Dear Brad,
There are some new url's in my LJ:
LJVAR.imgprefix = "http://stat.livejournal.sup.com/img"
LJVAR.statprefix = "http://stat.livejournal.sup.com".

I suppose that these addresses are relevant to SUP. Am I right?
If your answer is "Yes", can I decline using these servers for my LJ rightnow or ever? I have a paid account and now I don't want to use anything concerning with SUP.
If your answer is "No", why can I see "sup" word in these addresses?

Thank you.

Just in case: I'm not a paranoiac. Upon my life:)!

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Can we post off-topic comments here? :-)

Well, as I don't seem to have any particular questions about SUP, let me ask such question:

How large is your ban_list? :-)

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I think I've only ever banned like 5 people. I don't really use the ban feature... I just don't unscreen stuff if people are being too angry.

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What are you waiting from the coming New Year? :)

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I'm too stressed with house problems and work to be looking forward to the holidays. I haven't even done any holiday shopping yet. :(

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SUP homey?

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Damn! I was going to say that!

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Dear LazyBrad,

How do I get tomato sauce off of leather?

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Tongue

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Many thanks for mutual understanding! You really the social guru and many people should study at you!

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1. As I (tried to) ask in that post: wouldn't it be a good idea to show people (many of whom are, surprisingly) software engineers, a link to SVN that shows where exactly that flag is set and where is it used, so that even the most unbelieving Thomases will be finally persuaded?

2. Are there any news about that bug that showed sup.com links to people all over the globe?

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1. I personally wouldn't mind making that tagging script public, but it's part of a repo that's private. The sup-eligible flag is set if: your profile's location says you're in one of the 15 ex-USSR countries, your recent posts/comments are 51% or more in Cyrillic, or you browse the LJ site in Russian. This sup-eligible thing was needed early in the deal when SUP said, "Okay, we'll do sales & marketing for LiveJournal, but how big is the Russian/Russian-speaking/etc segment?" And we had to do stats to compute that for them.

2. The bug still exists and I haven't fixed it yet. SUP is angry about it because they're getting shit from users who are blaming them, but it's really my bug. It will get fixed, I've just been busy before the holiday break.

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Here's my understanding of the whole SUP thing.

6Apart does mark certain accounts eligible for SUP offers. The decision appears to be based on use of cyrillic alphabet for posts/comments. 6Apart does not wish to reveal that criteria, let the owner of the journal to know about this (since you disabled access to the relevant script) or remove that designation.

Is that correct? Are there plans to let the lj users remove that sup flag?

Please understand that I'm not about to question the policy or start a flamewar. I want to make a decision for myself based on correct first-hand information.

Thanks,

NS

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See my comment above for the policy on who is SUP-eligible. The criteria isn't a secret, but the code is part of our internal repo, so it's not public. I can ask if I can make public that one tagging script, though.

There's no point in letting users remove the flag, because it doesn't show up anywhere, or change your experience, move your journal, or force you to do anything. It just means, in the future, you can go to sup.com and do extra stuff. It's entirely opt-in. Since you're in the US, there's probably no reason you'd ever opt-in, since using Moscow voice-posting or Moscow SMS integration, etc, are useless to you.

SUP wasn't going to invest time and money into doing sales & marketing for LiveJournal if they didn't know how large their potential market was... that was the point of tagging users, for counting how many people could potentially use their services.

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When will I be able to fetch LJ posts using SUP?

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Dear Brad,
How many chickens must i sacrifice to be granted a spot on your friends list?
SideOffer, would you take a sister in lieu of chickens? people say she's a hottie, but i can't start thinking that was as we currently live in alabama and i dont want to fall into the "inbred" trap.

sincerely yours,
Valis Keogh
CEO
Valis Enterprises
http://www.valissoft.com

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you are jealous of me, aren't you valis?

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Question: honestly, how amazed are you with the whole SUP controversy? :)

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Now that I know more about Russia, media, power, etc, it all makes sense, so I'm trying to be patient.... if I were a Russian LJ user I'd probably be scared too. The only reason I'm personally not is because I know everything that's going on, and I'm comfortable that everybody will be happy with the deal when they see how it is.

I just wish more information was out there, but I'm so busy working on stuff that I haven't had time to get more information out there. Also because I'm not sure what I'm allowed to talk about, and I think it's not my job to be company spokesperson.

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since i can't check anymore, did my response help you with the mmap problem? maybe you could post a summary.

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I've decided to just mmap on tmpfs, which is already mounted everywhere anyway.

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I just had to laugh at this post. Maybe it will solve it so you can have a regular journal. :( Hope it works.

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Dear Brad,

the problem is that there are links to the protected post in hundreds places in LJ --- don't you think that screening it really does harm to the connectivity of the information resources? You probably realize now that your collaboration with SUP really influences situation, and that people --- at least those who still want to think that you're able to understand their strong feelings against SUP --- are trying to talk with you :-) I strongly wish you to stay calm and wish you good luck, though the last day made me think again of transferring my blog away from the SUP...

