Christine Cavalier › Comments

"Yes, got it. Please send another one so I can respond with delete. Peace! -PurpleCar http://www.purplecar.net/ ________________________________" - Christine Cavalier

"Peter, thanks for your thoughtful response. Amazon does, in fact, sell your reviews. This is a different system than affiliate selling. Amazon charges sites to access their catalog. Along with the catalog, they include some reviews. I'm not privvy to the formula (or what coders call "algorithms") that choose which reviews get packaged along with the catalog, but be assured that the user reviews are offered as a part of that catalog. Amazon would sell less catalog rentals if people stopped writing free reviews for them. The reviews are what set them apart from other ISBN/product code catalogs. This really comes down to how one views the internet and how to use it. Reviews are work. Getting the "freebies" of which you speak is now a forbidden practice, as per new FTC "guidelines." I'm not in it for free books. I can get my books from the library or buy them myself. The amount of "freebies" of stuff I don't even want or have space for doesn't compensate me for the work of reviews. You..." - Christine Cavalier

"MIke: I KNOW! Back in 2008! Isn't that a shame that this Adam Slaney hoax on Facebook is still making the rounds? I don't watch my blog stats, but whenever I pass my Wordpress Dashboard, this post is always at the top. It's gotten, literally, thousands of views. I keep adding the new names that get put on the spam email, so people can just search on the name and find out it's hoax. Snopes is wonderful, but they can't keep adding every new name that comes down the pike. If you see any new names in the hoax, please come back to purplecar.net and let me know, or find me on facebook as facebook.com/christinecavalier/ And don't worry too much about your friends. Everyone is in a learning stage right now. It's only been 10 years or so of widespread internet access, and it's a scary place. There is very little regulation, protection or education about it. Try to have some patience with the end users. (Of course, I say this, but I rip my hair out over their inane behaviors on a weekly basis.)..." - Christine Cavalier

"Thanks Hailey! You're right, troops need mail and support, no matter what our politics are." - Christine Cavalier

"OH! and I've seen SuperSizeMe. Awesome. Peace! -PurpleCar http://www.purplecar.net/ ________________________________" - Christine Cavalier

"OH! and I've seen SuperSizeMe. Awesome. Peace! -PurpleCar http://www.purplecar.net/ ________________________________" - Christine Cavalier

"Yes I think that's on my list. There is a superfreakonomics now too. Peace! -PurpleCar http://www.purplecar.net/ ________________________________" - Christine Cavalier

"No problem Mike! You know me (literally!). I'm a font of information. Or copied and pasted emails, which pretty much constitute "information" nowadays. Thanks for stopping in! ________________________________" - Christine Cavalier

"Thomas, thanks so much! Firstly, good work on the Amazon TOS. I was hoping someone like you would find the exact paragraph in all that muck. My gratitude! Secondly, thanks for clarifying "fair use." Will think about revising my post to cut out the unofficial use of it. Can't do that right at this moment but I will look at it soon. (Not a big fan of major editing after posting, so I may just publish an "Update" of your useful information.) Again, my thanks. Thirdly, yes, you're correct, Amazon can still publish my work even though I deleted it, but deleting it is my little form of protest. Also, it's my hope that their huge infrastructure will re-claim the dinky white (disk) space and truly delete the work, or at least remove it from the freely-referenced content. I'm not privvy to their infrastructure design, but I know as a former sys admin that it's possible that my deleting the work may keep it from being distributed again." - Christine Cavalier

"Sending them an invoice would just be an experiment, and ending up being an experiment in futility I'm sure. But if my review is still up on newandusedbooks.com without credit in 3 business days, I will send them an invoice. This is a legal hole, I think. Amazon says they own the content and can sell it (I'm assuming), so newandusedbooks.com will refer me to that policy. Still, it doesn't seem that newandusedbooks have set up protection from this. I'm not a barister or a lawyer, so I don't know. It would be interesting to find out. The point of contention is that they removed the links. Amazon lets you have a link in exchange for the review, but they let their affiliates remove those links. That seems unfair. I may call up my intellectual property lawyer friend about this." - Christine Cavalier

Visit this site just for the blogroll, if you are into books and reading. - Christine Cavalier

