• The iGo universal charger with interchangable tips

Clever idea? Nope, this is one you can definitely skip...

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If you subscribe to this blog, you might want to unsubscribe.

I'm not sure what to do about this space. I've quit paying much attention to it and I don't miss it. I don't read blogs much any more either. I've replaced that part of my informaion consumption with listening to netcasts (aka podcasts) on-the-go -- i.e. on my mp3 player/phone (I recently bought a Nokia 5300 in case you're curious).

Also, I guess, there are aspects of blogging that leave me feeling cynical about it. Sometimes really cynical. It sure seems look-at-me'ish and quest-for-hits'ish and monologue'ish. Doesn't it? In other words, not very social.

(By the way, at times, I've been just as guilty of that here as anybody. In fact, one could argue that I'm doing it with this post. Though like anything, it's a matter of degrees really.)

So I thought about this space, and narrowed it down to 3 choices: delete it, leave it as-is (an archive of old posts), or mirror my other (i.e. non-blogging) posts here, such as Twitter. I'm not sure which one I'll eventually settle on, but I'm going to try the latter first and see if that feels right. My theory is that because blogs.sun.com is high on google's radar, people who might like to participate in the public conversations that I participate in will have a better chance of finding them.

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An exciting event will be happening later this month: Indiana's new OpenSolaris distro is due for its first preview (milestone) release. Also, the OpenSolaris/Indiana Developer Summit is happening this weekend.

With this in mind, allow me to post a reprise or two of some of the core issues that were on a lot of our minds a while back as this new initiative struggled to find its footing.

Probably the most core of the core issues is this: Is the Indiana project a true collaborative effort? There are many shades to that question, but overall, I believe it is. I base this on the the following two things. (Note, the second rests on the first.)

• This definition of collaborative development
  
• The fact that at the technical level what "Indiana" boils down to -- which is to say, what it is comprised of and defined by --  is the IPS-LiveMedia-Constructor project. And that project is massively engineer-driven, as opposed to upper-management driven.
  

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Just wanted to blog a copy of a post I made yesterday about Indiana vis-a-vis BeleniX...

Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 09:30:23 -0500 (CDT)
To: Indiana Discuss <indiana-discuss at opensolaris.org>
Cc: Ian Murdock, Glynn Foster, Peter Tribble
Subject: Re: [indiana-discuss] scope
From: Eric Boutilier

On Tue, 26 Jun 2007, Ian Murdock wrote:
> Peter Tribble wrote:
> > On 6/26/07, Glynn Foster <Glynn.Foster at sun.com> wrote:
> > > I agree, and perhaps all these thoughts need to get down on paper, and start
> > > fleshing out the details. We need to, I believe, get to a stage where we are
> > > producing bits that people can download and install. It might not be fully
> > > functional, but it's a defined release and something that people can base their
> > > work around.
> >
> > By people, what's the target audience at this stage? I think my question is
> > really whether the first "release" is aimed at users, or whether there should
> > be a 0.0 "release" solely for the purpose of Indiana bootstrapping?
>
> The latter.. We need a starting point of some sort we can improve
> iteratively.

Glynn, Peter, Ian --

If a 0.0 starting point is what we need (and I couldn't agree more) why aren't we considering making a.) Moinak co-"BDFL" and b.) Adopting BeleniX version 0.6 to become "Bel-Indy" version 0.0, aka our bootstrapping starting point?

Sorry to keep being a pest about this, but indiana-discuss is collectively and increasingly suffering elephant in the room syndrome in this regard. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_in_the_room)

Eric

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It's getting pretty clear on indiana-discuss that the Indiana project isn't going to do anything separately from ONNV (Nevada) development.

Cool. I for one think that's a really good strategy. But as you can see in some of the discussions, it's causing some major weirdness too, and I think maybe I've figured out why.

Working entirely within Nevada development means the Indiana program and the Solaris Express program (the latter of which has been a runaway success and constantly improving for ~4 years now) have the exact same charter and target audience. In that case, can anyone explain to me why it would be beneficial (or even make basic good sense) to name a distro "The Indiana Distro" instead of say, "Solaris Express, LiveCD Edition"?

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Here's an idea I had of a way for special interest groups (SIGs) to network more effectively in this era of social network sites (flickr and such) and collaborative tagging. First, in order for this to work everyone in the SIG has to get registered on, and proficient with using a specific collaborative tagging site, say del.icio.us. (Not a big deal.)

Then here's all you do: Pick a unique tag word that fits your community, say, GuinnessLovers. Then just have all the members go to their main page on all the sites they're registered on and post that page to their del.icio.us account. The trick is to follow a convention of using two specific tags: the special community tag and the top-level domain-name of the site. So, for example, member joeblow tags his flickr page like this:

    URL:   flickr.com/photos/joeblow
    Desc:  (leave blank)
    Notes: (leave blank)
    Tags:  GuinnessLovers flickr.com

If everyone does this, it results in the following index pages (with unique feeds too!) automagically becoming available:

Master list:

• http://del.icio.us/tag/GuinnessLovers
  (Links to all home pages -- on Flickr, Digg, whatever -- of all members)

Group, subset pages:

• del.icio.us/tag/GuinnessLovers+flickr.com
  (Links to members' Flickr pages)

• del.icio.us/tag/GuinnessLovers+digg.com
  (Links to members' Digg pages)

• (etc...)

Individuals' pages:

• del.icio.us/joeblow/GuinnessLovers
  (Links to all Joe's home pages)

• del.icio.us/joeblow/frappr.com
  (A solitary link to Joe's Frappr page)

• (etc...)

Related:

• Cluetrain (opensource project) marketing and how tagging tools can help
• Dave Sifry on Blogosphere growth
• Batch loading blog posts into Delicious using Perl
• Broadcast, Notify, and Submit -- How to Immortalize your Tech-tips in Three Easy Steps

Tags: Tagging,  Folksonomy,  Blogging  Del.icio.us 

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Copying from an e-mail reply I just wrote to an acquaintance:

... "I'm not opposed to people wanting to be anonymous online in general. But I agree, ad hominem statements -- which are bad enough coming from people who claim them -- are absolute, 100% time-wasters when the person making them is (or thinks they are) anonymous." ...

Hey, wouldn't it be nice if someone wrote a module that enables online discussion systems (forums, blogs, and such) to detect and block ad hominem statements from people posting anonymously? Then sites could declare themselves troll-free, saving us all a lot of wasted time.

Related:

• Via google
• On this blog: Me, Philosophy, and Morality

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