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I know that they're working on a windows version of ecto, and it's been a while since I'd upgraded
(a few months) but I need to stop, catch my breath and ask, what the hell is going on?
The word 'Apply' should only occur in a Macintosh interface destined for the graveyard or in one dealing with actual applications; I apply for a loan, I apply to grad school and that sort of thing.
Using 'Apply to All' (what all? what are you talking about?), 'Apply' and 'Done' in a floating interface thing of some sort is a disaster.
Pfftui!
I was working on a glossary this morning and stumbled onto it mostly by accident: define: google. It was quite useful in finding a wide variety definitions for some rather obscure technical terminology.
Yahoo! doesn't seem to have a similar capability.
This is a howler: New York City Invokes Eminent Domain to Acquire New Jersey. My children must have thought I'd completely cracked up with the way I was carrying on from the time the page popped up until I finished. By the time I hit the landfill crack below, I was in tears.
New York will compensate the current residents of New Jersey with "fair market value" for their property, a total amount estimated to be well within Bloomberg's ability to pay out of his own pocket. After evicting all current residents from New Jersey, New York plans to add a new Olympic stadium, a Trump apartment complex, international airport, and, most critically, a 4,000 square mile landfill.
'Dibs on Nevada' indeed.
[via Hit & Run]
Owning your home takes on a whole new meaning with this weeks decision by the Supreme Court.
Start with this overview of Kelo v. New London, read the final opinion and then spend a bit of time reading the comments on Hit and Run (always interesting): What's Yours is Mine and Shorter Lefty Blogosphere Reaction to Kelo.
I can't say that I'm really surprised (although Souter and Kennedy surprised me collectively; who knows what they're thinking!?) It's humorous to find the answer in They Can't Take That Away From Me... Unless They Can to be nomination of conservative judges. Same old, same old. How about nominating judges who believe in the rights of the individual?
Corporate entities wield enormous powers through their lobbying efforts and the tax burdens they assume (sans loopholes). They've also found ingenious ways to pose as individuals, patron organizations and even community saviors (pose being the operative word) when it fits their needs. Politicians have been known to perform amazing feats of self censorship in order to keep their corporate benefactors happy.
We've always had to deal with the idea that any schlep who works for the city you live in can build a case to take over the land you live on in order to do something "in the public interest". With this ruling, "public interest" was thrown overboard with a brick around its neck and all that's needed is a local government promise of profit. Like that promise doesn't happen all the time.
All it takes is a city on the make for new corporate money. If they think they can raze and renovate the land you live on while enriching the city coffers in some way... you're out of luck (home and options too).
It'll be very interesting to follow this though in New London, a city which had already fallen on hard times and recently had a huge curveball tossed its way. The federal government decision to shut down one of the cities profitable enterprises (support for the U.S. Navy) by closing the base and moving the subs and training base elsewhere is a significant blow (Kings Bay seems reasonable, but where are all the bubble heads going to go for the basics, like escape hatch training?) Can Pfizer help soften the blow? In this environment, will they even stay? It should make for fascinating politics.
A co-worker, with whom I've had few identity management discussions recently sent me this in IM Friday afternoon:
A telemarketer calls me:
We're happy to tell you that you telephone number has been selected for a free vacation!
So you're sending my phone number on vacation? No telemarketing calls until it gets back?
Click.
It may not been a great joke, but it really struck a nerve and made me laugh.
I'd spent much of the day trying to sort out identity aliases from a RADIUS, Diameter and EAP perspective. Those policies can be loosely summarized as... we pass around your phone number (IMSI, etc.), SIP URI or something like it and pretend it has no meaning.
A local group of teenaged musicians called the Calabasas All Star Jazz Band is soliciting donations to pay for a trip to China. Based purely on the tune played on their front page and the commercial I saw, they're a pretty talented group.
It's unfortunate that their money raising strategy is so horrendously bad. By May 2nd of this year, kids who aren't even playing knew they were going. Until last night, I had no idea anything like this was happening and there's almost no information on the web. Secrecy isn't a useful attribute for a money raising campaign.
The failure here is a lack of understanding that I blame on the advisors. Local parents respond well (perhaps too well) to begging for money (we're conditioned to it starting around the time they enroll). The current model asks us to give money without anything in return, with no guarantee that the trip will actually take place and nothing to commemorate it actually happening. The strategy ignores the idea that once it expands beyond certain geographic boundaries (where parents are obligated), it becomes a marketing (sales?) problem and requires something in return for the investment. Inevitably, people will ask, "What's in it for me"?
There doesn't seem to be (and never was as far as I call tell) an opportunity to overpay to attend an event to help finance the trip. I can understand that it's expensive to book a venue and guarantee gate receipts, but I believe that some locations (like our local Civic Arts Plaza) have special deals in place for exactly this reason.
The biggest problem (and easiest to solve) is the music itself. Jazz is certainly popular enough to keep our local public radio station, KCLU running. I should be able to check a few samples and buy a CD (worst case) or a download of a bunch of MP3's (or better yet, AAC's) of the groups work. I'm quite willing to overpay to support their efforts.