"Thanks, Chris! I made the same decision a few months ago. It's a shame. But it is easier to click on every name in my @ replies (mentions) list to make sure I'm following back than it is to sort through all of the spam/spammers. Good luck. -PC" - Christine Cavalier

Do you get angry when signal drops? Does a short time away from the Internet give you panic attacks? You may have Disconnectivity Anxiety! Check out this article, assess your-uber-connected self. - Christine Cavalier from Bookmarklet

"Why can't this Clay Shirky write like this? He is perfectly understandable in this video, unlike his book "Here Comes Everybody," where he used overwrought, pedantic and esoteric language (yes I used haughty words to describe Clay's haughty words, the irony isn't lost on me). I really actually like Clay Shirky, I think he's smart. But I wish he would write for a more general audience; now his writing just comes across as elitist. Anyway: I like how he is approaching the emotional impact of false media and connections. Thanks for posting!" - Christine Cavalier

"w00t! I'm a big fan of moving the language forward at a bit of a faster pace than normally (which is about the speed of a turtle with a bad cold)." - Christine Cavalier

Asking for passwords ... that's not just risky it's stupid. - Stephen Baugh

I know, it is more trouble than the information gathered would be worth. - Christine Cavalier

"This is the first dropped comment I've run into myself, but I have no way of knowing who else may have run into it here. I also have a hard time with the spam filter. I send an email to delete the spam, but it remains on my blog's admin page and I have to manually delete it there. *sigh* Thanks for telling me that, I think if Marina Martin, internetz queen, ditched disqus, maybe I should too. -PC" - Christine Cavalier

"Thanks for commenting! I think we should note that the commas separating address parts are for paragraphs only. I had a little contention with the 3rd grade curriculum this year, as they were teaching the old convention for snail mail addressing. I sent a link to the Post Office website to the teacher. No punctuation and all caps are preferred by the Post Office now. Personally I find that adding the 4 digit code onto the end of the Zip Code helps speed delivery too. Yes I know I didn't put a comma after the first word of the last sentence or the first word of this one. If I wanted more dramatic effect, I would've placed the commas there. I'd say tell him to read whatever he writes out loud. That is an old novelist's technique and it truly does help with style and flow. By the way, when did we have the same English teacher? Who are we talking about? Miss Martin? Sister-what's-her-name? -PC ________________________________" - Christine Cavalier

"Thanks for commenting! I think we should note that the commas separating address parts are for paragraphs only. I had a little contention with the 3rd grade curriculum this year, as they were teaching the old convention for snail mail addressing. I sent a link to the Post Office website to the teacher. No punctuation and all caps are preferred by the Post Office now. Personally I find... more... - Christine Cavalier

"Sarah, There isn't any hacking risk to accepting a friend request on Facebook. You can accept any requests you like. Accepting friend requests from the people listed in this note (or any new ones that come along) won't do any harm, to you or your computer. It's just not how hacking works. A hacker needs your password, for any site that has password protection on the internet (like Facebook). Even friends on Facebook don't get to view your password, nor could they hack their way to it just because of the friend connection. Believe me, if there were a way to hack friend connections, the hackers would have already done it by now. How would Facebook survive if they didn't code this basic security into the platform? These types of emails are just hogswash, meant as a joke or denial-of-service attack on others. They also spread TRULY unnecessary fear. So yes, friend Adam Slaney and the others. They'll be able to see everything you haven't marked private, but they will never be able to..." - Christine Cavalier

"I LOVE that link, all of those charts and graphs! (you know I love me the statistics!) I'll have to look up Sysomos more often." - Christine Cavalier

"Thanks for sharing. I think he's deluding himself and us about the blogging jobs on craigslist and other sites. Firstly, many of them are scams, Secondly, many of them and other blogging jobs are offered at slave-labor rates, not at all worth the effort and risk of harming your reputation when the news leaks that you will blog for pennies. So, it kind of enrages me, actually, that he would put out this kind of "advice." It isn't good advice for writers who live in the real world. It's for lay people who want to see their name somewhere and they would do it for free." - Christine Cavalier

whaddya mean, "retweet robot"? - Ted Bradford II

having no following and no clout rocks. So say I. - Aron Michalski

"UPDATE: My friend Bill Cammack talked about this over on his awesome blog. As is usually the case, we tend to clarify our points in comments better than we do if we just post on our own. Go over and read his post (it's short). Here's my comment over there. It goes into a bit more of my thought process on why I chose my real name instead of my username on Facebook: "Hey man, I posted on this too. I was wondering about this myself. Facebook.com/christine.cavalier is my vanity URL but I almost took /purplecar. My reasoning was this: every other web app I take the "username" purplecar and "real name" christine cavalier. Why should facebook be different? But then I thought about the search behaviors of people on Facebook. People search Facebook in a unique manner, compared to other sites. They search for people, mostly, by just name, forgoing drilling down into networks or groups until after their initial search has turned up fruitless (yet abundant) search results. (We all are acutely..." - Christine Cavalier

