Archive - 2010
March 9th
The Anti-Top Posting Cult
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 03/09/2010 - 14:48One of the strangest online cults that I have recently encountered is the Anti-Top Posting Cult. These are people that argue strongly against top posting in replies to mailing lists. If someone does top post, they attack the practice of top posting and ignore the content of the message. Perhaps this is from some insecurity or inability to respond to the content of the email messages. Whatever it is, it has been enough to drive me away from a couple different mailing lists.
When a person replies to an email, they can either put their reply at the top of the email, a practice called top posting, or they can interleave their responses into the original email or simply post their response at the bottom of the email.
The practice of interleaved posting or bottom posting is not completely without merit. It is easier for readers of an email written this way to understand the context of the replies. “I agree” or “+1” makes a lot more sense when it comes right after what the writer is agreeing with.
Yet there are also advantages to top-posting. A good writer seeks to have a compelling first sentence. If that first sentence is interleaved somewhere in the email, the impact can get lost. When I glance at an email, I typically look at the first sentence. If it is interesting, I’m more likely to read the rest of the message. However, if it begins with three greater than signs, followed by a line that I’ve already read a dozen times, I’m less likely to scan down and look for the new content. This is especially the case when I’m reading my emails on my N900 which only shows ten lines per page. Some bottom posters have written messages that I have to scroll down several pages to find any new content. Usually, it just isn’t worth it.
Top posting is also simpler for many people because of their email programs. It seems like most lists that I subscribe to, and I subscribe to a lot, are predominantly top posted. I suspect many of my readers have never heard of top posting, and have never considered writing emails any other way than top posting.
Now, I don’t begrudge people who prefer to interleave or bottom post. As I said, there are benefits to this. However, I would hope that people who prefer to interleave or bottom post wouldn’t begrudge people that top post. Unfortunately, my recent encounters with anti-top posting fanatics have been very different, so I’ve left those lists where such fanatics dominate. What about you? Do you top post? Interleave? Bottom post? Do you tolerate those who write emails differently than you do? Have you ever even heard of this sort of controversy or even care?
March 8th
Let a Thousand Open App Stores Flourish – MeeGo Smart HAM
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 03/08/2010 - 15:24When Nokia and Intel announced plans to merge Maemo and Moblin into Meego, one of the great issues was what format of packages should be used, DEB or RPM. It prompted me to see if I could tweak my N900 to install RPM packages. I also loaded a memory stick with Moblin to boot up one of the laptops around the house to use Moblin. Since then, there has been a meeting of MeeGo community to discuss the infrastructure for the MeeGo community and some interesting discussions on different mailing lists.
As I explored DEB and RPM package formats, I came to the conclusion that the format does not matter as much as the distribution system. Since I run several Ubuntu based machines, I’ve gotten used to using APT which does a nice job of installing DEB formatted packages and tracking dependencies. Others have said that YUM is really nice for RPM based packages. Others have spoken about APT-RPM to install RPM packages using APT. Apparently, this is being discontinued as people move to the Smart package manager. I even installed Smart on my N900 to kick it around, and I really like it.
One of the things that I really like about Smart, besides its ability to use both DEB and RPM formats is its ability to support multiple repositories with different priorities given to each repository. While different groups want their repositories to be the highest priority, this may get more complicated as we move into a MeeGo world. Do I want to get MeeGo packages? Based on discussions within the MeeGo community, it currently looks like the MeeGo repositories might not have any packages that depend on other packages that are not open source. So, I may need to search MeeGo repositories as well as Nokia specific repositories. Then, I have to decide which ‘extra’ repositories I might want to search. On top of this, it may be that people will want to opt out of the MeeGo repositories, the Maemo repositories, or any future vendor specific repositories to create their own apps stores.
Personally, I think this is a good idea. At one end of the spectrum, you will find people that want to get applications only from official application stores. These sort of people probably like Apple’s App store. On the other end, you have people that want to be able to get applications from just about anywhere. There are risks to this. You need to make sure that what you are getting from one source does not conflict with what you get from another source. You need to be sure of the reliability of your alternative sources and be sure that you are not downloading viruses or trojans.
One tool that might help with this would be a new Hildon Application Manager (HAM), based on Smart that could use both DEB and RPM formatted packages. It could initially come pointing to the repositories preferred by the vendors, but could easily be modified by users that want to use some other application store.
Meanwhile, the discussions will continue about why people might want an external repository and what those running more official repositories can learn from that. Related discussions will continue about what sort of infrastructure will be necessary to support application development, testing and deployment in the MeeGo world, whether it is officially part of the MeeGo community, or is set up by others to meet their specific needs. We can all learn a lot from these discussions.
SB 365 – An Act Concerning the Posting of Public Agency Minutes and Legal Notices on the Internet Web Site of a Municipality
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 03/08/2010 - 11:49Last year, I wrote a blog post about bills before the Government Administrations and Elections Committee of the CT General Assembly. One bill would have delayed the implementation of a requirement that municipalities post their minutes on their websites. Another bill would have allowed municipalities to post legal notices on their websites instead of in local papers. The issue of legal notices has come up again this year, and I’ve recently written about it in public notices and covering the news and in Lebanon CT rejects budget ordinance.
In my blog post from last year, I noted that I found it interesting that people who supported delaying the requirement that municipalities post their minutes online were the same people that supported allowing municipalities to post legal notices.