There are a lot of well connected musicians in this area who could have helped out in some way. Imagine what could have happened had people like Tim Heintz (he's the only one I know because he lives just up the street) been involved earlier? I fear it's too late for significant money raising, but I'll ping Tim none the less (even though I know he's busy with LoVEFest tomorrow).
A co-worker posted a brief blurb last week on his work blog about a new web application called YubNub. It's somewhat hard to explain (a command line for web search isn't going to do it), so I'll leave you with Jonathan's own words.
For some reason, I decided to give it a whirl this weekend and I found myself really intrigued. I wanted to use it, but also wanted something to act as a front end application so I didn't need to go find the website every single time (you know us lazy people, we're basically spoiled by the google search item on our favorite browser).
When I mentioned to Jonathan on Saturday evening that I had something that seemed to work, he was quite interested in having me release it ASAP.
I had a few fits and starts but I eventually created something that doesn't totally embarrass me and may actually be useful to others. I now leave you to have at it.
I've been living under a rock (inside a bubble?) all week but I'm also wondering about two 'disconnected' things...
This announcement was made Tuesday: Consumer and Watchdog Groups Join Beef Producer to Challenge USDA Secretary Mike Johanns on Mad Cow Disease. They intended to challenge policies that fail to safeguard against the spread of mad cow disease. Seemed like a good idea to me. We had one scare and then nothing, poof. Blame Canada.
Later this week, while sitting in the family room reading, Sarah had on the local 11 PM news and they showed a cow with some pretty severe problems. Mad cow? No pronouncement was made at the time. But I wondered...
Today, while fiddling with some new search capabilities, I figured I'd check up on things. The Times piece is equivocal: More Tests Planned in Suspected Case of Mad Cow Disease. More tests are planned. The Lexington Herald-Leader (using an AP report) is less obtuse. They assume all is well until people start dying:
Regardless of the findings, the government says there is no health risk to humans or animals.
Umm, yeah. Just like AIDS in the early 80's and a host of other government 'pronouncements' over the years; when I was a kid, we were advised to hide under our desks to survive a nuclear strike. In a country of Burger based enterprise, what else would you expect them to say?
What I would love to know is what caused the Agriculture Department to do new tests? Was it the protests or basic procedure?
Meng Wong came by this afternoon (mostly to say hi, we're trying to set up a dinner tomorrow evening to talk IdM) with an unexpected surprise, a Segway. He called to say he was coming from SMV and shortly afterward I saw this image sliding down the driveway past the rows of cars that appeared to be on a motorized scooter (or something, all I could see was the shoulders and above) but I didn't hear a buzz. When the rider turned the corner I realized it was Meng and he was riding something 'odd'.
Initial impressions? Quiet and smooth. Meng glided around like someone moving quickly accompanied by a slight whine. It all seemed quite effortless. That he could stop and seem to hover was neat.
Eventually, Meng asked if I wanted to try it and I could not pass that up. While Meng rebooted it into basic mode, Saeid was leaving and said this was a huge mistake, I'd kill myself (he knows my history too well I guess).
I spent a few minutes zipping around the parking lot, gaining confidence and trying various things. The most obvious 'feature'... recoil because of fear causes a quick (smooth) deceleration. I quickly got the idea (with Meng egging me on) to bend my knees in turns and lean into them like a skateboard or surfboard (except that my feet felt like they were in the wrong place). Perhaps it's a bit more like skiing in that respect. The part I was having a problem with was the lack of handle control (I played a bit a few years ago when the older boys were into scooters and eventually got the idea of high speed steerage). I did some spins, learned to back up, change directions at slow speed and did some high speed runs into turns. Eventually I started whining about the turn radius because I wanted to be more adventurous.
I finally convinced Meng to reboot in advanced. He did and asked me to not hurt myself. Say what? Off I go!
Over the next ten minutes I managed to wrench the handles out of alignment twice, get the darned thing up on one wheel three times and in the final hopping Segway episode, I achieved what Saeid said I'd do, falling on my arse (my wallet area is still a bit tender; ouch).
What tripped me up was my response to an off balance situation. I was trying to the use handle bar for control and completely forgot the rotation control was in the left hand grip. By trying to steer right to compensate, I threw myself left (onto a wheelie there) and I actually started a bigger spin (rotation wise). Slowly (far too slowly) I sensed a problem, started dragging myself right and I think I shifted the rotation grip in the process. When the right wheel hit I was completely out of control, riding a stand up bucking bull and shortly after, I was sitting on the pavement.
But damned, that was fun!
Later Meng followed me back to my office so I could pack things up to go. In the quiet building with few people around the machine actually seemed a bit noisy, and more so when we took a tour through the empty and tile floored lunch room area so I could fill up my water bottle.
The speculation has been widespread since yesterdays late afternoon CNet mind bomb (deliberately timed to leave everyone twisting in the wind all weekend it seemed).
