FREEDOM!!!

It all started last summer, when Zuza showed me her Xanga.  Now, being a former Computer Science major, currently a CS Minor, I was well aware of the existence of blogs, but had never made one.  A few days later I went to Xanga to find her site, and I couldn't.  Not because I couldn't figure out how to search for it, but because Xanga would not let me.  Not until I joined.  I didn't want a blog, and I now especially didn't want a Xanga blog.  What's the point if people can't even find your blog without being a member?  Once I found it, I just remembered her user name (Zuza1) and would go to a random Xanga user, and just change the name in the URL of FireFox to get her site.  That way I didn't have to log in. 

After reading some friends' blogs, I finally got the urge, and made a blog.  Not on Xanga.  I have my own website through my University's computer science department, and I started a blog that I actually coded myself.  I put a short post on Xanga saying that it wasn't my real blog, and you could find my real blog at a different site.  Well, I used that blog for a few months, but it was limited in what it could do (no commenting for example) and I didn't have time to add that to it, so I used some blog software that was installed on the cs department server.  That anyone can see, without having to be a member.

So, I come back to my Xanga site so that I can change the link (especially since I noticed Zuza had made a link to it in her blog), and lo and behold, my post wasn't there.  Instead, there was some lame thing about how this was my new Xanga, msg me for ideas, blah blah...  if I logged in to Xanga,I saw my original post, anyone else saw their crappy thing.  It seriously pissed me off.  I object to Xanga for the same reason that I object to Windows, because I don't believe that people should be locked in to a specific piece of software, whether it be an Operating System, a web browser, or blogging software.  I don't believe that you should be a member of some exclusive club to find a friend's blog...  Why should I join Xanga if I already have an account on live journal, or vice-versa?  It's pointless.

So no, I'm not going to update this site any longer, except when A) They block my posts.  At which point I'll post this again, and again, until they kick/ban me.  So I leave with a call to the people who run Xanga, a request: Don't force people to join just to read!  If they can create accounts that will never be used, just let us search!  And for anyone else out there: This is my blog.