Posts

Today people are beginning to kvetch about the privacy implications of Gmail. The concerns hinge on a number of issues: Google will be able to correlate what people search for with their email identity if they use Gmail. You give up some anonymity when Google can map your search requests to your email address. Google will be doing content inspection on your email to serve you ads related to what's in your email. Google is just too damn big these days. Both of the items above also apply to Yahoo, but nobody uses Yahoo for search these days so I guess Yahoo seems like less of a threat. To me, the content inspection problem is not a big one, unless you don’t trust Google. I think the issue is more creepiness than violation. If you send your wife an email asking her what she wants to do for your anniversary, and up pop ads for local restaurants, trips to the Bahamas, or 1-800-Flowers, then that would be a bit odd. At the same time, ISPs that run spam filters are clearly doing content inspection on your email, and when you use webmail, your email is always in somebody else’s hands. I use IMAP so my ISP has sole custody of my email. If they wanted to grep for things or whatever, I certainly couldn’t stop them. This concern seems overblown to me. The idea of making your search requests less anonymous is a bit more worrisome. ...

I’ve been playing with Eclipse 3.0M8 for the past couple of days, and I’m amazed at the number of improvements that have been rolled in since M7. The new GUI is great, and the overall it and finish of the application is impressive. Unfortunately, on my most recent progress, I decided to use Subversion rather than CVS for version control, and the Subclipse plug-in isn’t ready for M8 yet. (It also hasn’t been updated for Subversion 1.0 yet, but the current version works fine with my Subversion 1.0 repository.) I also use MyEclipse for J2EE stuff, and that’s not ready for M8, either, but there’s a new release planned for next week. I guess I could just wait for all of this stuff to be released for real, but that’s no fun. ...

Great essay by John Gruber on Linux usability.

Brad Graham, whose shaving cream recommendation changed my life, is going to see a novel he wrote become a feature film for HBO Films, and has an option for a second film as well. I hope he makes an insane amount of money and wins an Emmy, or at least a Golden Globe. It’s great to see one of the really, really old school bloggers make good. Update: hoax. I now hate Brad. I thought to myself, “What an odd date to reveal something that has been in the works for months.” Suckered again. I hate this date. On the other hand, damn that was a good one. ...

Gavin King has announced the feature list for Hibernate 3.0. Hibernate has been one of the essential tools in my toolbox since I started using it for database persistence last year.

Bruce Rolston has written the best theory I’ve yet seen on what’s going on in Fallujah. He also fell for Jim Henley’s April Fool’s joke. If you’re interested in the use of mercenaries in Iraq, Kathryn Cramer has the definitive post.

I hate April Fool’s day. Even though I’m mindful of what day it is, I get suckered by jokes constantly, often because I’m a habitual skimmer rather than a careful reader. So far I’ve been nailed by Avi Rubin and Jim Henley, whose deadpan delivery is stunning. One good thing is that my Internet connection seems utterly crappy today, so the inability to get to many sites will hopefully prevent my being taken in by them. Update: Andy Baio is keeping a list of sites participating in Internet Jackass Day. ...

The Washington Post reports today that Condi Rice was scheduled to give a speech about our security priorities on 9/11 (it was cancelled for obvious reasons), and the focus was missile defense and rogue nations. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were not mentioned. How much was missile defense on the mind of the Bush administration prior to 9/11? Check out the absurd number of times I posted about it in 2001. ...

Juan Cole reports that Iraqi academics seem to be getting the hell out of Dodge or assassinated at a worrying clip. When Iraq was invaded, the hope was that educated Iraqi exiles familiar with Western style democracy would flood back into the country, facilitating the rebuilding effort. Is the opposite occurring?

Clay Shirky: Situated Software. Shirky describes a growing class of software – software designed and built for small audiences to serve an immediate need. One prediction Shirky makes that I don’t think will turn out to be true is that such software will often have a limited lifespan. He points out that software big, complicated software designed for large audiences often fails to last a long time, so when creating situated software, designers should assume a short lifespan. In this, I disagree with him. If people depend on something to accomplish things, they’ll use it until something better comes along, and events occur that make it utterly obvious that the new thing is better. And when you create situated software, chances are you will create something that people depend on, because it’s designed just for them. ...