"Michelle, Exactly. Thanks for commenting! Come back and link me to your post when you are done. I forgot to add the child-marriage aspect. My friend pointed out that the "imprinting" on babies thing is basically a child-marriage arrangement. We've all seen spin-offs of the Mormon church do this very thing, probably due to a fundamental belief in fate and pre-ordained couplings. With Jacob imprinting on Nessie and his other friend imprinting on the two year old girl, it supports that very fate-controlled life, especially for girls. Yuck. I totally agree that Bella and Edward are pathetic. It was quite annoying. -PC ________________________________" - Christine Cavalier

Hey all. Don't forget I have a newbie Twitter primer on purplecar: http://tr.im/mv0T Send it on, ok? We like newbies. :) - Christine Cavalier

"Hi Monkey Chick! Well, first let me say Congratulations on starting your new life. Divorce can be a beginning, too. I usually keep my advice to online etiquette and computing issues, as I'm not a counselor, but I felt compelled to answer you. I think you should treat this man as only a little more than a stranger. He's involved with a woman who is about to have his child. You do *not* want to get in the middle of that. Honestly, the guy sounds like he is looking for any way out of the ridiculous yet serious situation his irresponsible behavior has gotten him into. Don't give him that excuse. Ask yourself if it is really this man that you want or is it the comforting idea that you *do* have good taste in men. By getting back together with an ex, it's as if you are proving to yourself that you had it right but just got off the path somehow. After divorce, that crushing sense of failure can put false hope in unhealthy places. Keep your FB and MySpace relations strictly to girlfriends and..." - Christine Cavalier

like this is insane: "RT http://ReTwtr.com RT @PurpleCar: I've been won over by the anti "RT" or "ReTweet" argumen.. http://bit.ly/185heP" - Christine Cavalier

like this is insane: "RT http://ReTwtr.com RT @PurpleCar: I've been won over by the anti "RT" or "ReTweet" argumen.. http://bit.ly/185heP" - Christine Cavalier

Oh, look! http://friendorfollow.com lets you import a CSV file of all your fans, friends or follows. How handy! Following back ppl now. - Christine Cavalier

"Calla, that's what really got to me about the Twilight series: the abusive relationship and how no-one is talking about it. I really should have put that subject up at the top and put the religious aspect down at the bottom. But I guess the treating of women as second-class citizens is pretty rampant in conservative religions, so it's all relevant... I'm glad you're finally done! I hope some parents do in fact read the books to make the decision for themselves what ages are appropriate. I'm shocked to find that some 10 year old girls are reading this stuff. My 9 year old girl is diving into Harry Potter now and I know I'll have some interesting conversations with her throughout the series. There's no way she'll be ready for Twilight until she's at least 14, and she'll have to be a pretty savvy 14 year old at that. I'd rather girls under 18 not read it at all, actually. Anyway, the facts that the series is escaping scrutiny and is gathering momentum in the mom set are baffling to me. I..." - Christine Cavalier

"Glenn, Thanks for asking! Edward's values are conservative, and I did make a parenthetical statement above that Edward's beliefs are aligned with any conservative christian religion. What I found to be particularly Mormon was the young marriage and the immediate procreation. I'm not sure if there is any written tenets in Mormon that dictate that practice, but it is certainly part of the culture surrounding the religion. If you are asking about the history of Mormon, the wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki......) says that the church was founded circa 1830, well before Edward was born (according to the fuzzy timeline in the Twilight series). There is nothing in the books that indicates any particular religious tradition in Edward's (or any other character's) history. A religious background and conflict with belief systems are usually explored in other vampire novels, so I was actually surprised that Meyer ignored this tradition in the genre. The books and..." - Christine Cavalier