I will hardly be the first person to recommend The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria’s book on the politics of democracy and freedom, but I wanted to add my vote. I am hardly an expert in government and politics and have rarely found books on this topic that I care about deeply even remotely interesting. Zakaria does an excellent job of making his topic approachable. In reading the book I had many “ah-ha!” moments as observations and points he made clicked with things I had half observed came into focus. In addition to the history and perspective the book gave me, the critical point I think he makes is that there is a difference between democracy and freedom in a country. Both are needed, but one does not imply the other. Nor is freedom without democracy necessarily a bad thing (and sometimes is a good thing).

Good book. It will make you think. Go read it (assuming you are into thinking, that is).

Urban Archipelago

An interesting article, although it does go off the deep end in a few places with the urban isolationist attitude. However it appeals to the side of me that is often labeled “not nice” in that it advocates that the liberal portion of america should to some extent give up on the groups of people who don’t agree with us and the regions they live in. The republicans have learned to push the policies that support their ideology and I think we need to learn that too.

Paper Enigma Machine

Nothing else to say, just neat.

As most of you know, I am a huge supporter of the ACLU. I am also still very frustrated by recent politics. Those two facts, in combination with my recent readings of Joe Trippi’s The Revolution will not be Televised and Dan Gillmor’s We the media, has spurred me to start a new project.

The Virginia ACLU sends out emails during the legislative session highlighting bills and issues that are of concern (wither for or against). You have to sign up to get these emails and there is no online archive of them or place to discuss the issues. So, I have made one. I will be adding the “action alerts” to the website as the come out.

Action VA

If you think this is a good idea, I could use all the help I can get to put the word out about the site and actually get it noticed. Thanks all!

Just a quickie post about something that seems like a neat idea. An extension to a word-a-day email. Take a publicly available book and get one “page” a day via your RSS reader. Also links to a nice site for getting publicly available books, mobdex.

Russell Beattie Notebook - Serialized eBooks via RSS

For many people the run-up to the 2004 presidential election and the way in which we gathered news was completely different than ever before. The advent of free-lance and amateur news sources on the internet provided a new source for information that was faster and more responsive (although not always accurate). The mainstream web news sources rarely reported news I had not seen somewhere else, and print media was sorely behind. For myself, I am still subscribed to numerous politically oriented blogs and news sites via RSS

Dan Gillmor recently departed the San Jose Mercury News to develop new projects, but his experiences as a professional journalist and technology expert shine through in his book. We the media documents the history of how media has changed over the centuries. He concentrating on the emergence of “new media” since 9/11. The changes in how media works that I have experienced are well documented and the potential implications are explored. He talks equally about the potential of the new media to expand the types of information available to every citizen as well as how those same citizens can become participants in the process.

We are seeing a change in progress; a tipping point that will likely change the way in which news is reported for decades to come. If that interests you, We the media will be a good read.

Note: Although Dan Gillmor defiantly would appreciate the purchase of the book, he is embracing the new model by releasing the whole book under a Creative Commons license so you can download the book in its entirety. Download from the book website here (online book, top left).

Well, the comment spam arms race continues. I have installed a captcha system which requires that you transcribe a numeric value from an image into a text box before your post will be posted (or even accepted). In addition to foiling spammers for a little bit (remember, when your party is being chased by a dragon, you don’t have to outrun the dragon, you just have to outrun the hafling), it will allow your posts to be placed online immediately without being moderated.

This system does have it’s drawbacks, most notably that you have to type in another thing before posting, but more concerning is that I am preventing anyone using a non-graphical browser (text, aural, etc.) from posting to my blog. It is unlikely that this will actually effect anyone, however it does bother me in principle as I try to develop pages that are fully accessible. But in this case I feel the benefits outweigh the problems and to a certain extent my hand has been forced.<p>

I am sure that spammers will get around this eventually. I have seen it happen before. When I initially moved over to [Wordpress](http://wordpress.org/) from [Movable Type](http://www.movabletype.org), I saw a drop in blogspam. Then they caught up. I renamed my posting script to stop the hard coded bots who used the default script names. They updated their bots to parse the actual blog entries to find the posting script. So I know that the spammers will eventually catch up, but hopefully this will last a while. Next step is probably forcing the client computer to do math that takes a few seconds to process (i.e. [Hashcash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash), [Hashcash 2](http://www.hashcash.org/)).

I have a project at work that is posing a sort of problem for our team. This project, let’s call it project FERRET, has been requested by a rather influential person. This is not a new project, it is making functional changes to an existing system that to a large extent works, albeit clunkily. He has indicated that, in his view, the requirements of the project are rather simple. And if you look at exactly what he wants, he is correct.

The problem arose when we talked to the users of the system and actually looked at the system itself. It is a mess. To really make a system that I could be proud of, it needs a ground up rebuild. Our team has come up with some great ideas that would result in a wonderfully flexible, clean system that would really take the drudgery out of dealing with this data for the people who use the system and let them actually do their jobs instead of paperwork and cutting and pasting. But that will take at least 9-12 months. We don’t have that kind of time.

So we have come up with a short term solution. It isn’t bad, and I am thrilled that one of my teammates came up with it, because I couldn’t think up with a way to cut this project down. I was stuck in my own head with doing it the “right” way.

In the end I hate having a situation where we can either do something that works, but isn’t the best answer in the required time, or do great work that we can be very proud of that will make our team look damn good with a powerful person on campus, but not in the time allotted.

sigh.

Is the sound of the head of every CEO of every flash based mp3 player company exploding.

Apple has joined the fray and no one else has a chance. Ever since the introduction of the iPod other manufacturers have been squeezed down towards the low end of the market. With over 80% of the hard drive based mp3 market cornered, Apple has decided it needs to take over the low end of the market. I almost pity the competitors, they don’t have a chance. Apple - iPod shuffle

In addition, Jobs also announced Apple’s attempt to stop the complaints that Apple doesn’t offer an entry level Mac. The Mac Mini seems to me to be squarely targeted at PC users. It doesn’t come with a monitor, mouse, or keyboard. PC owners can buy this relatively inexpensive ($499) computer, hook it up to their existing peripherals, and they will be all set to experience something they haven’t ever before. Not to mention the fact it is tiny! (6.5 x 6.5 x 2 inches. wow.)

So what does this mean for Apple? I think this is a big move for them. It is the first time in a very long time they are trying to compete on price. Since the return of Steve Jobs to Apple, he has positioned Apple as a high-end niche vendor that produces products that are the epitome of cool. Virtually every television show, movie, and teen idol has an iPod and show it off. Every issue of Wired has a section profiling a famous individual and what’s on their iPod. It has entered the culture. It appears that they are going to capitalize on that now. The perception of Apple has been cool, but I can’t afford it. But now that a whole new range of people can afford Apple products (and their wonderful simplicity and craftsmanship) interesting things will happen

I think this will be good for Apple. I look forward to them succeeding.

We are back!  Back from the nice warm sun to the cold grey twilight of winter.  You can tell I'm thrilled :)  We had a wonderful time.  The boat was nice, our room comfortable, the food scrumptious (and plentiful), the sea beautiful, the islands warm and welcoming.  And the trip was just the right length; we had enough time to relax and enjoy ourselves but were happy it was over at the end.

I am very happy Elizabeth talked me into taking a cruise and I have a feeling I may be more excited about the idea of going on another one than she is.  She did a wonderful job of documenting what we did every day and I expect she will post those at some point, but I can give you a glimpse via pictures.  Well more than a glimpse since we took over 800 of them.  Have fun!

Cruise Photos