctor's office polls for tasks from the disease prevention centre in the municipality, region or country level, and if a task is found - say, how many cases of pertussis do you have? - the agent does a local database search containing instances found, date reported, ZIP code area and returns the local answer. The service then aggregates the incoming results, and puts these on an SVG-map. This distributed workload means you can get an answer about when and where a disease is spreading for the size of Europe in about a half a minute. Pretty cool, actually!

Martin Farrent - 1 year ago

Sorry, that should read: You CAN'T stop people having long...