Dave Winer: My first review of Leopard

I have been watching all the buzz on twitter of the anticipated arrival of Leopard this week. Most of the twitter users I follow are Mac users. Hmmmm. They all seem to be very excited about it. My buddy Dave Winer just posted his first review of Leopard.

The review is not exaustive, it could be summarized as

boring
(Icon courtesy of Zlango)

I don’t mean his review is boring. But that Dave finds the new OS boring.

I don’t have a Mac any more so I can’t comment. But my experience is that an OS move is always bigger than you think. The move from XP to Vista was tough but I am not willing to go back and give up some of the features.

I think Daves review is needs help.

All in all, changes to an OS aren’t that important. The action is in the apps, and for me, just a couple of primary ones, the web browser and my integrated writing and programming environment. It’s been quite a while since there have been meaningful improvements to either, and those improvements would end up meaning a lot more to me than improvements to the OS.

There isn’t much you can do, after the Mac has been around for 23 years, that hasn’t already been done.

Net-net, my first impression of Leopard is that it isn’t a big deal one way or the other.

My first review of Leopard (Scripting News)

Jackson Shaw says: Happy Birthday Kim!

 Pamela Dingle pointed this post out to me early in Sept. We both decided not to write about it and make fun of Kim and Jackson for violating privacy guidelines so blatantly. But Kim got a good laugh out of my pointing that out so–while late–here it is. Pictures, dates the whole thing. Who cares about privacy anyway eh?

Kim’s Birthday Party

August 31st was Kim Cameron’s birthday. Yours truly got to cook the “meat blob” that was served along with a wonderful platter of Mediterranean halibut. Ian, Kim’s brother and his wife came down from Vancouver to partake in the festivities. I hadn’t seen Ian in years so it was great to catch up with him.

Below is a picture of Jennifer Wu, Kim and myself enjoying some of Jennifer’s Chinese dumplings. The three of us worked together at ZOOMIT. Jennifer was responsible for the directory synchronization and metadirectory engine and moved to Washington with the rest of us after the acquisition of ZOOMIT by Microsoft. She’s moved over to work on the “Indigo” team now.

As usual the food was awesome, the wine was great and the company was exceptional.

Jackson’s Identity Management & Active Directory Reality Tour Travelblog: Happy Birthday Kim!

Technorati tags: privacy, identity, kim cameron, birthday

Subtle–The new approach

It takes a minute to put it together. This fabric makes any background look like you are driving by it really fast. The billboard–very subtly–is for the Ford Mustang.

Ad: This Ford Mustang billboard isn’t painted – it was created using a special type of semi-transparent material, that blurs the background to make it look like you are driving really fast.
Author: Ian Hart

Fun Forever – Luxury fun is affordable for everyone! » Things are not what they look. Part III

Papers, Please!

DHS–the Gestapo–is a scary organization. Read the article. Take some action. We can’t let this happen.

cb

DHS proposes to require both ID papers and passes for all air travel

August 12th, 2007

In a series of recent publications in the Federal Register, the Department of Homeland Security is proposing a comprehensive new system of surveillance and, perhaps more important, control of both domestic and international travelers.

The proposed new rules, which are currently open for public comments, would require that:

1. All would be international travellers to or from the USA (even US citizens crossing the U.S.-Canada border on foot) would have to have government-issued ID credentials
2. All would-be passengers on international or domestic flights to, from, over, via, or within the U.S. would have to have both government-issued ID credentials and explicit case-by-case prior permission from the DHS to the airline to allow each passenger to board a plane.

The proposed rules would enforce the requirements for papers and permits through default provisions that would:

1. Require all air travellers to show their papers (”government-issued photo ID”) to airline staff on request of the DHS, under penalty of denial of transportation.
2. Forbid any airline from issuing a boarding pass to anyone, or allowing them to baord a plane, unless and until the airline received individual permission (a “cleared message”) authorizing that airline to allow that specific person on that specific flight.

Papers, Please!

UnRealID.com

This is very scary stuff. Read the article. 

Time To Bury REAL ID

Fund it?  Kill it.

The Senate will be voting this week on funding Homeland Security this week, and one national ID card-loving politician is trying to slip-in a little REAL ID funding: he needs to be stopped.