This year, the bill looks much better. It links the two together in an appropriate manner:
Any town, city or borough that is in compliance with the provisions of subsection (a) of section 1-225, as amended by this act, concerning the posting of minutes may post any advertisement of a legal notice described in subsection (a) of this section in a conspicuous place on such town's, city's or borough's Internet web site in lieu of insertion of such advertisement in a daily or weekly newspaper.
Today, there is the public hearing about the proposed bill. I’m told that the publisher of the Willimantic Chronicle is testifying against the bill. I’m not particularly impressed with their website, but they do have a link to a very interesting website, Connecticut Public Notices. This site appears to aggregate public notices published in newspapers from across the state and make them easy to search. The site is part of MyPublicNotices which is a unit of Legacy.com. “Founded in 1998, Legacy.com is backed by several individual investors and the Tribune Company”.
It will be interesting to see how this develops. I think there is benefit to municipalities being able to publish their legal notices online. I had previously written:
Perhaps instead of simply doing away with the requirement that municipalities publish notices in local papers, we should allow them to publish them on online sites as well, providing the online sites get sufficient traffic. Municipalities that have vibrant websites might be able to use their own websites. Municipalities with lackluster websites that do not attract traffic might find it more efficient to post their notices on some of the online news sites that are rapidly growing in the state.
The language of SB 365 seems to move us in that direction, but other issues remain, such as with this loss of revenue for local papers, how will local news coverage be supported? Will there be sufficient tools to aggregate the public notices? Is there the possibility of an open standard for posting such notices and open software to facilitate posting such notices? Whatever happens, SB 365 seems to be just another small step in the long journey of news organizations and municipalities adopting to the age of the Internet.
March 7th
#saveabc7 versus Cablevision and HR 5469
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 11:35Yesterday morning as I surfed my daily allotment of blogs, I notice one recurring advertisement. It was for SaveABC7. Clicking on the ad, I found that Cablevision was entering into a new fracas similar to what happened with Food Channel and HGTV earlier this year. That three week dispute with Scripps was over the amount that Cablevision must pay per subscriber to carry the channels.
This morning channel 7 on Cablevision had a message from the cable company saying that ABC7 was off the air during the current dispute. It appears as if a similar dispute is now being fought out over what Cablevision must pay to carry ABC7.
The media landscape continues to evolve as people argue about creation and distribution of video content. Yet this is not a discussion that the average subscriber needs to be involved in. In fact, using subscribers as pawns in such discussions seems, at best, unfair.
To address this, the Energy and Technology Committee of the Connecticut General Assembly is considering bill HR 5469 – An Act Concerning Cable Subscriber Rights. The proposed bill has the following language:
No certified competitive video service provider, holder of a certificate of cable franchise authority or community antenna television company, as defined in section 16-1 of the general statutes, shall withdraw programming from its channel lineup during the contract renewal process for such programming. A violation of this section shall be deemed an unfair trade practice in violation of subsection (a) of section 42-110b of the general statutes.
If you are tired of being used as a pawn in a high dollar game of who video content is distributed contact your State Legislator to discuss the bill.
March 6th
#gov20ne pregame
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 05:57In a little while, I will hop in the car and drive up to Boston for Gov20camp. It is an unconference about using social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies to create a more effective, efficient and collaborative government. I always approach unconferences with a little trepidation.
Often, they start off with a time for everyone to introduce themselves. With large unconferences this sometimes gets skipped, or everyone is asked to describe themselves in three words. This is complicated by other factors. One of the rules of unconferences is ‘No Rockstars- everyone is an equal’. On the other hand, people go to unconferences to network and to find the next fun new project.
So, write now I’m thinking of introducing myself as an ‘Activist, Writer, Geek’. I do hope I find some interesting new ideas to explore and I sure hope that the conference will be dominated by discussions instead of presentations.
I also typically approach unconferences from a group dynamics perspective that I’ve gained from going to Group Relations conferences in the tradition of Tavistock, A.K. Rice, and Wilfred Bion. During my drive up, I’ll be thinking about how I approach the conference. How can I listen and learn as much as I can, while at the same time sharing whatever information I might have and doing any networking that might lead to fun new projects?
Looking at the agenda and ideas posted on the #gov20ne wiki, I see space for three sessions. Another rule of unconferences is the rule of two feet. If you are in a session that just isn’t doing it for you, get up and go to a different session. I hope that I won’t end up hopping around sessions like that very much. Walking into a new session part way through can be a little disorienting. Are the questions you are having things that have already been discussed? So, hopefully, I’ll only attend three sessions. Maybe it will be four or five. However, it is likely to be much less than the twenty six session ideas currently listed on the wiki.
Some sessions are likely to be introductory. What is Gov2.0? How do you tweet like a pro? What are ‘camps’ (or unconferences)? They would be good to go to, especially since I’m helping organize PodCampCT, but I’m not sure these sessions will be as valuable to me as some others. Some sessions will have an international flavor. What can we learn from the Haiti Quake response? What can we learn about organizing data from the Dutch Taxonomy Project? There is a session on Web 2.0 and foreign policy. Again, these sound pretty interesting, but probably have less of an immediate impact on me.
There are a couple session listed on Geographic Information Systems or GIS that seem particularly interesting, but again, may be getting a little too nitty gritty for my interest this time around.
For me, the big issues I’m looking at are around engaging citizens, video and public meetings, and the role of the new media. Hopefully, these will be lively discussions that I’ll tweet about during the day and have some good blog posts about afterwards.
Okay. I’m getting excited now. I need to wrap up a few things and get on the road.
