Yep. It’s true. I received the best comment spam ever today. It’s awesome because, if for no other reason, it’s completely honest.
Not much on my mind right now, but it’s not important. I’ve just been letting everything happen without me. I just don’t have anything to say right now.
Sleepy…
Originally uploaded by Turnipville.
(This story was also published on Newsvine)
I was listening to Security Now earlier today, and Leo Laporte was talking with Steve Gibson about cryptography. It’s a pretty interesting topic, and it carries some fairly heavy "ethical" concerns – as they pointed out in the podcast.
Essentially, both Steve and Leo were strongly against any ability by the government to maneuver around encryption for the sake of "national security." I understand this perspective; it’s in line with Orwell’s predictions in "1984." I think Leo put it succinctly by saying, in justification of NSA snooping, something like "the government is fairly benign now, but we don’t know what it’s going to be like in the future."
They don’t trust the government…and I’ll bet that if you asked ten random people on the street whether or not they trust the government, you’d get more than five (perhaps more) who don’t trust the government either. This isn’t a shocker to me, as you can’t hardly spend any time in the blogosphere without running across some reference to "Big Brother."
Ironically, I was driving across a bridge while I was listening to this podcast. The bridge itself isn’t anything spectacular: most people who drive on it each day probably couldn’t tell you that it was a bridge. In actuality, it’s no more than 25 or 30 feet above the freeway below, and isn’t more than a quarter of a mile long. But as I was listening to this, thinking about whether or not I trust the government, the following occurred to me: would I have driven on this bridge, without hesitating, if I didn’t trust the government?
There’s the line of thought, and it doesn’t stop with bridges. Every day we do things (eat in restaurants, drive on bridges, give money to banks, pay taxes) that require the government’s involvement to ensure our safety and satisfaction. We do most of these things without thinking twice, yet, if the government were to somehow make a mistake, what might the consequences be?
Let’s continue with the bridge example. If the portion of the government that sets architectural/engineering standards for public expressway bridges was staffed – due to the untrustworthy nature of the government – by complete buffoons, it would be conceivable that the bridge might be constructed in an unsafe way. What happens if the bridge fails while I’m driving across it? You can count on the results being far more disastrous to me than some dude in dark shades at the NSA knowing what type of pizza I ordered last night.
Before the rants start filling up the comments section, understand that I recognize the difference between privacy and the "public good." We pay taxes so that things like roads and bridges can be built, so that we know the restaurants we eat in are clean to an acceptable standard, and that when we deposit our money in a bank, we have a legal way to get that money back. But we do those things because we trust that the government is doing what’s in our best interest.
I’m not making an argument for boundless wire tapping or special "backdoors" in encryption schemes, just pointing out what I perceive to be a particularly ironic stance on governmental trust.
Let the flaming begin.
I just spent the last few minutes catching up on the latest Web 2.0 stuff over at TechCrunch, and noticed an older article about 30 Boxes – the online calendar that’s all the buzz lately.
Now, I played with 30 Boxes a few weeks back, and it’s cool. Don’t get me wrong…it’s a super slick calendar.
But at what point does the average user tire of having 15 difference specialized applications, and default back to suites like Outlook?
There’s a lot to be said for doing one thing, and doing it really well. I think we’ve seen that with things like Gmail, Bloglines, and Backpackit (just because Backpack isn’t meeting my GTD needs doesn’t mean it’s not awesome). But at what point do the specialty features of these customized services stop outweighing the inconvenience of having numerous different services?
It’s been well documented here that I’m a gadget geek, and as such, it’s important that I’m able to keep my information synchronized across all of my machines. Obviously, the web is an excellent way to do that. But can you imagine bouncing between six different sites on your handheld, trying to check your e-mail, to-do lists, appointments, instant messages, etc.?
I don’t mean to rain on the 30 Boxes parade, because it’s actually super slick. It’s just that every time I see something super cool like this, I end up having to make adjustments in my overall scheme. My question is: how important is convenience, and how does it stack up against feature-sets?
I hate to say it, but I’m waving a stern goodbye to my Backpack account…at least, for the interim.
Part of what was so great about Backpack was that I can access it from just about any internet connection – my PDA/phone included. I’ve been able to send e-mail updates to my lists, and work fairly comfortably from them in conjunction with my GTD effort.
Unfortunately, the single biggest problem with Backpack is the inability to move items between lists. It’s one of the most fundamental tactics of Getting Things Done, as everything is supposed to start in the inbox and propagate its way through your system (even as it becomes actions). It’s difficult to do that without retyping everything, on Backpack.
For now, I’ll be using Outlook on my Windows machine (in conjunction with my MDA) to categorize to-do list items. It’s not what I want to do…but my GTD implementation is suffering on account of my hesitation to re-type items as they move between lists.
Sorry, 37Signals. I’m still a loyal Basecamp user, at least.