• Indian EVM compared with Diebold – hmm, not sure about no person-to-vote audit trail, but the rest looks lik eit’s much more effective

Kottke points to what he calls a dumb /. thread on MT’s new pricing structure. I’ll admit that SNR on /. (everywhere really) is horrible (and slashbots are typically clueless [yet strongly opiniated of course] when it comes to web tech), but with the FoF and moderation filtering (increased to 5 now, sadly), I have to say, overall discourse isn’t that bad. I’ll almost never come out of a thread without seeing an insightful, informational, or eloquent argument, which is a hell of a lot better from most of my offline conversations. (I’ve added my preferences to the link (I think most people aren’t even aware the numbers are for filtering posts); sadly you can’t see my Friends/Foes list applied; I use it aggressively to flag posters who present interesting/informative posts — I would use it even more if it would do background passing of status changes, but that’s another issue entirely).

I’d been blowing off the whole licensing thing because well, it doesn’t really effect me. For my personal sites, I don’t use MT, at school, the Director of the Program is Joi Ito’s brother-in-law, so if licensing becomes a problem that’s probably near the bottom of the list, and at work (err, also at school), we would love (well, love may be too strong of a word) to pay for support, as we have rolled out a couple MT installations in limited production capacities [the single-cpu license clause has got to go; I don’t even think we have any single-CPU servers]). However, scrm’s post (referencing drunken monkey’s erm, critique touches on a very good point and made me very glad that I didn’t install the alpha or beta MT3 releases.

I’m not going to spew invective, because I like, know, and trust Ben, Mena, and Anil (but er, not the gawd knows how many other employees there are now), but hmm… it’s a pickle.

You ready a beta release of a piece of software, and ask people to beta test it. Mention nothing about paying, or even that you are considering changing the license. Being the loyal folks they are, lots say “OK” and you give them the software. They upgrade to it, and there’s no way to downgrade.

Then, about 5 weeks later, you say, “Oh, by the way, most of you will have to pay to upgrade out of beta”. Keeping in mind that most of the people who are the most loyal to MT, and therefore the most likely to have signed up for the beta program, are the ones who take MT to its’ limits by using multiple blogs for things like link sidebars, book reviews, photoblogs, etc., and a lot of them no longer qualify for the free version because of the three blog limit.

That’s pretty harsh. Given the timing, I’d be willing to give the benefit of the doubt and say that it probably just wasn’t well thought out (lots of easy ways to fix it). Or I guess you could just pin it on the evil VC? 🙂

See also: those who bought MT 2.6 commercial licenses

Note, I haven’t been following this closely enough to see if there’s going to be another non-developer edition released w/o the stupid author/blog limits for personal use, nor how the licensing is enforced

hmm….

The reality is that they have effectively eliminated power users from the upgrade path by giving them three choices: a)dont upgrade, b) fork over what I feel is a fee bordering on extortion (my simple little personal site would have run hundred of dollars to upgrade), or c) become a criminal. These are the users who in some some cases have spent years extending MT and are among it’s most vocal supporters.

Adding insult to injury, to even download the thing now requires a TypeKey registration. Isn’t this directly contrary to SixAparts previous claim that TypeKey would not be required? Compounding this is the detail that sites running under the free license will no longer be reflected in the recently updated list something they failed to mention the times I voluntarily donated.

I have no problem paying for software and think that MT is worth the money, but I do feel the rug has been pulled out from under me. This is a major change that many of us were expecting to see in the vaporware MT Pro, not something we anticipated being part of what, in terms of functionality, is a minor point release.?

Today I got called in for jury duty (made it through 4 days of dodging the bullet). Turns out this week is Juror Appreciation Week, which involved guest speakers, free coffee and donuts, and fun juror games with, what else, early dismissal as prizes. I was wearing my EFF hat and ended up having a brief conversation with a woman who works for a local lawfirm that is considering filing a class-action suit against Diebold and other e-voting companies. I was sort of bummed out about being called in as I ended up missing out on Commencement (John McCain was this year’s commencement speaker) and hitting up the last day of E3.

The day was actually going pretty well (made my way through a large chunk of Free Culture and Eastern Standard Tribe), and it looked like I was pretty much in the clear, but I got called in at 3:30 and will need to report back next Tuesday for juror selection in an attempted murder case.

It should be interesting, however if I’m actually called up, I will have to ask about my juror’s rights. My reading seems to show that I have a right (and of course responsibility) to judge both law and fact. The Juror’s Handbook (err, it’s a trifold) handed out today says that jurors are only supposed to judge fact. Further confusing matters, the judge made some opening remarks emphasizing the importance of our role as judges, but also spoke about and being non-judgemental (I know what he means, but when you put that together it’s sort of funny).

• Basic Juror Information
• Jurors’ Handbook: A Citizens Guide to Jury Duty
• DOING YOUR BEST AS A TRIAL JUROR: SURVIVING VOIR DIRE
• Rejected as a juror

Should I make my way through the selection process, I’ll probably keep a little writeup (to be released after conclusion, of course) of the experience.

Received from a friend today:

hey, do you recognize the music in this car commercial?

• Digital Web gets a facelift. Congrats too all, looks great
• MusicPlasma – I’d seen the link around, but hadn’t actually tried it until last night. This thing rocks. Pulls Amazon related artist information and puts it on a dynamic Kartoo-like visual topic map
• speaking of maps, noticed that Marcos Weskamp‘s stupendous Newsmap is now sponsored by The Hive Group, the self proclaimed “world leader in treemap technology. Marcos’ flash-based newsmap spanks the Hive Group’s Java-based Honeycomb demos from a UX perspective…
• Powerpoint To Flash Conversion Tools – The PPT2Flash Top20 – there’s a reference to a ‘manual way’ — I should really write up/publish how I did Lessig’s Free Culture presentation (partly manual export, with some custom vbscript macro for dumping out a timing array from the ppt, and a small ActionScript presentation engine)

Just got a new Samsung 193P monitor (backed up by some good reviews) at work. Neither the new 173P nor 193P have harwdware accessible OSD buttons, depending on Samsung’s “MagicTune” drivers. Not mentioned on their site (and contrary to AnandTech’s review) is that the drivers are only available for Windows. Bad form.

A workaround is to set up the monitor on a PC, which will at least allow me to turn down the blinding brightness of it (but won’t do much good for color correction, much less pivot support). Suffice to say, this monitor is not recommended if you’re not on a Windows PC. (While I’m griping, the monitor has a dead pixel, but what can you do?)

Also, not surprisingly their Download Center web page doesn’t work properly in Mozilla/Firefox.

from Plastic:

sglover910, I think the odds of the Bush administration admitting that they got this wrong are somewhere around zero. They can’t do it before November because that will blow the election for sure; if they win they are so arrogant that they wouldn’t do it afterwards after getting a mandate from the American people for a continued occupation. My belief that the UN will be asked to get involved is predicated on a Kerry victory in November . a victory that I hope arrives. At the moment, Iraqis are being killed to allow one man to hold on to his job. That is a sick as it was when the man was Saddam Hussein.

OK, Blogger isn’t a good fit right now I don’t think. But neither is anything else out there really. pb made really good points about filtering and post templates, both things I’ve been thinking about with twine (also, about properties, and a model for restricting views [ie, can capabilities be applied to networked nodes [see E]).

It’s easy when working with these issues to completely scope out (at least that’s what I’ve found whenever I’ve had a chance to actually rub some neurons on it). My new take is to try to set concrete milestones, ant to also target very specific features, and then refactor as each feature requires so that it makes sense as a whole. In theory, at each step of the way you have something that does something at least marginally useful.

Ahh, hubris. Brainfart on goals for an advanced blogging system:

• Links (target URIs) as first class data structures; xref’able; obviously must be m:n; have aggregate properties
• Faceted, filtered entries
• Entry+Output customizable (or better yet, adapting)
• High level creation of custom data entry, behaviors
• Combining: journal, blog, linklog/bookmarks, outliner, knowledge base into single kspace
• Handling multimedia
• Personal aggregation (ie: things I’ve posted elsewhere)
• Collection of all the implicit metadata possible
• Smart parsing of sources, relationships

Of course, this development effort is sort of independent of having a decent blog. I’ll be trying to pull an overhaul that’ll link up some upcoming, del.icio.us, blo.gs, feed on feed functionality.

• kSpaces.net – kSpaces is a metadata-driven, distributed knowledge management platform. It was designed to be lightweight, transparent and extensible. The kSpaces proof-of-concept allows files to be described with arbitrary RDF metadata. These descriptions can then be easily shared with and queried by other nodes in the system. Finally, kSpaces-managed files can be made available to all other nodes participating in the same kSpace.
• pDNS: Diagram of how it fits – The PeoplesDNS project is being created to allow traditional DNS style lookups in ‘peoplespace’ utilizing FOAF. It is a powerful way to search and lookup information on people and a powerful way for you to be integrated into products like PeopleAggregator and Tribe, Orkut etc. The pDNS system will be opensource, non-centralized and will be a series of independent servers operated by individuals and companies. PeoplesDNS.com will act as ‘Node1’ and distribute ‘zone files’ much the same way as the DNS system currently works.
• Drupal: Incentives for online software: the 7 pieces social software must have … – discussion of some of Matt Webb’s recent thoughts on social software. [some of my own thoughts from last year; I’ve yet to write up my thoughts on automated ways of establishing complex trust relationships or limiting personal data propogation w/in DSS systems; I may get around to writing some of it down… or not depending on time; current priorities are in finishing work and writing up some KM thoughts for Hypertext 2004 submission]
• Digital Squeeze: Matthew Phillips – Digital Squeeze explores a digitally enhanced society and supports the evolution of community; how people connect and interact online. Digital Squeeze is dedicated to the question: ‘How will the digital world connect back to the physical world?’ – OK, what’s w/ the patents though? (software patents are BAD) Also, I doubt anything you’re ‘inventing’ is really revolutionary. Come on now. It’s probably been thought of before, and probably at least dozens of other people are doing the same thing at this exact moment
• Commentary on my presentation from last year – in Chinese. So I can’t understand it. Oh well. (WorldLingo gives a partial crappy translation, Systran does a little better)

OK, Let’s actually try this out…

So, it’s one thing to click around, and a whole different ball of wax to actually try using it. I’m switching back to Blogger for a little while to test out the new version

• Path publishing was all screwy; guess that’s a migration issue
• Archive permalink urls have changed to absolute URIs somewhere in between the past couple versions
• Tabs aren’t trapped, so it’s still editing w/ a textarea. Blech.
• Not sure why virtual wrapping isn’t used in Mozilla (that JS wrap function is janky). Err guess Chris never saw the virtual wrap hack?
• Like I mentioned, lack of event trapping is a pain. ie, ctrl-shift-l gives a blockquote, but continues to bubble up a location url loader in the browser.
• It’s always puzzled me why custom toolbars weren’t allowed (w/ custom shortcuts and tags.
• I’m not convinced this interface is an improvement over the old style. The tabs are good, but well, hmm, hard to describe, will have to give it some thought; editing old posts takes a lot more clicks.
• No keyboard shortcut for publishing post? I may be switching back to vim quicker than I thought.
• Forgot how much waiting for publishing sucks.
• No warning for switching out of unsaved posts? Bad form. Actually, none of the pages warn you to save changes…
• Single post ulrs break my string filtering, will have to fix that to enable comments. The message parsing for that is sort of wack however
• Hmm, interesting. Enabling comments enables single-post mode, which (besides taking forever to publish) also screws with permalinks