I'm sticking with what I had to say last week regarding the Apple x86 rumors. Local blogger Ole Eichhorn has an interesting take on things (I read it right before dashing out to finally see Star Wars — more on that later perhaps) which at least focuses on the developer side of the picture.
Perhaps I've had too much of the Lucas vision today, but that's the dark side, the really painful aspect of this idea.
Matt Deatherage (editor and publisher of MDJ and MWJ), an extremely savvy Apple watcher and analyst, added this last night on the subscriber mailing list:
The entire point of the last issue was the emphasize that Apple could make products based around Pentium-family processors without "switching" the Macintosh to it, or even calling it a Macintosh. But the CNet story says that Apple is "scrapping its partnership with IBM and switching its computers to Intel's microprocessors."
The *only* way (so far) I can think of that this might make sense is if Intel gets into the PowerPC alliance, and is allowed to both manufacture and develop PowerPC-compatible processors. That would alleviate Apple's supply problem with IBM and help Intel legitimize a market that has struggled for a while. Everyone seems to be assuming that "Intel processors" means "X86-family," but there's no technical reason that must be true.
I hadn't previously considered the idea of Intel joining the AIM alliance originally formed by Apple, IBM and Motorola (is there really a PowerPC alliance or is that just what it's called these days?) and producing PowerPC silicon. Should that turn out to be the case, I think it would be terrific (competition is good).
In the end, if Apple does choose to use Intel x86 processors for future Macintosh products, it'll be interesting to watch how things turn out. As this article comparing the G5 and x86 platforms indicates, the much lower frequency Opteron continues to outperform the Xeon. Shifting processors also won't address the threading bottlenecks in MacOS X (see the chart here) and may actually make them more obvious.
Mondays keynote is going to have a lot more interest than it would have previously and while I haven't been to a WWDC in several years (and this one seemed like it was going to be especially boring), I'm sort of wishing that I could be there.
It's pretty darned odd how things fall together at times.
For instance, I've been corresponding with Doc Searls for a few years and he 'only' lives about fifty miles up the coast in northern Santa Barbara, yet our plans to meet were frustrated until last winter at ETech in San Diego. And the next time we met up was a few weeks ago in San Francisco at DIDW.
Likewise, I've been meaning to get together sometime with Tom McDonald for a couple months, but things (usually work, sometimes family) kept getting in the way.
When I saw the post about Darin's birthday present on Sunday I was giggling and could well imagine the look on Darin's face.
Darin and I are lifelong Packer fans (we'll have to see how Tom does when things go really south). I thought about posting a link then, but what was I going to say? The best thing I could think of was something along the lines of this making you pee yourself laughing. Hardly seemed worth adding my two cents.
And then I got an email from a coworker today telling me that as a Packer fan I had to see the link he included. A quote:
Knowing that you are a Packers fan I thought I would piss, er pass it along.
I immediately recognized the origin and eventually realized that our mutual friend in Oklahoma was the source. He'd passed it along as a challenge to a true Redskins fan (which is pretty funny all by itself, I'd like to see a urinal with Skin's colors and switchable Cowboy, Giant and Eagle targets). When I asked how he'd found that odd article, he'd just followed a link from here.
The upshot was that I called Tom when I got home to give him a sense of the story and we decided that tomorrow was a good day to get together for a long delayed lunch (I've also been promised some backstory on the urinal).
I've been talking about identity management a lot during the last couple weeks, in part because of discussions happening inside our department related to our normal work, but also with others throughout the company (of all stripes technical, executive and marketing).
The big problems our customers (nay, everyone's customers) seek solutions for are largely centered on client side issues at this point. Primarily, avoiding identity theft currently facilitated by viral spam, phishing, spyware and a host of other injection mechanisms. Very few are vocally interesting in aspects of the lightweight ID systems popping up for use in various forms of social software right now. That's not to dismiss that area, but the people there either don't care or can deal with that part of the IdM puzzle all but themselves (for now).
Inevitably, we get around to talking about InfoCard and I find it hard to describe, especially to people who use Windows. It's not a concept that comes naturally (and the idea of using a lot of passwords is really alien which as Kim Cameron has pointed out, is our collective failure and something InfoCard intends to address). If they have some Mac exposure, I can at least draw some parallels to KeyChain but even that misses the mark by a wide measure. The closest I've come is a quick demonstration of PasswordWallet™, an application I've used for several years to track passwords (and lot more it wasn't designed for) and handle close to automatic sign in for most web applications. Even there, it's missing a huge part of the picture like the virtual device to avoid keyboard loggers (and friends), the features aimed at web services and some sort of description of the browser and InfoCard interaction (where I resort to hand waving at this point). I actually used PasswordWallet today to show the process of generating a new password, something I think InfoCard is going to deal with (but I'm not completely sure about).
It's taken a while to get past my initial disappointment that the identity metasystem was really a client implementation, some new directory schemas (when do we get to see them?) and a bunch of WS-* gobblygook. Pragmatically, the problems that InfoCard is intended to deliver solutions for make me keenly interested in it's success.