States have strongly resisted this unfunded federal mandate – one that the Department of Homeland Security expects to cost more that $23 billion or almost $100 per license holder.  Seventeen states have said ‘no’ to REAL ID – labeling it invasive, un-American, costly and an invitation to identity theft.  They know it will force citizens to stand in long lines for licenses and endure numerous hassles looking for documents like birth certificates.

Now instead of listening to the states, Senator Lamar Alexander plans to offer an amendment to this year’s Homeland Security funding bill that will take hundreds of millions of dollars away from important things like port security, the Coast Guard, and disaster preparedness.  He wants to give a little cash to the states to fund REAL ID – 300 million dollars-worth – and expects the states to gratefully pay the remaining 22.7 billion dollar tab.

UnRealID.com

Gotcha

12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know

 OK. It’s a little late but you should know I read this and you should read it too.

12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know

May 1st, 2007

While the Internet still retains some of the “wild wild west” feel, increasingly Internet activity, and particular blogging, is being shaped and governed by state and federal laws. For US bloggers in particular, blogging has become a veritable land mine of potential legal issues, and the situation isn’t helped by the fact that the law in this area is constantly in flux. In this article we highlight twelve of the most important US laws when it comes to blogging and provide some simple and straightforward tips for safely navigating them.

Source: Blog Law » 12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know

Phil Windley– "I’ve Got Fiber to My House"

 Man am I jealous. 40 bucks a month for 12MB/sec. Sweet!

Utopia is Utah’s large-scale municipal-broadband project. My city, Lindon, was one of the first supporters of the project and all winter I’ve watched in anticipation as crews dug up the lawns in my neighborhood laying fiber.

I first heard about Utopia when I was Utah’s CIO and Utopia was just a dream Paul Morris had. I’ve supported it, written about it, testified about it to city councils, and, mostly, waited for it. Yesterday was the day that I had service installed in my house.

Source: Phil Windley’s Technometria | I’ve Got Fiber to My House

 

Technorati tags: fiber, internet, utopia

MobileCrunch » Cellblock: Fast Video and Image Vlogging

Gotta try it!

cb 

34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog

My biggest offense is infrequent posting. For this I have a remedy. Post more frequently. 

34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog

Thanks to everyone who has added their thoughts on why they unsubscribe from a blog’s RSS feed. There have been 109 comments left on that post so far and some interesting recurring themes have emerged.

I’ve attempted to categorize them below. Obviously with 103 opinions (and most people giving multiple reasons all in their own words) I’ve had to make some judgement calls in classifying comments left. Some of the categories below have overlap but I think you’ll get a pretty good picture of what motivates people to unsubscribe from RSS feeds.

34 Reasons Why People Unsubscribe from RSS feeds:

• Too many posts (the post levels are too overwhelming) – 37
• Infrequent Posting (or the blog is effectively dead) – 29
• Partial Excerpts Feeds – 25
• Blog Changes Focus (too much off topic posting) – 23
• Too many posts that I see elsewhere (Redundant, Repeated or Recycled News) – 19
• Uninteresting Content – 16
• Irrelevant Content – 13
• The Blogger’s Ego – Too much self promotion – 11
• Low Quality Content – 11
• Too many posts that are too long – 10
• Negative blogging – 7
• Feed Errors – Especially when a Feed Reloads the latest 10-20 posts every time – 7
• Offensive Content/Personal attacks/Discrimination – 6
• ‘infomercials’ (too much selling) – 6
• Blog Titles that Don’t Tell what the post is about – 5
• No or Poor Formatting in posts – 5
• My own interests as a reader change – 5
• No Longer Useful or Valuable – 4
• Too many links in the text and not enough content – 4
• Advertising – 3
• Inconsistent writing (style and focus) – 2
• Too Many Grammatical Errors – 2
• Found other feeds that are better – 2
• Too Narrow a focus – 1
• Too much repetition in topic – 1
• Pushiness of Blogger – 1
• Blogger Doesn’t Respond to Comments – 1
• No Images in the feed – 1
• Lack of Confidence or Opinion – 1
• Lack of a sense of who the blogger is – 1
• Too much clutter/extras at the end of posts – 1
• Talking Down to Readers – 1
• Too many quotes – 1
• Change of Primary blogger – 1

Source: 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog