Winerism of the day

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There are many people far more qualified than I to comment more in-depth on this, but I’ve got to wonder — is Dave Winer actively trying to piss people off?

Movable Type’s new TypePad service is unveiled. It appears to be what UserLand had working (for free) in 1999.

It’s good Dave’s around to keep reminding us that he invented everything. I’d hate to forget.

Navigation – left or right?

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I breezed through a usability study comparing left- and right-justified site navigation this morning.

I had the standard left-justified navigation for a while, and at one point had a three column layout with sidebars on both sides of the page, but in one of my redesigns I decided to go with the current right-justified navigation, and plan on sticking with it.

My basic reasoning is that this layout emphasizes the content over the navigation. As English speakers read from left to right, the content area has dominance. It also (I think) makes it a little easier to track your position on a page when reading a long post. With left-justified navigation, when you reach the end of a line on a page and move your eyes back left, you need to account for whatever space is taken up by the navigation bar. Using a right-justified navigation scheme, you just let your eyes snap all the way to the left of the page, and no searching is necessary.

Now, these are my opinions only, and I’m not schooled in usability at all, so I could be completely off base with that, so take my reasoning with a grain of salt. It’s just my thinking on an admittedly not very important matter. ;)

(via WebWord)

XXX

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Okay, yeah, so everyone told me it was a bad movie. I just wanted to find out for myself. And whaddaya know — they were right! A willing suspension of disbelief is one thing, but when the fight scenes in both Matrix films pay more attention to the laws of physics than the stunts in XXX, it’s really not a good sign (and that thought hit me in the first twenty minutes of the film).

Ah, well. It killed a couple hours, and there were plenty of scantily-clad women scattered throughout the film to ease the pain a little bit. Too bad the female lead looked like a strung out Juliette Lewis, though.

Reclaiming the Public Domain

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Back in January, I (and many other people) were appalled at the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the Sonny Bono Act, extending copyrights and essentially preventing anything from entering the public domain.

This morning, Kirsten pointed out that Prof. Larry Lessig (who had been arguing against the Sonny Bono Law) is still working on finding a solution that will both allow Disney (one of the primary lobbyists for the copyright extention) to keep control over Mickey Mouse, and would allow the majority of works to enter the public domain after a limited time period.

Here’s his proposal:

The idea is a simple one: Fifty years after a work has been published, the copyright owner must pay a \$1 maintanence fee. If the copyright owner pays the fee, then the copyright continues. If the owner fails to pay the fee, the work passes into the public domain. Based on historical precedent, we expect 98% of copyrighted works would pass into the public domain after just 50 years. They could keep Mickey for as long as Congress lets them. But we would get a public domain.

At the moment, the proposal is ready to go, but Mr. Lessig is in need of a congressperson willing to present the bill. In that vein, he is asking everyone with an interest in this case to write their Representative and Senators to ask for their help.

Jason Buberel has posted a sample letter that can be used, and Prof. Lessig is keeping track of the work at The Eric Eldred Act.

Hopefully, with a little work, we can see our way to a compromise that satisfies the media conglomerates, and yet still allows more and more work to find its way into the public domain for all of us to have access to.

Bush's hydrogen plan

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According to this Kalilly post, Bush has figured out how to seem environmentally conscious while still screwing over the planet.

You may remember Dumbya’s big “hydrogen car” plan in his proposed budget at some couple of billion or so bucks. Many said, Huh? Well, get ready to huh again.

Now there are basically 2 ways to get hydrogen: from water and from hydrocarbons. The former leaves behind oxygen, the latter carbon. Which method does the Dumbya plan focus on? Why the hydrocarbon one, silly. Why? Because the basic hydrocarbons to be used are FOSSIL FUELS!!!!!!!!!!!! Which means precisely no difference in our basic approach since we’d still be totally dependent on fossil fuels. Why would he choose that approach? Can you say Halliburton? Can you say Oil. Can you say Iraq?

The source for this isn’t linked, but was apparently on NPR at some point. Can anyone track this down?

Patron Saint of…

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There’s a good chance that dad knows that Francis Xavier is the patron saint of the archdiocese of Indianapolis, Indiana. He might even know that Therese of Lisieux is the patron saint of the diocese of Fairbanks, Alaska.

But I’d bet that even Dad would be hard pressed to come up with the patron saint of goitres (Blaise), the fear of night (Giles), or sheep (Drogo).

