If you want meaningful data, shouldn’t you be appending locally anyway? AFAIK, if SocketAppender loses its connection, you lose all events until reconnection.

“Coming along from the network standpoint,” isn’t it preferable to ‘pull’ when you need, rather than ‘push’ all the time? Does SocketAppender encrypt the serialized object, so as not to “fall by the security wayside”? Annnnnnnd I’ve lost my mind.

Have started working with Ruby on some Second Life RegAPI stuff, but just poking around thus far.

And what do you mean “nasty ass SQL” ??? SQL is beautiful! I love it - so structured.

RT: Who makes up the community? You said it - people. What do they do? They’re people being people: chatting, flirting, gossiping, scheming. I don’t think it needs to be a restrained to a particular user type. They have a tool that allows people to connect - fine by me. Which is my interest: whether there are applications in teaching and learning.

That said.. I obviously don’t think too highly of it if I haven’t joined yet. I dunno. Hyopcrit I guess.

If this doesn’t scare you off Facebook, nothing will:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMWz3G_gPhU

PS. But if you decide to join, look me up…

Laura

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

- First, learn Ruby. It’s an awesome language in it’s own right, and you may use it for a lot of other things. You’ll want to read Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby (poignantguide.net/ruby/), complete with cartoons and narration. TryRuby (tryruby.hobix.com/) offers a basic tutorial, complete with an interactive ruby console in your browser for immediate satisfaction.

- Next, learn Rails. Pretty much everyone recommends “Agile Web Development with Rails” 2nd ed. as the best source for this. I’ve read it and still refer to it. There’s also a comprehensive wiki.

- Try Ruby natively, rather than JRuby. Say goodbye to the ugliness of java tracebacks. InstantRails provides Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL in one (instantrails.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl)

-The Rails core team all use TextMate (rather than Netbeans), as well as the majority of Rails developers do. You’ll produce code quickly.

- I realize it was more a Netbeans demo, but Roumen missed out on some things which make Rails elegant. For instance, you should generate migrations for table creation. RoR is database agnostic, so you should never have to see nasty ass SQL, like the stuff he pasted.

I *really* recommend Google Reader. I have a billion-something feeds, but somehow I’ve managed to get what I need from them thanks to greader.

If you’re already using it, I *really* recommend the “Better Gmail” extension for Firefox. Among many useful things, it puts Reader and Calendar into your Gmail view so you don’t have to dedicate separate tabs to them.

If you’re already doing all that, then I have nothing for you! And if you have something better, I’d like to hear about it!

In a sense, I think Facebook’s “explosive community growth” is largely exaggerated and equivocal, if not completely fictitious. I say this because, up until Fall 2006, membership was restricted to students (http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/24/technology/facebook.fortune/index3.htm). Facebook could have continued catering to students only, perhaps providing student-specific content, but they decided they’d be better off duking it out with Myspace. The questions that come to my mind are:
- In what sense is this “growth”, beyond “catching up with / exceeding the user population of every other social networking site”?
- If Facebook IS an example of “explosive community growth”, who makes up this community (since it is no longer restricted to students)? “People who use Facebook”?