Rodent Regatta

College textbooks cost too much. Even timeless books of literature, calculus and basic chemistry cost too much. Move into a study of computer science, microbiology or biomedical engineering and the books, which sometimes take a year or more to get to print, are out of date before they are a professor’s required text, and…they cost too much.Also a story about an angry Hispanic lacrosse player who vanished from a cruise ship during Bush’s low poll numbers

The “simple” in the title of this article refers to this question which you’ve read here before:

How much of an American citizen’s income should be paid to the government in taxes?

Nevermind the debate about what those taxes will be used to pay for. The question is how much is enough? In Memphis, TN we pay almost ten percent in state and local sales tax. We pay city property taxes. We pay county property taxes. We pay for car tags and driver’s licenses. We pay many other taxes.

Send a child to a state-run university and either you or your government subsidize the cost of that education. The only question is a trick, “who pays the greater share of the student’s education cost?” Answer: You paid 100% of the cost. The government has no money it didn’t receive from you.

Readers still with me at this point will enjoy an essay titled Tuition Soars Due to Knowledge Shortfall by Anne Coulter. Though one of her clever, obscure asides, here’s the quote that captures:

The two big topics on CNN last week were (1) high gas prices and (2) the high cost of college tuition. (Also a story about an angry Hispanic lacrosse player who vanished from a cruise ship during Bush’s low poll numbers.)

Kathy Sierra’s weblog makes you think she’s reading your mind. Her recent articles read like confessions from clients. The things that keep clients awake at night—at least my clients—are clearly explained at Kathy’s site.

In The Myth of Keeping Up we see the reading pile that has become all too familiar. Unfortunately, the reading pile that once resided at the office has a big brother gaining weight at home. Articles, books, magazines and even newspapers accumulate like loose change, but that loose change grows in value as its weight increases. Those reading piles do not!

Put the pile on a scale and you’ll discover another sibling or two with their toes on the corners pressing down. These siblings are email—in multiple accounts—along with RSS feeds, pdf downloads and web sites far and wide. Even the best automated filters and organizers do little to reduce the pressure people feel when falling behind.

Never has it been more important to understand what you are truly passionate about, what your purpose is and with whom (or what) you’re trying to keep up. Here’s a tip: if you’re trying to keep up with somebody else, stop! Stop now and free yourself from that struggle. It’s unimportant.

If you work in a place where the culture pits you against your coworker, get out now. It is 2006 and if your employer hasn’t discovered the benefits of collaboration over competition, he or she never will. You, your health and your relationships to others are far more important than trying to “keep up.”

Constant striving in these areas defines the rat race. There’s a big difference between the rodent regatta and a peaceful afternoon of sailing. Purpose, passion and balance characterize the latter. Toil, frustration and a fuzzy finish line characterize the former. Let the Jones family pull ahead. You won’t lose a thing!

Some of the brightest developers I know about are doing open source coding for the Textpattern content management system. They are continuing to improve and extend the capabilities of that software.

One challenge involves properly providing RSS 2.0 feeds from Textpattern-based sites given a rather wide variety of site designs. My own RSS feed was once described as funky. That saga dates to the summer of 2003. 1 – 2 – 3 – 4. Absent solid, understandable answers at that time, I went about my business. I actually believe that around the time of those links, the Atom initiative was getting off the ground. It gave birth to another syndication technique. Many sites now provide both RSS and Atom feeds.

With the request from the Textpattern developers comes an opportunity to solve the RSS 2.0 problems once and for all. I’m no developer, but I’m a cheerleader for bringing some resolution to the entire debate. The call is out for a who’s who of (apolitical) developers to answer the questions raised here. Maybe those who write the feed readers could weigh in as well.

Twenty four 8 1/2in. x 5 1/2in. pages hold my web passwords. Firefox manages passwords fairly well, but the pages are beyond dog-eared due to frequent references required to log into a news service, software forum or web site.

Three questions remain unanswered in the whole arena of web 2.0, hosted, software-by-subscription, software-on-demand, utility computing, web apps…you get it. I talked about those questions earlier. Here’s the quick reminder:

• Who has my data and can I get a copy of it that is useful?
• What do I do when you—my web app provider—go away?
• Can you really survive the bubble?

Now, a far more eloquent essay about the matter exists. Joel Dueck has written The Nuclear Proliferation of Little Rails Apps. He hits on all the concerns, but with a more immediate focus on whether or not we are really more effective with dozens of specialized “little Rails apps.”

This one is drop-everything-read-it-right-now good.

The whole thing began as a short weblog entry by Jason Hoffman at the Joyent weblog. That entry pointed to an article titled Shaking Up Tech Publishing. There are currently forty six comments about that article.

Here’s how that turned into a two-day excursion through all kinds of new thinking:

Read on...