And if that’s not enough, the Patron Saints Index has many, many, many more.

(via MeFi)

Geeze, that's a big-ass cube.

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Ever tried to visualize the number one trillion? It’s not easy to do — the number is so big, it’s really difficult to wrap your head around.

1,000,000,000,000

One trillion

That’s a lot of zeroes. Thankfully, we’ve got places like the MegaPenny project to help us out — it turns out that one trillion pennies would form a cube 273 feet to a side. That’s roughly half the height of the Washington Monument. The cube would weigh approximately 3,125,000 pounds.

Now, just to boggle your mind a bit further: multiply that cube by 100 times, and you’d have the number of pennies that the Department of Defense can’t account for.

The Department of Defense, already infamous for spending \$640 for a toilet seat, once again finds itself under intense scrutiny, only this time because it couldn’t account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and planes.

[…]

Though Defense has long been notorious for waste, recent government reports suggest the Pentagon’s money management woes have reached astronomical proportions. A study by the Defense Department’s inspector general found that the Pentagon couldn’t properly account for more than a trillion dollars in monies spent. A GAO report found Defense inventory systems so lax that the U.S. Army lost track of 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units.

And before the Iraq war, when military leaders were scrambling to find enough chemical and biological warfare suits to protect U.S. troops, the department was caught selling these suits as surplus on the Internet “for pennies on the dollar,” a GAO official said.

As Prairie so eloquently put earlier (and therefore contributed the title for this post) — that’s a big-ass cube.

(via MeFi)

Water shutoff

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Oh, this is good — our building has a 30-day shutoff notice from the water utility posted on the front door.

Not one of the tenants. The building. In other words, the leasing agency for the building hasn’t paid the water bill for long enough that under normal circumstances, it would be shut off, but as this is an apartment building, we’re given an extra 30 days to see if something can be worked out.

I’m thrilled about this one.

Update: Even better — I just tried calling the offices of Kauri Investments, our leasing agency, and couldn’t get anyone to answer the phone, not even a receptionist. Better and better…

Update: The following is the text of an e-mail I just sent to the sole Kauri employee with an easily accessible e-mail address on the Kauri website, after my failure in contacting anyone by phone.

From: Woody Hanscom
Date: Mon May 19, 2003 12:23:18 US/Pacific
To: kenta@kauri.com
Cc: parkseneca@speakeasy.net
Subject: Park Seneca Apts. water shutoff?

Kent –

I’m neither an investor nor a real estate professional, however I was unable either to reach anyone (even a receptionist) by calling the Kauri offices, and yours was the only e-mail I found for anyone at Kauri on the Kauri website. I do hope that this isn’t too much of an intrusion. I’m cc:ing this message to parkseneca@speakeasy.net, though I’m not currently sure who checks that e-mail account as it was set up under Melvin Kelly’s name, but he is no longer the building manager.

I am a resident of the Park Seneca Apartments, in unit 405, and this morning I found a notice posted on the front door of the apartment building alerting us to the fact that due to delinquent payments, we face having our water shut off in 30 days. I hope you’ll understand that I find this to be a fairly major concern. While I have fallen behind on bills from time to time in my life, when I do so, that affects only myself – not a 50-some unit apartment building.

In the year that I have lived here at the Park Seneca Apartments, I have had to cope with an elevator that seems to be broken more often than not, a renovation that seemed to drag on forever, with constantly shifting reports on when various services would be turned on or off, months without on-site laundry services, and a few weeks surrounding the replacement of the water heater when there was little to no hot water at all in the building. I have watched as many of my fellow tenants, equally or more disgusted with the difficulties encountered during the renovations, moved out. I chose to stay on, as I do enjoy the location of the building, its proximity to downtown and Capitol Hill, and as I haven’t wanted to deal with the hassles of trying to find another apartment and moving (not to mention attempting to move without the benefit of a working elevator). However, instances such as this shutoff notice go a long way to making me question the wisdom of continuing my residence here.

I sincerely hope that the current situation with the water bills will be resolved soon, and I (and my fellow tenants) will not have to deal with the severe inconvenience of not having water next month. My intent at this point is to continue living here, for all of the reasons previously stated. I did, however, feel that it was worthwhile to raise my concerns with the conditions I have been living with, in the hope that difficulties such as this will not be a concern in the future.

Sincerely,

Michael “Woody” Hanscom

Who knows if it’ll do much good, but hey, I feel (a little) better.