Regards,
Vladimir Dotsenko

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of transferring my blog away from the SUP

SUP doesn't have your blog.
SUP doesn't have acccess to the servers were your blog is hosted.
SUP doesn't even have your email address.

So you can transfer away "from SUP" if you want, but you'd really be transferring away from LiveJournal, not SUP.

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Is it possible to decline the SUP support and be able to use the Livejournal service provider as before? What if I pay for it?

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You don't have to decline it. It's declined for you automatically to start. (and you don't have to pay... for everybody, paid or not, it is off by default)

Only if you want SUP stuff, then you need to do something.

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What keeps confusing me, and reading below is making that even more so, is what does this deal do/encompass/whatever. Technically that is. Below I've seen you say:

- stuff about opt-in extra services under a sup.com name, branded with an lj name. Nobody should get worried about that, and this is clear, IMO.
- the setting of an internal flag about whether you seem to be 'Russian'. From reading that, it isn't clear to me what the effect of this flag is. Text seems to suggest first it's 'just for counting', but then why does it still exist? You've counted them now, right?
- And then there is the serving/reading/whatever-it-is of lj journals (public, friends, private etc entries and all) through a sup.com domain, like you did in Moscow.
You say this sup domain helps with them not accessing your lj cookies (I suppose the reasoning is: sup.com is under their control, if if they are bad, they still can't get your cookies so they can't do bad things?). Ok, but then how were you reading/posting to your lj faster then before, via lj.sup.com, without lj.sup.com having access to your lj cookies? And to your entries?
This is basis of my not-understanding: what is sup doing here? Running a big proxy/memcache? In that case: that proxy/memcache things already contain private entries... and you'll just have the same cookies but under the lj.sup.com name no? And if it's not, how come lj.sup.com is so much faster? If I knew what sup was doing at a technical level, I (and many others) could probably answer these myself: * if sup were bad, and if I'm in Moscow, can sup read all the private posts I make? The friends only posts of others that I read? (Like any other proxy/hub along the way, or the KGB monitoring the lines from Moscow to the USA, could do I guess).
* and if so, is that indeed the ONLY thing they can do? Won't they (potentially) have my password as soon as I type it into the login box I see at lj.sup.com?

Note: I'm not Russian, just interested.

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All sup has right now is essentially an HTTP cache of userpics (already all public) and static site images/js/css (also all public). And because your browser makes only one HTML request to the server (in San Francisco), and then 24 or so HTTP requests for public content, those 24 requests can come from SUP's cache in Moscow at 30ms latency, rather than 260 .... which makes the site feel a ton faster.

No memcache, no private data, etc.

The sup-likely-russian bit exists still because those are the users eligbile to use the extra SUP stuff when it comes out. They're not going to give GBs of free photo hosting to all LJ users.... that'd be too expensive for them.

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I couldn't care less about SUP; however, I do find nmap() facinating, did I miss anything interesting?

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What'sup?

Also, did you get in any more taxi related incidents (just to be suitably offtopic here)

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Hi Brad,

How about visiting StPete, Russia? I'll show you the Hermitage.

PS. no sex plz

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Brad, any room left on your friends list? Apparently, I'm not on it ... :-)

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Not a question, just a quick opinion here.

I am bilingual and had been living in the US since before you were born (yes!), so my connection to Russia is quite tenuous. My LJ is English-only, although some of my comments are in Russian.

I do not know anything about sup and do not have an opinion about them but I noticed that they are not the only ones who suck at communicating with customers.

This whole brouhaha could have been avoided with more communication and transparency on the US side, your side.
As it was, the lack of reliable info had allowed wild rumors to form and circulate.

The way users' concern are handled is a PR disaster. The idea flagging some US-based profiles "sup" is ill-conceived as it looks much like ethnic profiling to me. When users' access to this page is abruptly shut off as soon as the cat is out of the bag - it is a lot worse, a terrible PR. I do not know whether you (6apart that is) do have anything to hide but you certainly act as if you do.

Erasing people's comments and telling them to stay away from your journal has the same effect of fanning these flames -like it or not, but people perceive you as a face of LJ, not just another private user.

So you guys on the American side have so far greatly undermined your own credibility in my (and others') eyes. It is not really about sup, as far as I am concerned, but rather about your own handling of the situation. So far, it does not inspire much confidence, although I am talking more about perceptions than about facts.

I do have to tell you that this thread is about the only exception to this PR calamity - thanks for starting it.

I did not mince words here, but I hope you'll find this comment to be useful.

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I guess it's a "good" question - whom does my attorney sue for ethnical/language profiling - 6 Apart or SUP, or both?

Thanks

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I am curious to know why, if this was meant to flag accounts as SUP-eligible, it read as "SUP user" in the same manner as people are tagged a Paid user or having extra userpic space on that page, instead of something like "SUP eligible". Was it just something that happened without a second thought?

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The original plan, months ago, was going to be opt-out, not opt-in, so all users were going to be SUP Users unless they said no. But then we realized it'd be beter for users if it were opt-out instead, where users had to explicitly ask to be in SUP, so we changed it to be SUP eligible. But I forgot to rename the bit. It's since been renamed.

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