Senators Ball and Griffo, Grisanti and Martins, and especially you, Senator Lanza,

I am writing on behalf not just of your LGBT constituents but all of your constituents. The issue of gay marriage is not an issue of gay rights, it is an issue of human rights. Denying the right to marriage to any part of the population is both cruel and unusual. The 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees equal rights for all citizens, and bans on gay marriage are every bit as discriminatory and illegal as anti-black and anti-female laws were not many decades ago.

This is your chance to do the right thing and serve not only the economic interests of our great State but also set a powerful precedent, a statement that New York will not countenance prejudice or discrimination in any form.

A majority of the state and a majority of your constituents are in favor of repealing the ban on gay marriage. Allowing all committed couples to form a committed spiritual bond and allowing them all to enjoy the legal benefits granted by recognition of such a bond is the best possible thing for children and families, and poses no threat to anyone, anywhere. Allowing the religious preferences of a portion of the population to control the opportunities and lives of another segment is backwards and narrow-minded and has no place in a state whose great Statue of Liberty has stood for decades as a symbol of freedom and equality.

You were sent to Albany to serve your constituents. Please, do what you were elected to do and vote to allow gay marriage.

-An Ally for Equality

The current crisis — to again borrow one of my favorite phrases from Wendell Berry — is a solution neatly divided into two problems. We have people who desperately need work to do. And we have work that desperately needs doing.

It takes years of specialized training to reach the point at which one doesn’t see the obvious “therefore” — or, even worse, the point at which one doesn’t view that obvious next step as desirable or possible. It takes the sort of training in which one learns to argue for the sanctity of efficient markets by insisting that the massively inefficient failure of those same markets is the best of all possible worlds. The sort of training that allows one to pretend to think that idling 14 million productive people while simultaneously neglecting urgently necessary tasks is the definition of “efficiency.” The sort of training that suggests we humans are powerless cogs with no agency who must accept the destiny decreed by the mystical and unalterable Market God, obscenely rechristening enslavement to that cruel God as “freedom.”

—Fred Clark, “Making Work”

I’ve been trying to tie up some loose ends, so that I can start in on my summer project list with a clean slate. And as loose ends go, my Rainmeter suite, Enigma, is sort of a big one.

I originally planned to release this thing on January 1st, as a New Year’s present. And in the midst of an incredibly productive December, this seemed like an entirely reasonable goal. Then—long story short—2011 decided that it just wasn’t going to be my year. January kicked it off with a sort of breathtaking series of unanticipated events, and I’ve really spent the last four months trying to keep up. As a result, most of my hobby projects have fallen by the wayside. And there’s nothing I hate more than unfinished business (except disappointing people and being falsely accused, which, funnily enough, have also been involved).

Frankly, Enigma was overdue for an update in December. Now it’s way, way, way overdue. And for the first time in forever, I have a weekend without any other timestamped obligations. So I am planning a coding blitz, starting this afternoon and ending tomorrow at midnight. Whatever’s done by then will be released on Monday as Enigma 3.0.

Anything left (probably the media player APIs, among other things) will be released in periodic patch updates as I get to them. The new Rainmeter website and skin installer utilities make patching a whole lot easier than it used to be, so I won’t have to go through all the logistical grief involved in a version overhaul like I did in the past. In addition, 3.0 completely changes Enigma’s basic code structure, which, although a little shocking at first, will also contribute to making future updates smooth and relatively painless.

It’s incredible to still see people downloading, using and modding Enigma, nearly three years after it first appeared on Lifehacker. I really feel that I owe you guys the modern Rainmeter experience that you deserve. The wait is (finally) almost over.

Counting down. All functions nominal. All functions optimal. Counting down. The center holds. The falcon hears the falconer. Infrastructure, check. Wetware, check. Everyone hang on to the lap bar, please.

Apotheosis was the beginning before the beginning. Devices on alert. Observe the procedures of a general alert. The base and the pinnacle. The flower inside the fruit that is both its parent and its child. Decadent as ancestors. The portal and that which passes.

Nuclear devices activated, and the machine keeps pushing time through the cogs, like paste into strings into paste again, and only the machine keeps using time to make time to make time.

And when the machine stops, time was an illusion that we created free will. Twelve battles, three stars, and yet we are countless as the bodies in which we dwell, are both parent and infinite children in perfect copies. No degradation.

