Potential Topics

From Zanecorpwiki

• taming doubt
• planning fallacy; may also want to massage into commentary on software development in particular
• $1,000,000 tax bracket; may also want to cross link/incorporate into the wealthy bully essay
• now that I know xpath, should do up some notes on it: w3 spec, useful examples: [1], [2], [3]; also note the command line tool
• XML test suite
• CACert; break the cert monopoly
• need mac notes; first topic is how to set up root (did I already note this?)
• PHP/Java Bridge; specifically want to use this to bring in the Java userdata library into the PHP-based services data checking
• viewing current postgres activity
• panic by Bruce Sterling; the good side of it is this is how things change, so the fact that we've reached the panic stage (probably) means that change is coming
• JQuery, Moo, etc. are not JavaScript frameworks, they're UI frameworks, this isn't surprising and people that use them will instantly recognize this as obvious--to the point of it seeming like mere semantics; however, it strikes me as rather important semantics
• small business investing: the current law is based on protecting people from fraud... but makes it nearly impossible for small business to get funded at the level it should be; also, investing in small business should be a sort of national expression... why can't I just give money to awesome that embody the things I would like to see come to fruition
• evidence of the app store effect; not that this hasn't been tried before (didn't Sun have something before?), but now that the appstore has 'broken through', maybe things are different?
• avoiding problems with parody and gripe sites
• speed up web page load time
• Interesting idea by ShopGreen... unfortunately, they're transaction fee is ridiculously high. Not saying it's out of line, but the cost of such a program as part of an integrated solution would be close to zero... maybe charge $0.01 fee (instead of $0.10 + 3.9%); the 10 cent base fee means that for most purchases, the transaction fee will end up being 20-30% of the extra-money! Only 70c on the dollar to the cause is pretty shitty all around. You need to charge something, as in integrated solution you could run the program at cost (or even a little below as your own contribution) and get the value from the PR bump. (Plus, I hate all-flash websites... especially when they're broken.)
• interesting graphical view of code size and language speed; thought: ultimately, all speed questions are irrelevant as every thing's mappable
• I need a Korean connection; I want the soundtrack to Pump It Up
• want to check out this music list
• Bill Gates gets it almost exactly right; the only thing missing is the understanding that becoming very (billionaire) wealthy puts a drag on society. Microsoft's monopolistic dominance put a profound, decades long chill on software and IT development.
• No big surprise to anyone that pays much attention, but athiests are far more peaceful than the faithful; empirical disproof of the moral center theory
• the key to a productive society is not individual worker productivity, but universal employment[4]
• go over marketing bits in dog_food_software/public_relations/marketing/2009_04_21_kibbles_marketing_brainstorm.pdf
• Opera Unite
• @font-face
• The question isn't why is open source so important, but why isn't open source so much more important. Most developers I know are pretty passionate about open source and, I believe, sincerely want to contribute. Yet very few have. I don't know anyone that's contributed significant time to an open source effort and aside from throwing an open license on some personal code and a few dollars at one of the OS foundations, I don't know anyone that's contributed much at all to open source. The fact that it's still going speaks to it's universal popularity. Every vegan in the world would have to get active to really push their cause forward, but only 1 in 100 open source proponents need actually take action to assemble a critical mass of contributors. So the question really is why doesn't open source take off? The single biggest problem may be spin up time. Despite the fact that I'm far less passionate (and hopeful) about politics than I am about technical things, I've volunteered a good 48 hours over the past few years for political stuff. In that time, I helped organize the press for an event and made 1000's of phone calls for candidates and issues. In the same period, I've done nothing to help open source. The problem is that while I can donate the odd hour to making phone calls, the minimum necessary commitment to get started on an open source project is starts at weeks. There's a tremendous spin up time to developing code. Even when working daily with familiar code, it'll take 30-60 minutes to really start doing work.
• civic apps; I love it