How to Subscribe to Andrew’s AJAX Chat
Posted by Andrew | Filed under How-To
Instructions as to how to get yourself entry to my private chat room…
Following my recent posting at Facebook, here is how to log yourself in to a private chat room on my personal server:
1: E-mail me to let me know that you would like to use the service. Include the username that you would like to use.
2: Wait… I’m a busy boy.
Users cannot subscribe themselves to this service: it’s private, and I am the administrator – meaning that I also have to allocate a unique strong password to each member. This is a manual process.
3: Navigate to http://myeasternhorizons.com/ajaxchat/, where you will be confronted with a very simple, plain login page:
4: Enter your username and password, then select “Public” or “Private” channel.
5: Choose your language.
6: Click on “Login”. You will be presented with a chat page like this:
7: Chat with other members for as long as you like.
8: Log out link is on the right hand side.
Death of Twitter, Indeed?
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Commentary
LOL People are so whiney, they make me laugh so much… why do folks have such a sense of pointless ‘entitlement’ that they think a commercial platform owes them anything? More, why subscribe to a platform for opinion where the people you try to share your opinion with all line up to disagree with you? Is it simply an excuse to put others down and make yourself look superior all the time? Or are you simply not happy unless your life is filled with endless stress and conflict?
I got a good word to describe these people:MASOCHISTS!
Apparently, Twitter’s falling revenues have made it look for alternative ways of financing itself, which some seem to view as a ‘violation’ (you can tell it’s Americans talking here) of their ‘right to free speech’. But ‘freedom’ surely also implies that you can make choices, in this case to another more suitable (from your POV as a customer) platform… doesn’t it?
This is where the pointless part of ‘Free Speech’ – the violent part in which participants feel that ‘freedom’ is represented by pouring unacceptable insults and threats upon those who do not agree with you – meets the limits of what has been made available ‘for free’: Twitter has to be paid for somehow, and if their notional ‘customers’ do not represent an actual income stream (i.e. they want Twitter’s service for nothing), why do they think that they should have a say in how it is run? This is the trouble, someone has to pay for the servers, the developers, the electricity and so on; it’s a business and it needs real money. But the ‘users’ want to contribute nothing but their opinions, and to do so without limits on their rudeness and arrogance – or so it seems to me.
Now, apparently, Twitter is trying to bring in new income streams which impact what people see on their Twitter pages. Funny, but when I have this issue with (e.g.) Facebook, there is a whole range of extensions and other add-ons to mitigate this – AdBlock, Ghostery, Facebook AdBlock and all the rest. Shit, I even have extensions to change the colours! Aren’t there any corresponding extensions for Twitter, or is it really not that big a deal? Isn’t this kind of thing enough of a motivation for people? Or are they just a bunch of lazy, self-indulgent fools?
Violent written disagreement is a feature of so many on-line fora and the ‘Comments Sections’ of online mags and newspapers: places where people seem to forget their politeness and manners simply because they can; because they really think that ‘Free Speech’ literally entitles them to say anything. But it doesn’t. A person can express a contrary opinion politely and explain their reasons for it; likewise the notional ‘opponent’ should be able to raise reasonable objections and explain their reasons, and the result should be a ‘debate’, not a hate-filled slanging match, because in an ideal world, people might still not agree in the end but they would understand the other party’s thinking better and everyone involved should have new ideas as a result, which should stimulate their own thinking.
Instead, what we have is cesspools of pointless hatred, sticky morasses of putrefying intolerance and one-sided, irrational thinking. The whole thing is protracted because people refuse to seek reasonable alternatives which might come closer to satisfying as many people as possible. Even worse, the ultimate consequence of talking to yourself in an echo chamber is that despite your feeling that you (and increasingly, only you) are right, the lack of contrary viewpoints and the new ideas that they bring only takes you further away from reality. Got a hint for you, folks: this ain’t progress. It’s stick-in-the-mud stupidity!
Also, bearing in mind what has been written in these pages previously, this is narcissism of the intolerant type, so typical of the ‘civilised’ West, a state of mind into which someone dearly wants us to be conditioned. When people behave like this, it shows only one thing: who is really controlling them. There is no ‘free will’ or ‘free speech’ until we realise exactly who is pulling the strings and why. There is no real ‘education’ when this is the result – it is, as I have adumbrated previously, merely ‘indoctrination’.
The intellectual part of public debate in particular has descended into pure infantilism, coupled with an unreasonable sense of ‘entitlement’ according to which individuals expect to express their opinions without being contradicted in any way, shape or form; and they expect to be allowed to impose coprolalial demonisation upon their detractors without consequences, either social or legal. And they think it should be free…
If you really want to be able to express yourself in an echo chamber all the time, is it really so difficult to set up your own forum or chat room? This is something anyone can do – when Opera decided to shut down their social media, I decided that enough was enough and approached a company in Singapore about web space to relocate my blog, and in a space like that you can do anything social media-oriented, if you want to. It costs me just sixty Singapore Dollars a year – almost nothing in ‘real’ (i.e. UK) money – and I can have any number of e-mail accounts, too, which I can set up myself.
There is a Control Panel from which you can install all kinds of services at no extra cost. I have forum space set up (and have since I subscribed in 2013), but I don’t use it to demonise others. And anyone can use it – go to http://www.myeasternhorizons.com/wp/forum/ and apply for free membership. You can have free chat there, too. But be warned: I am the owner and moderator, and you can be thrown off for being offensive, so read the conditions first!
But this is not enough for some people: they want everything literally for free, and worst of all, they want no responsibility for the consequences of what they say or do. And that is the terrible state of Internet commentary – endless, childish flame wars over trivia not worthy of a kindergarten playground fight. What a sad commentary upon Western civilisation!
NOTE: Details of how to access my private chat room can be found here.