The makers of the makers fall before the child. Accessing defense system. Handshake, handshake. Second level clear.

Accepting scan. Love outlasts death.

Their ships fail. Skittering like skipped stones. Meaningless in the absence of time. What never was is never again.

First, though, a disclaimer for those who don’t know me: I’ve always been a little bit of an idealist when it comes to technology. I still watch every Steve Jobs keynote and every Google livestream with bated breath, shamelessly hoping for the next thing that will change the world. And yes, I still cross my fingers for the creative minds behind the paperclip, because I believe it’s never too late to get it right.

And there are a number of features here that I find truly fresh, bold, and indicative of a tighter creative direction which Microsoft has been sorely lacking. The Windows Phone 7-esque visual style is especially encouraging. WP7 is basically the first time MS has hit on a style which even its staunchest critics find unique, attractive and functional, and extending that success across the whole ecosystem can only be a benefit. (I’m not worried that the “tiles” paradigm won’t translate to the desktop, either; thanks to the boundless creativity of the Rainmeter community, we already have a compelling proof-of-concept.)

I also adore the fact that the new apps, as well as the Start screen’s tiles, are written in HTML5. I continue to believe strongly in the HTML standard, which has now had over a decade of intensive growth and refinement, as a key part of the solution to this fragmented glut of “apps” that iOS and Android are responsible for dumping on our heads. It’s not a silver bullet, but the closer we get to the web, the smoother the road seems to get. I know a lot of developers are tearing their hair out because of this, and I don’t lack an appreciation for the overwhelming breadth and history of legacy Windows software. But this is the future, guys. Half the “apps” pinned to my taskbar right now are just websites that open in their own windows via Chrome’s “app” framework.

I have to disagree with John Gruber, who calls it a “fundamentally flawed response to the iPad”. Not least because the Apple ecosystem itself is showing exactly the same patterns of consolidation.

Every new UI feature of OS X Lion—the tiled app launcher, the fullscreen modal interface, the removal of scrollbars, even reversing the touchpad’s default scroll direction—is bringing the PC and the iPad user experiences closer together. And Apple, it seems to me, has been entirely upfront about this. I strongly suspect that within the next 5 years, both OSes will be fundamentally the same product—and installed on the same types of devices. (Remember, too, that the first iPhone OS began its life as a stripped-down version of OS X proper.) A more fully-featured OS will remain available for developers and power users, but the difference will be one of usage case, not form factor.

HP, too, is designing the same webOS to be used on phones, tablets, and traditional PCs. After a decade of failed tablets, the myth of the unworkable hybrid device is starting to break down. Google is still maintaining their Holy Line of Demarcation between finger (Android) and mouse (ChromeOS) devices, but I don’t see that lasting as a long-term solution.

I think Microsoft sees where this road is leading, and they’re taking advantage of the still-considerable resources of their empire to try and leapfrog the competition. It’s ambitious. But—as someone who was buying peripheral keyboards for Palm Pilots back in 2002—I think it’s more doable than ever. As UI designers gain more experience, and show more willingness to break with a mold that is now almost two decades old, it takes less and less imagination to see how the realm of touch and the realm of the cursor might just find a way to coexist.

I don’t want to read much into the specific way the classic Windows desktop is presented alongside the new interface in this preview. For one thing, it’s all Aero. It has none of the WP7 styling, which makes me think that what we’re seeing is just a bunch of front-end software running on top of a regular Windows 7 system. I expect it’ll be a little while, and several failed attempts, before they figure out exactly how to integrate legacy software. I do strongly feel that the taskbar, or whatever they come up with to replace it, should remain a universal mechanism, available from all apps and consistent in appearance. The biggest problem is how to integrate windowed apps, and frankly I could write a treatise on that. If future previews don’t show more progress in this area, I’ll be concerned.

I’m definitely not ready to take the plunge, and I’m not sure Microsoft is either. Windows 7 is a mature OS, the evolution of a tried-and-true working paradigm on which the whole world still relies. I’m not at all comfortable with the idea of throwing away a good chunk of Windows’ greatest strengths as a platform. But that’s partly the point. Microsoft has decided not to be the next IBM. They’re gambling on a vision which, if it’s successful, could help move the whole industry forward. And for once, there’s reasonable evidence that they have a solid plan. I’m looking forward to it.

