Happy Birthday to Microsoft [Windows 7]!
R.I.P. Thawte Web of Trust
Still saddened that the Thawte Web of Trust system is being shut down by the new owners, Verisign. Anyone surprised since Verisign offers a pay product that Thawte did for free? To make matters worse, I had become a Thawte notary a few months ago. It’s crazy that while they have sent emails to everyone the Web of Trust website doesn’t indicate anything about it going away. They are still happily letting people sign up? Huh?
Mail.app Smart Mailboxes
I’ve been using Smart Mailboxes in Mail.app for the first time ever and finding them very helpful. I’m guessing there are a lot of people that don’t know that these exist. I found this post on 43 folders helpful for some hints.
Inspired Software Keynote
I was honored this year to be invited by the Computer Science department at the University of Minnesota to give the keynote for the 2009 Computer Science Open House. The department has an open house every other year and it is a great opportunity for all the various research groups to present the work they are doing. The common area of the building was filled with researchers talking through their research and what the impacts will be. Really great stuff. Informative, inspiring, interesting.
The audience for the keynote was a mix of students and people from the industry. I decided right away that I wanted to take the opportunity evangelize my perspective that software has a critical, fundamental, role in our society and that we as the people who make that software are responsible to create elegant and inspired environments. The anti-codemonkey.
The talk was really put together in three sections. First, a quick brief on the huge impact that software has had on people. I was shocked in my research to find that 6 in 10 people, in the world, have a mobile phone. Talk about amazing adoption rates! I then made the case that open source is not just an alternative means of making code, but is perhaps the means that is best suited to the giant role that software plays in the world. And lastly, I wanted to reinforce the role that the individual developers has in making inspired software a reality.
Related: Open House Keynote Speakers
Just listened to Steve Earle’s appearance on KQED’s Forum. Great interview.
Resisting the temptation to wear my Sorels this morning.
Just finished an OCD-like marathon session watching the last FIVE episodes of The Wire. Done with all 5 seasons now. Best show ever.
Just sitting here working away with some reasonably heavy I/O operations on my Drobo and it spontaneously rebooted itself. Yikes.