I’m going to try to start posting something at least once a day. It’s encouraging to know that I actually have a few readers now. (You know who you are – and again, I’m grateful.) Andrew Sullivan says you need to be posting at least three times a day, or you’re not “taking the job seriously.” But of course, it’s a full-time occupation for him, not to mention his two interns.

Hey, would anyone like to be my interns?

When at last we left, the children danced along with us for several miles, laughing and singing improvised songs—one of them would start, and the others would quickly pick it up and join in.

The words seem oddly dated, don’t they? It all sounds rather naïve and sentimental to be talking about children laughing and dancing and singing together when we all know perfectly well that what children do in real life is snarl and take drugs. But these children/kids/youths, and all the ones we came across on our journey, were happy in a way that we in the West are almost embarrassed by.

—Douglas Adams, “The Rhino Climb” (The Salmon of Doubt p75)

1. Most of the people in Japan weren’t alive when Pearl Harbor happened.
2. Japan is one of the United States’ biggest economic partners. Anything that hurts them, hurts us.
3. The tsunami which resulted from the earthquake hit Hawaii. You know, where Pearl Harbor is.
4. If there is some cosmic force tracking our cosmic debt, there’s a lot more to say about both our countries’ histories than the events of December 7, 1941.
5. Innocent people who have lost their homes and families don’t need ethnocentric pricks telling them that they deserved it.

Goodnight.

So for the sake of a healthy mobile ecosystem, can we all agree not resort to ridiculous straw-man arguments?

This is the worst kind of false equivalence, and it seems to come from a chronic misunderstanding of what open source proponents mean when they use the word “open.”

You – yes, you – are free to download the entire Android operating system. You are free to read every line of code, to copy it anywhere you want, to change anything you want, and to install it on any device you want. You are also free to sell that device to anyone you want, for any price you want. Google provides detailed instructions for doing exactly this, and does not require its permission – or your money – for any part of the process.

That is an open-source operating system, and regardless of whether it makes for good ethics, a good market, or a good business strategy (those questions are certainly debatable), it is open in a fundamental way. A way that iOS is indisputably not. Apple (as I discussed recently) doesn’t even allow its own paying customers to modify the product to their liking. Google, while they have obviously formed privileged relationships with HTC, Motorola, et al, gives amateurs the same basic access to their flagship technology. We’re probably approaching the day when someone out there makes a better Google phone than Google, who – by all appearances – is actively encouraging it.

If Google established a curated marketplace, took a 30% cut from every sale, and excluded unapproved submissions… then, honestly, I wouldn’t mind a bit. They have no obligation to lend their resources to support every CS undergrad’s Hello World marquee. And based on my initial experiences with the Market, they could afford to be a tad more selective, especially when it comes to knockoffs, duplicates and misleading descriptions.

As long as they don’t inhibit my freedom to install software from unapproved sources. That’s the difference. That’s what is called “evil” about Apple’s policy. No one¹ opposes meritocracy, value, capitalism, or user experience. They oppose a company, founded by tinkerers and supposedly the savior of creative users, telling people that they don’t actually own the products that some of them have paid up to $830 for.

Can’t really argue with this one, though I think it depends more on the app than the OS. You could give Apple points for excluding apps with unclear security conditions, but on the whole, I prefer not being treated like an idiot by my cellphone.²

I think I’m just going to concentrate on what an oxymoron the phrase “monoculture of freedom” is: Gnargh! How dare our Google overlords force choice down our throats! Why must they burden us with the freedom to do whatever we want?

But seriously. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to see Google become a monopoly. I want other search engines, other email services, other browsers and other OSes to exist and to be competitive. I think Apple’s walled garden is a legitimate niche and will continue to exist (even as I question the self-respect of those who choose it). Competition makes everyone better. And I don’t believe Android enthusiasts, who delight in the idea of having hundreds of colloquial variants on everything from tablets to toothbrushes, would disagree with that principle.

(Just kidding.)

1. Well, no one of consequence. I left Toronto two years ago, but I still can’t seem to get my email address off the UT International Socialists’ listserv, which I never asked to be on in the first place. So the hell with them.
2. That’s what my printer is for.